How do you play The Sims?

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Justine Keaton, Sexy Linda, Trevor Phillips.

I am a huge FAMILY PLAYER! I started playing this one family that I created around Christmas last year and im on the third generation now (they are kids). I play on really long (custom life span leinght with mccc).
But, I keep it really interesting!

I'm a family player, but aging is off. My favourite thing to do in the game is explore the worlds for interesting things, like areas I might have missed.

I create families while trying to see how some of my favorites could be improved. When I play a game, I tend to always have sims start learning to cook and fix things. All of my sims will know how to fix things. I'm still figuring things out after all this time however as I still don't know if I prefer singles in a roof or a family with a toddler.

I start with one Sim, start a family, and have their kids spread out and start their own families. I play all of them in rotation while updating townies whenever a new sim is born to one of my families.

Oh, where to start!? I feel playing this game is like living a double life, not only for one household, but I play a full community including laws, nobility, stock market, council with 5 years elections, and I keep track on every individual cash account. I have so many plans for my community, but not enough time to do it all, even if I recently spent way too much time on it. It includes lots of organizing, scripting and reporting, too, as I base most of my youtube videos on real sims and locations in my game.

I am into programming, so when I think a registry with info we don't access easily in game would be useful, I create that registry. On my blog simmerville.blogspot.com there are links to the Residents Registry, Community Section (split into the Councilor's departments Law & Justice, Trades & Taxes, Culture & Entertainment, Health & Welfare, and finally Education & Science.

I've currently built a site where I can look into each nobility house's jewelry box. I needed that to keep track on what Duchess owns what necklace and tiara, because it would break all my illusions if a low nobility lady shows up wearing the Duchess' tiara, right? I wish we had personal dressers and jewelry boxes in game... (btw, the jewelry box site is not yet online, will be in a week or two).

My rotation includes 60+ households, might soon be 70. I play each house for only 1 day every other year, but if something exciting is ongoing, I can easily stay 5 days with one house, and skip a few unless they have birthdays etc. So, although the amount feels massive, I make sure to be flexible. Sometimes I even play a full year without anyone aging, just to get the time to focus on specific features, like when I want to enjoy a newly added pack.

Usually I start with a single young adult or a young adult couple with just the base money. They start out on either an empty lot with however much house they can afford to build, or in an apartment. When they can afford a place with enough rooms they start a family.

Then I either play one household through multiple generations, like a legacy without the rules, with the youngest always the heir, or I switch to rotational mode when the first spare moves out and usually one of the oldest is the heir. I've been playing my current rotational save for a little over a year now and since my sim had nine children it's gotten to be a pretty big rotation.

I usually only play my simself which is my main save. It is now on it’s 3rd generation my simself’s grandchildren as young adults some with their own children, some single, some in relationships without kids. I will play rotational between all the main households, single and family depending on what suits that sim. I will play other households in the save mainly the goth family generation as I’ve also invested in that family but only as it has close ties to my simself family. Until I joined this forum I never realised how people play sims differently and I had never even heard of challenges before. I’ve always played my simself even since sims 1 and it’s the only gameplay style I find most enjoyable.

I play The Sims in a variety of ways. I build as close to my house/apartment that I currently live in to help me figure out where to place furniture. I love building houses and furnishing them, sometimes I use house plans but mostly I just have fun making something. Occasionally I make a Sim or eight for a house I want to build.