The Sims: My Journey

In 1991, a fire raged across Oakland, California, destroying many homes in its path, and one such home belonged to a computer game developer named Will Wright. While constructing and decorating his new house, Wright was inspired to make a dollhouse simulator where a group of simulated people, named Sims, would walk through and evaluate the players' build. Eventually, the Sims themselves became the focus of the game and the eponymous series would go on to become a multi-billion dollar franchise over the course of many generations. In particular, the series may have very well changed my own life as it is.

I very briefly dabbled in The Sims back around the time it came out. An extended family member had it on their computer, so I was able to get the very basic gist of it, but unfortunately this was the early 2000's and my family did not have a computer of our own so I was unable to play the PC version. I did, however, have a GameCube, and the first game in a different version did indeed come to the console in 2003. It was one of my favorite games on the console, having played the poor disk to near destruction as I created new Sims and built the houses in limited fashion.

Eventually I got an Xbox, and with that came The Sims 2. I owned the console version of TS2 before I got my hands on the PC version, and even then I only had a few of the expansion packs before the computer it was on was sold without my knowledge, around the same time I lost my Xbox. Due to my living conditions at the time, the late 2000s was a tough time for me, and I didn't even have my comfort game to get me through it anymore. The only solace I took in this time was watching previews for the next game in the series, and hoping I could get my hands on it when it came out in 2009.

In 2010, I went into college for art in an effort to get away from that depressing situation I was living in. For my college classes, I needed to get my hands on a laptop, so I got one. With this, I finally got a chance to get The Sims 3 and that is where my story really begins.

The Sims 3: Tom and Annabelle

When I was able to play The Sims 2, either on console or otherwise, one of the most prominent type of Sim I made was an alien with black eyes, and alien-human hybrids with green skin but normal eyes. I wanted to recreate those Sims in 3, but unfortunately black, alien eyes were only custom content at that time and my youthful self had very little idea how to download custom content. Don't mind me; I was not a smart young adult.

As a recompense to myself I decided to create an alien hybrid Sim, gave her black hair and purple eyes, and called her Annabelle Kethrin. I then created another Sim named John Kethrin, Annabelle's human brother. Then I created Scarlett Keene, a redhead Sim who loves that very color, followed by a youthful, cheerful Sim named Kelly Coen. After those four, I wanted to make a Sim to explore the World Adventures expansion pack which I had purchased alongside the base game, so I made someone based off of the character Indiana Jones. This was Tom Jameson. With these four Sims made, I set out on a journey through the game, one I am still on today.

As time went on, I refined the characters, made them each color-coded to find them easily on the world map as well as make them identifiable. Kelly wore blue, Annabelle wore black and purple, Tom brown, Scarlett red, and John black. This may have given off some Power Rangers vibes to some, but I still do it because these colors have become representative of the characters themselves. I put some of my own personality traits in them as well so in a way, these characters were somewhat based on me.

After a year or so of playing the game, I wanted to do more with the characters I'd created, so I decided to go on the Sims Facebook page and tell some stories. It began with just some pictures and captions, and people seemed to really like those, so I did it more. Eventually, I stumbled upon an album the Facebook group were doing at the time: Sims comics.

It begins.

I wanted to make a comic that stood out in comparison to the rest, so I made a simple four-panel comic where Tom made fun of Annabelle for not having the Green Thumb trait, a way of breaking the fourth wall in the game as traits were just added in The Sims 3. At this time, when you posted a Sims comic on the wall of the page, every once in a while the Sims team would publish said comics on their own page as part of an album. I started making comics what seemed like daily, adding a variety of different comedic routines including Tom being so clumsy he could not do anything without literally exploding out of nowhere. Tom and Annabelle themselves were the most popular characters on the comics, as their antics were seen as hilarious by many readers.

A few months into making these comics, I started getting requests from people to make my own page for them, so I did. I was then asked if I wanted to do a story at first, which I was reluctant, but I eventually decided to because I figured these characters were interesting enough to do one, giving little previews of the story on the Facebook page.

It was around this time I began to get friend requests specifically because of my page, which I had accepted a good portion of. Some of these friends are still active in my life to this day, some very close.

I had gained over a thousand followers over the course of months, people were commenting on my comics, my story posts, my timeline posts, everything was going absolutely great until Facebook decided I was having too much fun and introduced a system called Post Boost. Now, page owners had to pay for people subscribed to their pages t0 see their posts, and I was always broke. This led to an expected result: my page fell off the radar. Around this time I was also increasingly depressed and anxious due to life events, so I slowed my own posting down. To make matters worse, my computer was running sluggish with The Sims 3 so my story chapters were slowing down, as well as a lovely case of writer's block. This has the result of my page being partially dormant until well after The Sims 4 came out in 2014. I was able to get a copy of that game relatively quickly and even though it wasn't perfect I still enjoyed it.

My renewed interest in The Sims series and what they could do with the fourth main game led me back into writing on my Tom and Annabelle page, I was interacting with my community, talking with people in my messages, posting on Twitter, I was finally getting more engagement in my posts on the Facebook page. I was on track to getting a copy of The Sims 4: Get Famous in November of 2018 which I could hopefully use for storytelling and was planning on starting a Sims 4 reboot of my story that very same month.

Everything was going okay, until it happened.

My own fire.

On November 12, 2018, I woke up to the smell of smoke in my apartment. I lived alone so I didn't have anyone to wake me up, so I panicked and ran downstairs only to watch as a blaze destroyed an apartment cattycorner to mine. I lived in a terrible part of town and it was a drug deal gone wrong. Thankfully my friend helped me out after the fire but I am still in dire straits due to PTSD and anxiety.

To make things worse, my power was still on while the smoke filled the living room where my computer was still running and playing videos I used to help me fall asleep. My computer's fans pulled smoke into it, and it hasn't worked right ever since even after all the cleaning. This computer was given to me as a birthday present the year my dad passed away, and it was broken. I was broken. Because I couldn't use my computer, I couldn't play Sims, which meant I felt like I was back to where I was years before when the other computer was sold. This time, my only solace was my Switch, which my friend had convinced me to get. Still, I wanted my Sims back.

I spent the next two years trying to save up for a computer, but I was losing hours at work that whole time living paycheck to paycheck. I thought my work would give me more hours and I would be okay from then on until another major event happened in my life. Our lives.

You may call it COVID-19.

Because of the virus, my anxiety levels shot through the roof. Every day at work I would be worried I'd catch the it, and I started taking leaves from work because things would be too anxiety inducing, including the one I am currently on. I even started therapy at this time because of all my life's issues crashing down on me. I also injured my shoulder and continue to feel vilified at work due to being on light duty which my co-workers do not seem to like. But I continued going on.

At this rate I had to do something to get my head out of this perpetual funk, so I took some saved money, borrowed from another person, and took part of a stimulus check to get myself a laptop. My main reason I got it was because I wanted to write, I feel like I was born to write, and also I wanted my game back, my comfort game. I lost my saves and my custom content which I used to write the story but I plan on creating a new story, with the same characters in The Sims 4.

Will Wright lost his home in a fire and that inspired him to create The Sims. I lost my home, but also my will, my stable state of mind, but out of that fire I found my own inspiration, the inspiration to write, to create, to continue on a new path with the same characters people seem to love. And most of all, it inspired me to play with life.

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this look into how this game changed my life. I am so thankful for everyone who followed my story up to this point, for all the likes on Facebook.

If you like this, please share, it's probably the most I've ever shared on a public forum. If you don't like this, it's okay; not everyone is perfect.

Nick out.