Not sure if others have seen this video talk. I found this video on you tube and found it very interesting, and it got me thinking about the many ways over the years that simmers have used the game for story telling and the variety of ways it can be played.. Discussion and thoughts ?

https://youtu.be/YjuOSgPdtS0

I noticed how certain actions would trigger event trees a long time ago. I don't know if it's more pronounced in TS2 than in the other games, though - the wants and fears makes it a bit easier to see. I would use it more as a tool to get aspiration points and such, but it would in a way drive the story forward, although usually not in a very different direction than the one I'd already planned.

Nowadays I'm more of the "dollhouse" player, so for the most part I don't care that much about the ingame story techniques.

I really like this talk, and what he's saying about ambiguity and projection. That's also one of the things I find lacking in the newer Sims titles. They're trying to do and say so much that there's less room for projection and interpretation, less gaps for the player's imagination to fill in - gaps that for that reason actually made the gameplay feel richer.

The one example from my game that always springs to mind is when I had a young woman become pregnant by an older man she'd met fairly recently. She called him over, in my mind to tell him about the pregnancy, and after spending just a few minutes at her house he left. No pop-up or anything, just walked off the lot. And they were in love, i.e best friends. What happened from the game's perspective I don't know, but from a storytelling perspective, it was very clear: he had no intention of being the slightest bit involved in this child's life.

Particularly TS4 sims tend to feel a bit "cold". The sims don't react the same way TS2 sims would do to events. Once their moodlets are over and done with, they almost seem to forget about whatever happened. In a lot of ways they feel more static, like their reactions to things are nearly always what you expect them to be.

TS2 sims, because of their memories and event trees, in addition to relationships, have multiple ways to react to things. It makes them seem more alive. They also tend to have more spontaneous reactions, like suddenly crying over a lost family member after a week or two, or having different reactions to getting up in the morning depending on mood (there's probably some of this in the other games too, but I often feel they cheapened out on the animations with the newer games). From a storytelling perspective, I've always found more inspiration in TS2 than the other games.

What you commented here was exactly what made me want to the link to this video.. it is always fascinating to me to see how others interpret their game. I am just slowly coming back after a few years of no interest. I thought it would might generate some interesting conversation, but I guess there isn't alot of interest in this type of thing. I still see so many comments on posts that have been similarily repeated many times over the years, and thought maybe this was something a little different. To each their own I guess..



OTE=Kligma]I really like this talk, and what he's saying about ambiguity and projection. That's also one of the things I find lacking in the newer Sims titles. They're trying to do and say so much that there's less room for projection and interpretation, less gaps for the player's imagination to fill in - gaps that for that reason actually made the gameplay feel richer.

The one example from my game that always springs to mind is when I had a young woman become pregnant by an older man she'd met fairly recently. She called him over, in my mind to tell him about the pregnancy, and after spending just a few minutes at her house he left. No pop-up or anything, just walked off the lot. And they were in love, i.e best friends. What happened from the game's perspective I don't know, but from a storytelling perspective, it was very clear: he had no intention of being the slightest bit involved in this child's life.[/QUOTE]

I watched the video too and enjoyed it. I found it very interesting. I watched it around the time they sent out that TS4 survey to people. I was sent the survey but it ended once I entered my age (older players need not apply, I guess), but I did see a video that said what the survey questions were. I found it interesting with the questions that were being asked in the most recent survey, compared to what he was talking about in the video from a couple of years ago. It feels that things are going in a completely different direction from what his vision was. I'm guessing he's no longer involved with the Sims team?

This video got me thinking back to my past simming days and how I lost interest sometimes because I was feeling like all I was doing was keeping them alive with eating, sleeping and working and was having some trouble "seeing and finding story." Anybody else feel this way ? I am really thinking of giving it another go with a custom sc4 terrain and nh. Any tips to help stay out of the "grind zone?"

For my part, I’ve said nothing before because I don’t watch videos.
But now I’ve torn my tendon and can’t do anything, and have finally gotten this stupid phone to work, more or less, and the topic of storytelling is one I can talk about even on this tiny keyboard, so here I am.
Sims2 is an excellent storytelling medium, well-balanced between the freedoms and constraints of tellers and characters. By this I mean that the characters have agency, but the player has choices about how much control to take and what that agency leads to. For instance, a happily married sim rolls a want to flirt with a friend. The player interprets the want and makes choices about its fulfillment, within the constraints of the game mechanics and mods. The better a player understands how the vanilla game and the installed mods work, the more nuance the can give the story.
In the case of the flirt want, if you understand how want trees and aspirations work, and also understand real life impulses and desires, it soon becomes second nature to consider the circumstances, envision consequences, and choose whether or not to fill the want. If, for example, the sim in question is Romance, married their spouse in CAS, and has just made best friends with the one they want to flirt with, and you know that the Romance Want tree is triggered to throw flirt wants when a want to make best friends is filled, that under the vanilla code a sim who has only done romantic actions with one other sim is unlikely to initiate them with anyone else, that it’s common for real people to feel attraction that they never act on due to other considerations, and that moral and practical considerations about romantic behavior are not coded into sims; all these things come together in your head effortlessly and get compared to your plans for this sim to determine whether or not to direct the sim to flirt, and whether and in what ways to mod the possible consequences. You made a married Romance sim in CAS for a reason. Did you want lots of jealousy drama, a happy open relationship, a saga of unbridled monogamous passion? Here’s your chance for any one of those things. Choose.
And yet - unless you’ve chosen to turn off free will - you don’t actually control the consequences. Your sim may still surprise you. They may behave in statistically unlikely ways; the complex interactions of mods may create unintended consequences; the autonomous behavior of a neighbor on a community lot may throw all your plans into a cocked hat.
And that, as any writer can tell you, is when things really take off!

@peni
Thank you Peni for your two cents, great insight. Is there a cheat sheet someplace on things such as you said under standing the vanilla game. Particularly as you said want trees and Aspiration. In the past I mostly did building, not really much playing with the sims themselve to a long extent..

The game is far too complex for any kind of cheat sheet for the subtler effects . You play a lot, you talk to other players, you read threads like “what did you discover today, you think you understand it, and then it blindsides you. Much like stories, or people, for that matter.

I’ve grasped a lot of the mechanics of the game related to character and narrative because that’s where I live and what draw me to the game; but I do n’t kid myself that I know all about it. The way the game behaves for me is affected by my play style and the choices I make within it. How could it be otherwise?