The Sims is based to a culture of the United States. We can see it in little things like going school by the yellow bus or eating pancakes as breakfast. There Finland children go school walking or by bike and pancakes are considered as dessert. There is also things like Greek Houses that are not common outside US. Homever translation fixes that in Finnish version. they are tranlatede to "osakunta" a student society which gathers together students by their home area. Some things makes me wonder are they thing in US. For some reason both TS2 and TS3 Universty Eps comes with bonfire. I have no idea how university and bonfires are connected.

I am interest to know how your culture affects to your playing. Do you think your sims as americans or are they from there where you live? Desbite the school bus or pancakes my sims live quite finnish live in TS2. For example I build often sauna for them and it is usually connected to bathroom like home saunas are in Finland. On the other hand they eat what the game gives including pancakes as breakfast. There is no similar private school system but I invite the headmaster over if my sims want to. I had also downloaded CC that based on real Finnish desing.

In Ts2 my sims have Finnish names and that is easiest because all npc names are translated. In TS3 names are not always Finnish because not every name is translated. Worlds have also more clearly cultural and geographical backround and I want my sims to fit in.

I mostly play them as Americans, with names from there. I find translations to be shallow and unnecessary. Castaways to me fell flat, although not immediately in my first playthough. Most core Western amenities were simply reskinned without fundamentally changing how they worked.

I build and furnish houses based on my experience because I do not know how American houses should be, and I don't want to take the examples given in the game. I build a foundation, fence, a single sturdy door, many plants, in a way that looks warm and safe. I think sims live further north away from the extreme heat of California and Vice City, but not a specific country, maybe in Canada. I do not play the Strangetown area.

I made a mod that allows children to walk to community lots as they would do around here, without being imprisoned on the lot. School still works the same as before.

Since I eat anything that is in the fridge, regardless of the time of day, my sims do that too. Foods don't have any functional impact, so you can eat pancakes every day without getting a sugar disease. They cook through the Make menu if they want something that can be eaten fast and efficiently. Sometimes they eat vegetarian.

I am American, but I was not involved in Greek life or the sports culture when I was at college. However, I associate bonfires like the one in the game with parties, particularly pep rallies to gear up for a big game or possibly beach parties.

I play my game based on American culture, mostly from where I live in the South. Everyone must own a car. In America, if you don't live in a major city (and sometimes if you do), we have almost no way to get around without a car, sadly. This is one aspect of American culture I wish would change. If my Sims have a backyard, they will usually get a BBQ grill and some kind of outdoor seating so they can throw family barbecues on summer weekends.

If I play in a small town like the one where i grew up, I like to build lots like a volunteer fire department where the volunteers can stay while they are on duty. I also will usually have a diner of some kind because either that or a hamburger stand was the only dining out option. The pharmacy may have also had a soda fountain inside where you could get sodas and hamburgers. There will always be a country store where you can buy groceries and sundries. There will usually be a lake for swimming and fishing and a "junk" store, but there will not be a whole lot of places to go unless you get in the car and drive somewhere else.

I think a lot of the houses are based on US building practices i.e. raised foundations so there are steps up to the front door or veranda. In the UK we pour concrete foundations into the ground and build on that so the front door is at ground level. From a playable aspect I don't like the raised foundations. Fine on their own but if you have a garage with a car on it you can't click/select it to go anywhere as you can't see it as technically it on a different floor so you have to floor down to see the vehicle.

I have Ikea furniture in my own house so loved the Ikea pack when it came out and still use a lot of the beds and furniture in my sims homes. So in answer to you question, I build UK style houses.

A lot of houses down the hill from us could have used raised foundations. They all got condemned after a flood.



Is that mod uploaded anywhere?

A lot of the houses build by the Thames, upstream in the non tidal parts, are on raised foundations because the Thames does overflow its banks at times.

I don't have a driving license, am a street photographer, and only ever lived in very walkable places, so I really dislike cars. I don't think I ever had a functioning car in the game. My hood is very compact just like my hometown(s), so it is realistic for sims to walk almost everywhere, and where not, my headcanon often uses horse carriages despite it being a 100% modern place. Most houses are very close to each other, children can play on the streets, and just like in my childhood, it is very normalised that neighbours watch over each other's children outside. My community lots often go out into the road using moveobjects and Mootilda's lotadjuster, which allows you to add all the roads around a lot on top of the front one, and make them fully accessible and playable. I attached screenshots to show what I'm talking about. I don't know how it is in America, but I think it slightly is a typical privileged continental Europe thing to eat your cafe/restaurant lunch in one of the tables spread outside, talking to passerbys in the meantime. To do something on the main square, which is a connection of roads around the oldest/centremost part of the city. Or, if you're from a small town suburbia hole like me, to eat outside with your neigbhours. So I really like that in my game.

