Well, today's the day! It's ten years ago today since I started to play The Sims 2 for the first time. I had spent a few weeks reading the little manual that came with my copy of Double Deluxe, and I had played the Tutorial with Tutorial Joe, but this was the first time I was playing "for real". I opened Veronaville, went into CAS and made a teenage boy and called him Andrew. And, when the game wouldn't let me save him on his own, I made a mother for him and called her Gloria. Then I moved them into a little house at the end of Chorus Court. . .

. . . And they blew me away. I think I was in love with both of them within minutes. I had fairly high expectations of this game I had bought, but the reality of it far exceeded all I had imagined. These were real characters with real personalities, and I just couldn't help caring about them, as they obviously cared for each other. . .

So today I'm celebrating ten years of life in Veronaville. Ten years in which I have somehow kept all my Sims with me. I don't know we managed it in the early days, when I still had so much to learn about this game, but somehow we came through it, and I've never seen a Sim die in my game. The Grim Reaper has never made an appearance. I grew very close to Andrew as I felt we were learning how to play this game together. Of course he was in it even more than me -- it was his whole life. . .

I've got some Real Life things to do at my church this morning, but I plan to spend the afternoon and evening with Andrew and Gloria, and their respective husbands as they're both married now. They'll have their Thanksgiving Meal, no doubt cooked by Andrew. Ten years of peace and relative prosperity is a lot to give thanks for. I'm sure we'll have a great time together. :lovestruc

@AndrewGloria Happy Veronaville Thanksgiving! And happy 'birthday' to Andrew and Gloria. :lovestruc

Happy tenth anniversary to you and your sims!

♫ ♪♫ Writing this description proves why I'm not a songwriterrrrrr ♬ ♩ ♪

@AndrewGloria -That's how long I've had my computer for that I currently play on and I'm currently starting out Pleasantview's history and background from it's colonial past 420 years ago in the 17th century when Early America was being colonized by European settlers.

I found a used copy of the Prima guide for TS2 at a used bookstore yesterday and even though I doubt it has anything meaningful that's not already well-known, I'm still curious to look through it and see what absurdities they thought to include!

You don't have to buy one-it's available free of charge on the internet-through the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/The_Sim...ide_Prima_Games

Or through this Tumblr link:
https://www.tumblr.com/naterxanders...ides-i-gave-you

I remember reading all the guides before and thinking in some parts "That is not true". Though I suppose any false claims were probably supposed to be true but then just couldn't be but they were already put in the guide ...

I recently asked my local computer guru to see if he had a replacement DVD drive-which he did, and replaced the one that died in my computer.

While running the test to make sure it worked, he asked me, "You still playing that game?", in reference to the pixels.

I said 'Yes, I am."
He didn't say anything but I had the distinct impression he was a little shocked by it.

Ever since then I've been off from playing my game-although I've been having off periods lately, this dug in.

I wish people would understand that playing a game does not denote that I'm a child-I just have a very odd hobby!

Age has nothing to do with maturity-I've knowm wise 10 year olds and childish 70 year olds.

Don't judge another person by the way they amuse themselves unless it is illegal or dangerous.

The recent post in the glitches thread about a snow day notification in summer reminded me...the snow days in the game are pretty pathetic. If we're calling off school for snow, it ought to be properly too deep or hard or cold to go out in.

When my mother was at school before (and possibly during) the Second World War, they used to get "snow holidays", just to let the children play in the snow. So, when I hear of something similar in The Sims, I think, "What an enlightened idea!"

Sadly my Sim kids don't get snow days because I don't have have Seasons. But without Seasons they have the benefit of living in a perpetually benign climate. And I use Inge's Flexi-School to give them time off school for holidays/vacations.

Where I live, kids get a snow day if snow is in the forecast. :-)

Although since COVID, it's not a true snow day anymore as they have to still have their classes online. :-(

Huh, I thought schools were still doing snow days anyway. So not fair.
Anyway, where I'M from, snow days only happen if there's a literal blizzard going on. Sometimes there are "cold days" which are days when it's below -20 out and nobody wants to go anywhere, but I can count the number of those there were during my own schoolyears on one hand. It'd be interesting if you could set the standards yourself.
It'd be interesting, in fact, if the neighborhood ever got more than just a light layer of snow. Where are the giant snow mountains in the parks that kids can play on? Or curbs piled so high that you have to have someone scouting for cars on the sidewalk in order for someone else to pull their own car out of the driveway? I guess maybe that's just a Northern thing.

I have hacks to allow my sim kids to skip school when that becomes a thing though I ditched school a few times when snow came and I didn't have the right clothing or gear to go out in the snow and was infact housebound because I lacked proper snow boots and snow pants so I just wouldn't go out until all of the snow was gone back then until I bought snow pants and snow boots.

