Hello everyone,
My name is Tia and I have been addicted to sims for about 15 years (since 2003). I started with the base game and soon got the expansion pack with makin magic, vacation and hot date all in one. My mom was a little hesitant because it was a teen rated game and I was about 9 at the time but she figured it would keep me away from wanting to watch family guy. I grew up with the sims, while other preteens we're exploring adult content online, I was giggling nervously as I watched covers move and hearts appear over the heart shaped bed (in these days, the heart shaped bed was the only one that you could use to woohoo💋). Unfortunately, the computer got old and died, which is a natural part of life and I took a break from the sims, playing games like roller coaster tycoon and school tycoon which came from cereal boxes (yes in those days, video games came with a box of cheerios). I would think about it every now and then and then Christmas 2005, we got a new computer and the gift of sims 2 for me. Seasons came later and I loved being able to have snowball fights and the festival's. Since the game was still kinda buggy, I kept losing my active household and would have to go into CAS and make new families constantly. I faithfully played sims until a friend introduced me to WoW, while that became the new obsession, I still had a place in my heart for the sims. Wow stopped playing on the computer and reinstalling windows repeatedly meant that I could no longer play either. It became all about iPod games, they even had a sims game that I purchased for $6 in highschool and I tried playing the Freeplay version as well. We had a Wii and Ds and would play mysims but it wasn't even close to the real thing. Ds came out with sims 3 and although the graphics were worse than sims 1 I finally had a version of sims that I could carry around with me and the addiction became full blown (I'd play sims during classes, on the bus ride home and staying up late when I had homework to do). Fast forward to 2013, I met my significant other who helped me to get the sims 3 on my laptop. He also had the designer edition on his computer. Some nights when if stay over I would play until 4am while he slept. It became a very dark addiction that was making me feel depressed. I stopped playing until just recently (I got help for my depression and I'm doing much better now). My SO and I live together and each have our own PC. I tried the sims 4 and had fun creating a bachelor scenario but that was short lived. Sims 3 just had so much more to offer (customize a style, toddlers, pools, so many jobs, travel to the future, university etc.). I am working on having a healthy relationship with the sims where I try my best to get what I need to get done and play and to make sure I don't stay up playing if I have somewhere to be the next day. It's a work in progress but I think having this game in my life has taught me a lot about possibilities and the importance of escape (with regulation) to maintain sanity when real life gets difficult.
Thank you for reading
TLDR: I love the sims and have played almost every version. I grew up with it and as an adult now I plan to use it as a therapeutic tool to decompress from stressful reality.