I also always really feel the need to have a town church and priest, but I don't like the idea of my sims actually practicing religion.

I don't have many non-white sims. The first time I've ever seen a black person in my country was at the age of 17 (I'm 20 now) and it just wasn't on my mind much ever. I've started changing that now and adding diversity, but it's still something that I do consciously, rather than something that reflects my own IRL environment.

All of my sims have Polish, Nordic (I love Finnish) or Greek names/surnames, but most of my handmade lots are called something in English (Plato's All That Tat just really doesn't translate)

Other than that, things that don't exactly reflect being a provincial Polish girl specifically, but does still reflects my life "habits" - my sims never order fast food, I almost never play cheating/promiscuous lifestyles, and I never had private school kids, because I think the headmaster gameplay is extremely awkward.

I hope my answer is at least partially on topic, I'll probably think of way more obvious ones as soon as I hit "submit".

EDIT: this is also not so on topic, but there's a Polish guy who builds and furnishes apartments in a VERY fresh-out-of-communism Polish/Eastern European style. This style disappeared in the past 15 years, but I still remember very clearly just how accurate it is. I even recognise some of the pieces of furniture, because back in the USSR most people owned the same 3 things. Here 's a link, if anyone at all cares XD

EDIT 2:


My experience living in two British houses was that they both started cracking on the walls and ceilings because of tree roots drying out the soil directly under the foundationless houses and making them unstable. Northern British housing looks scary in general to me, houses right on top of canals/rivers and simultaneously right at the bottom of valleys etc

Wouldn't cars just run right over people sitting at those tables?

I don't think I have ever thought about it!

It seemed logical to me to build houses the way they look where I live (and sometimes other buildings) - and I remember, when being told to build a Painted Lady in a building contest, I had NO idea what the hell that was. (Learned a lot, though).

I grew up in a railway town. The houses were not fancy (even the fancy ones were not fancy). I grew up in a kind of a bungalow, but it was a simple one, although quite roomy. We had cars, but we often took the train, and going to school was either on foot or with a bicycle (except for the kids from the farms outside of town, they came in a bus).

My game is probably also influenced by my very diverse country, I have all kinds of sims, but i see them as South African (or those British ones who still live here). Some of my sims are simply inspired by characters in novels too, and I will admit that some of them are British too

I simply ignore things that don't make sense to me (e.g. Greek houses, which I did play for a bit when Uni first came out and decided that I could do without it). Bonfires - a bit lame, to be honest - we make a proper fire for a BBQ, and then we keep that fire alive after eating and sit around it

I like to think imagination is ruling in my game, but I guess even imagination will take one's own surroundings into account.

Well I just say to myself that this whole area is a no cars zone. It's right next to the river and mostly community lots, so I treat it like an "old town area". Of course it happens in hood view all the time, but like I said, my sims don't own cars, so whoever's driving those, the fines are on them.

My cultural background affects my game quite a lot without me knowing, actually. Even though i mostly play my sims as american to fit the aesthetic, there are many things i just can't bring myself to do. For example, i can't stand my sims walking around the house with their shoes on, it makes me SO uncomfortable. I often build houses which resemble my country's architecture (which means they look pretty depressing, lol), in Poland almost everyone lives in "blocks" and apartments, which often made me play in sims cities filled with apartments. Many of them were build a long time ago, during PRL or communism period. When it comes to food, i sometimes avoid mac'n'cheese, because this kind of food isn't very well liked in my parts (i tried to eat it but i really didn't like it :<). Or letting my sim kids out of the house by themselves unless they're teens, since it's seen as dangerous to let children out by themselves to wander around the city alone (unless it's close proximity to their house) to play, socialize etc. in my country, even if the simworld doesn't have those kind of dangers. Clothing and customization aren't that affected, since we dress similarly to people in America. I'm sure there's more examples of it, but i can't think of any right now. Honestly, this is such an interesting topic and i'm glad someone made a thread about it

I think I play them partly American beecause of how the game is built up, but also put my own spin on it - there's likely a lot of European influence (both from where I am, plus maybe a bit from here and there elsewhere in Europe).