Snow is uncommon in my country, but I don't mind having my sim kids staying at home - it gives them a chance to do other things.

Kids in my state, (Maine) don't get a snow day unless it happens to be a lot of snow, or mixed with rain, creating ice.

We learned this lesson the hard way in 1998, in the Ice Storm of 1998, when we shut down for more than a few days.

Thus, my pixel kids have never had one yet.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who'll actually be disappointed if I don't get this right, but I'm still doing it... I'm making my life more difficult for basically no reason lol...

And on a different note, the schools in town here all closed for a snow day yesterday with about 6 inches overnight. I'm not sure if the university closed too or not, but I instantly had flashbacks of many of my professors in undergrad sending emails that said some variation of "the university is still open but I'm cancelling all my classes because this is dumb and/or I want to go skiing instead," so... make of that what you will.

Snow is rare where I live, but a mere 100 kms away it can be readily see on the nearby mountain peaks.

The only snow day I've ever experienced was when the school I was at cancelled due to too much snow (defined as "enough to stop the school's heating pipes flowing", which in this case was around 6 inches on average and well over 1 foot in the drifts) at the end of lunch break. Naturally, I was on a work placement that day, but still got sent home 15 minutes early. Not because the workplace closed (everyone still there at that point lived within a few doors of the place, and customers similarly close were using it as a place to stay warm) but because it had taken my transport home 3 hours to get the mile from school to where I was doing the placement, there were other students already on board, and the driver was absolutely not waiting any longer to get everyone home!

Thankfully all snow days in SimNation are instead announced in advance!

I have so many townie servos at this point that when a servo couple adopts a baby they're actually having biological children.

Late response, but this is totally not an odd hobby!

And he probably wasn't judging you due to age. He was probably surprised that you were still playing an old version instead of Sims 4. Some people don't understand the appeal of older games.

Either way, play your game and ignore what one stranger might not even be thinking about you!

All of my Gen B babies have aged up to Young Adults which means I can finally take their generational pictures!!! I'll leave this here while their mandatory generational party takes place so that the single ones can meet each other and maybe find someone interesting that they like.

This generation has 54 children!!! And the next one is even bigger omg.

I like the random green dude

In another thread @simsfreq suggests that Kindness could be an additional Aspiration for our Sims. It's interesting to look at the actual aspirations of the two kindest Sims in our Veronaville. Regina Tsvirkunov just became a playable Sim a few days ago, but I've noticed this Veronaville townie since the early days of my game. She was a regular Welcome Wagon visitor, and she always seemed ready to talk to the new arrivals and listen to them sympathetically. Sims who got her as in their Welcome Wagon were indeed fortunate, and a lot of them became friends with her. In her green granny dress, and with her rather plain Maxis hairstyle, she's far from the most attractive Sim in the neighbourhood, but her readiness to sympathise and to empathise with all sorts of other Sims, lead me to see her as a townie with a heart of gold. Like most people I am perhaps too ready to follow stereotypes, and I kind of assumed that she'd be Family, or possibly Popularity. But when I actually checked her Aspiration it turns out she's actually Romance. (She certainly doesn't look like my CAS-created Romance Sims in their hot-pants and micro-mini skirts -- and I don't just mean the females!)

The other Sim who has long impressed me with his readiness to listen and befriend is Ravi Bertino, who is the Tricou teen boy with the long tousled hair like Mercutio Monty's. As a Tricou teen, he is of course Pleasure. He is a Virgo -- like Andrew he cleans fanatically. I wanted him in an open relationship with Jack Gill. With the Romance Mod in place, his Outgoing + Playful + Nice points had to add up to at least 15. Since I liked him both serious and shy, that meant I had to give him five extra Nice points. Those extra Nice points turned him into the gentle, thoughtful, considerate boy that I know today. A Pleasure Sim who likes to give pleasure to others -- the kind of person who greets strangers in the street and tells them a little joke, to brighten their day up. Like Regina, Ravi is a regular participant in Welcome Wagon teams. I think one reason why he's so promiscuous (and he is!) is because he just doesn't like to say "No".

So there you are -- the two kindest, most considerate Sims in the neighbourhood -- one a Romance Sim, and the other a very promiscuous teenage boy with a Pleasure aspiration. Maybe not quite what you'd expect!? Is it perhaps easy to see Romance and Pleasure Sims as selfish and self-centred? I think there could be quite a profound lesson to be learned here. Don't be too ready to pigeonhole Sims in the game -- or people in Real Life either.

I think that could be why I like to see my Sims as human. If my Sims can turn a broken community round and make it work, and become somewhere that's really good to live in, maybe -- just maybe -- we humans just might be able to do the same. One of these days I'll start a thread on why I like to play a rather utopian game.

I just.... if I was designing The Sims 2, I'd make personality-based turn-ons and turn-offs instead of skill-based ones. Nice, playful, mean, serious, etc.