No, 30 minutes should not equal 30 minutes in the game. Do you realize cooking animations are the longest running animation set in this game. It's takes so long for them to cook because they pause and look up at the sky..eliminate useless animation of looking up in sky (even when they have high skills) like in Virtual families, then time doesn't need to be slowed down. Or just create a mood booster and fill all motives and you have plenty of time. It's my belief because people complained about not enough time so many animations and interactions were cut to just get to the point of things. But I do think unnecessary animation of the Sim paused looking up in the sky while they aren't mixing that bowl of food, is silly and worthless time waster.
ETA: I hate real time games, btw. So slooooooooow to get anything done. Here is how you speed up getting enough time, stop multitasking..hello, sitting at pc to write novel but your Sim is stopped while looking at something on the wall, end the multitasking (cancel them looking at picture or listening to radio) they go back to working. Viola, time is saved and then they can watch TV or whatever, since it takes less time to do these things separately than it does for them to stop and do these things together.