The food is familiar enough to not be annoying, but there are things I miss, like plain pieces of bread with something on them, or simple glasses of juice or other beverages. The cans everywhere are a bit annoying. I grew up with pancakes (the thin ones/crepes) as more of a dinner dish, occasionally dessert, but not as breakfast. The thicker ones (probably with a slightly different recipe) are more of a dessert/comfort food/"lots of people to serve" kind of food. Never even heard of Baked Alaska until I played TS2, and I think I've only eaten turkey once during holidays (but wasn't a fan - I prefer other things). And my grilled cheese also has ham

I am American, but I'm an oddball too .. I don't know how culturally driven my game play is as much as personal life experience. I absolutely LOVE to see pictures of peoples house that have full of deco clutter, but I just can't seem to do that myself. My mother is a somewhat casual hoarder. I say casual as it's never gotten to the severe stage as some may have seen on TV or the like and she does occasionally get rid of stuff. Because of her wantin to keep things "cuz it might be useful someday" really pushes me a lot in the opposite direction. I don't have many knick knacks or the like. Things more of less need to have a function or reason. Don't get me wrong my room is by no means void of stuff (nor is it always spic 'n span clean )

When it comes to building homes I feel I'm a bit more pragmatic for space. I don't usually do the giant sized houses with bedrooms that would be the size of a small house. There needs to be enough walk area so as not to cause to much foot stomping.

I don't often think about it, as I prefer to think sims live some place else, maybe a parallel similar but different universe. They have different laws of nature and person types like plantsims after all. When I do think on it, I draw from my own country of Australia.

If a play Christmas in game I play it in summer, Easter is in Autumn.

I have a cheat that switches cars from driving on the right to the left (only in hood view sadly)

The school bus I defaulted into a van (we do have buses but they are not yellow and look different) mainly for my small towns as I am from a rural town in Queensland.

I have made fridge stockable Vegemite because we love our Vegemite and I want most homes to have some.

Most times I play college at home as I had never heard of Greek Houses, or the names they give like Sophomore. My daughter is a college student, she has never set foot in a dorm, she lives at a house she shares with friends and drives in each day.

But I also have a Wild West/Pioneer save and that is based on the US. It probably doesn't look much like that, but I did look up clothes, life style and food for it.

Oh, yes, I forgot about the weather, and the cars in sims driving on the wrong side of the road (that may have been the first mod I downloaded).
Christmas is in summer, Easter is in autumn! Cannot help it, but it just does not feel right to have Christmas in the winter while playing

I think, like Jo, I see the sim world as just somewhere else, like any world that does not exist in reality, but exists in fiction.

im south east asian and the only cultural shock I had is the sims needing so much space to move properly. just HOP over it! just say "excuse me" and shimmy a lil bit! crawl over to the other side of the bed!

That's not a RL culture thing. It seems to be solely a Sim culture thing. XD

I am from a post-Soviet now EU country. I am in my early 30s, was born few years after the restoration of independence from USSR, grew up on mostly western and specifically USA media.
I started to play the Sims 1 when I was about 10. Switched to the Sims 2 as soon as it came out, so when I was in my early teens. Sims have never been translated to my native language.

I have only ever played my sims as Americans, or, more accurately simericans. I don't think it occurred to me that I could technically build neighborhoods inspired by my own culture until I was an adult. I think it's partly because of the language - as I have always played sims in English, I do think of them as belonging to "English speaking" world and that world to me as child was USA. And partly it's because the culture of sims felt familiar from USA media and it therefore felt natural to play sims as Americans. Or Simericans.

Of course, my "American" sims are living in imagined, idealized version of USA (and therefore I think of them as "simericans" now). I have been in USA once. I think I am still processing the homelessness crisis that I saw. And I am politically active leftist, so my list of criticisms about USA is LONG. My sims definitely do not live in realistic USA, they live in a USA that could have been or that I wish was real. A dreamland that is partly constructed by me and partly by USA itself.

ahh sims, you give them all the space in the world but cant step over a toy car



i feel exactly the same when i was a kid i thought americans lived in some sort of utopia

then as i got older i realized there aint no utopia so now i just make the utopia in the game with free school, good infrastructure and -gasp- public transportation

Hm. I live in a rural part of the Basin and Range formation in the western US. So . . . Sims 2 is very definitely coastal suburbia. Like, I think there's one, maybe two, taxis in the nearest town, and I could never afford to hire one. A tank of gas is cheaper! (I remember my dad did once when I was a kid. It was absurd, like two nights in a hotel at that time.) Everyone drives. One of the first mods I downloaded was a home school mod. Yes, we have the yellow school buses, those poor kids having to waste three hours a day on the bus unless their parents take them to school. My nearest neighbors are a mere quarter mile away, so we aren't super rural, but . . . Almost everyone I know grows some of their own food and may show up randomly or call you up to come over to get rid of something they have in excess of needs. Like last summer an elderly friend called because their peaches did too well and they couldn't use them all, and we canned sixty-four quarts from her trees. (We're higher in elevation and have no luck keeping peach trees alive, so it was a really amazing gift!)

