About Soap City

I've been playing The Sims since its arrival in 2000. In spite of its Groundhog Day storyline (it was the same day over and over), it was an addictive game in which you control the lives of small pixellated families. In 2004, the sequel was released, and added amazing depth to the world of our tiny friends. Time actually passed. Children grew up. The adults aged and even died. You could play an entire life cycle and watch generations of descendants. The Sims 2 also brought a whole new level of storytelling with the ability to take not only screen captures but video as well.

The site you're now viewing came from the frustration of the aging advancement. While your sims can age, they don't all age at the same rate, unless you play all of the households for the same amount of sim-time. Ken and Barbie, who were children together, could now be an elder and a teen, because you played Barbie all the time. It was a little eerie to me. So I made a new neighborhood with seven households. I would play them for one sim-day at a time and publish the results on a web site. But of course, there had to be rules:

1. No custom content. (Of course, I made this rule after I had already created the sims to be used. The effects of this decision are visible in Day 1.)
2. Play goes from 6am to 6am each day. (Except on move-in day, which starts at 8am Monday, I believe.)
3. No cheats or hacks. Part of the reason for Rule 1 was to avoid the hacks. Also, cheating takes away the challenge, don't you think?
   EXCEPTIONS:
   1. I am using a hacked object that eliminates stray animals from the lots. I hate dealing with strays in the Pets expansion.
   2. When needed, I will use a time cheat to "catch up" to the current time frame. (This is because all new lots start on Monday -- if someone moves out on a Wednesday and into a new lot on Thursday, this becomes a problem for time keeping.)
4. No aspiration rewards. The effects of these are often much like cheating.
5. Sim Valley residents will not attend college -- time at college is too wonky to be able to justify it.
6. Game play will use the Wants Method style of play. This allows the sims to tell me their stories instead of the other way around. (Note: This link will take you to an external website.)
7. Other rules will be addressed as the need arises... such as reader participation.

Updates will commence one sim-day at a time. Day 3 is already well under way! I hope you enjoy Soap City.

Last Updated: February 13, 2007

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