So a lot of my sims have gardens, and a lot are self-employed (it's been over twenty years since I worked for someone else: I had to count) and they home school their kids, and just, you know, live normal lives instead of urban lives with high power careers. I'm always trying to push the boundaries of what my computer can do with the Sun and Moon sets, because . . . you know, it's just cheaper and more convenient to do it yourself than to go to town and spend money on it, and it's probably going to be lower quality when it comes from the store anyway . . . which reminds me I need to start a batch of yogurt.

That is a good point. First I found out The Sims Mediaval little bit odd because monsters and magic. My inner history nerd said it was fantasy, not mediaval. Then I thougt about plantsims and alien pregnancies. Maybe other sims are modern fantasy?

I think the paraller universe has also mentioned in the game. According the text boxes, you see while you are buying furnitures, or career quests they live land called Simnation and there is a sea called Side Sea in Finnish translation. (This is joke. Sivumeri sound quite like Välimeri, Mediterranean Sea) Homever sims do not have their own strong culture which does not base real cultures. Sometimes The game works differently like some cultures. For example: chidren goes sauna in Finland but not in the Sims.

I play my Sims as I feel for example, I only play two neighborhoods One is Pleasant View, and the other is my custom build Shanghai. I would say Pleasant View is located somewhere in America. And Shanghai is located in China; the Sims there are all Asian with Asian names from different background they could even be Japanese or Koreans but mostly Chinese. Their homes have more of the Asian touches and home structures.

Pleasant View is more American build homes and European homes; the Ethnic is a mixer of all races of people as found in America.
In both of my Neighborhood the Sims have their own cultures and beliefs.
In my world of Sims, "It like Alice Through the Looking Glass." A Classic story in the book by author Lewis Carroll's where reality may not be real.

Well, as a Christian fundamentalist (Independent Baptist), I probably see the characters a lot differently than a lot of people do. My line of work in the public school system also affects that interpretation.

Take Cassandra Goth for example, I get the feeling most people wouldn't see the long lineage of the family, the lack of a television in the household, her family aspiration, and her propensity to want to learn to play the family piano and interpret her as being a fundamentalist and church pianist. And while most would see the Pleasant family as imperfect, I doubt that as many people would see Daniel and Mary Sue Pleasant as the abusive dirtbags I see them as (which is affected by both my faith/culture AND what I see in my career).

Then there's the Grim Reaper. One thing on my mental to-do list is to figure out how to mod him to look like John Dye/Andrew from Touched By An Angel. I feel like only a fundamentalist (or maybe someone who's just a really big fan of that show) would think of that.

It varies from one hood to another - I play some hoods as more realistic and try to make them more like the world I see around me, others (especially Strangetown) run very much on Sim logic!

My most realistic hood, still under construction, is set in northern New Zealand and therefore has two springs and no winter, never any snow, more palm trees than deciduous trees. I'm building houses based on ones I see around town. Cars drive on the left in hood view. But there are a lot of gameplay problems - the letterboxes are all wrong including the animation (the postie should be able to push letters through the slot, not have to open a flap!), if I want a social welfare system I have to implement it myself, and the career chance cards are from a very different world. It doesn't make any sense for a security guard to use a gun, let alone be required to own a gun and bring it to work, and hospitals don't generate profits and certainly can't be owned by a single person!

As @breakfastcountess said, it would be a lot better if sims could take their shoes off at the front door instead of wearing them through the house (shoes off inside is not universal NZ culture and varies from household to household, but I would never assume I could wear my shoes into a house I'm visiting!) - and I find a dearth of CC clothes with bare feet or sandals! When I look in the default database I see that many creators have defaulted the Maxis sandal outfits to give them sneakers instead, so my want for more sandals is out of step with the zeitgeist. I also need to look pretty hard to find clothes that are summery and casual - bare skin usually comes on overtly sexy outfits, so I've collected a lot of recolours of the Freetime afbodycomfy outfit. (Right now in real life it's the coldest part of winter and I'm in my woolliest socks and slippers - warm clothes are much easier to find for my Sims.)

The hood I'm playing most often has no aim to be realistic - it's a quasi-historical low-tech fantasy outpost of a matriarchal empire with an imported nobility ruling over the local populace and a lot of plantsims and alien spawn - and it does snow there. I think I associate snow with fictional settings, so it makes sense for snow to happen!

Yep, religion has effect too. There are people who do not make their sims woohoo before marriage for example.