population explosion: notes on residence in my TS4 world

I have a love/hate relationships with sim townies. For as long as I have played sims games, I have had this same dilemma: who gets to be part of my neighborhood, to have their stories lived and documented, and who has to stay in the background? In a perfect world, I would be able to use all of my own sims in every available role and assign them where I want them to go, and I would have the tools to make enough space for them all to live in. But y'all know these games are not perfect.

Yet I have always fallen in love with my townie sims, the friends and ex-lovers of my born-in-game sims. Some of my very favorite sims started out as townies once. Every time someone gets dumped, I always feel so bad for them and want to follow their lives to happiness. You have to have a townie pool, but you can't play them all. It just goes on and on and on. Ex-lovers need new lovers and friends and family. I always feel like my townies need to have a family of their own. Only so many marry-in townies can be orphans before you get bored of writing the orphan story, lol!

Some sims, like Aliyah, as I'm writing them, I realize that they clearly have a happy normal family somewhere.

When I’m writing new characters, their family backstory is always very defining to me. Because our families and early experiences do define us. At least to start. Whether you come from a happy family, an ambivalent family, a dysfunctional family, adopted family, step family or mixed family, or else you’re orphaned or fostered. Those childhood and young adult experiences shape a character, and I can usually tell as soon as I’m writing what kind of family my characters come from, even if they don’t exist yet in pixels.

I could tell from Aliyah’s personality that she had a family, and that they were a happy family with no trauma—no dead parents, no discord. She is very independent, and I felt like she moved away from them for college, not because she was angry. She is a very well adjusted and confident woman, so I know she was raised well and had a happy childhood. I feel like she has younger siblings and that her parents are still happily married. So, from that starting point, I already knew a lot about her family before I ever decided to make them as sims in the game.

Things are a little different in my TS4 game than they were for me in TS2. It is very easy in TS4 to move a sim between housed and unhoused, or played or unplayed status. Nothing has to remain permanent. That is good, yet I can't just move everybody in because housing is VERY limited in TS4. We can't add lots or modify the sizes of any of them. So where do you draw the line if your sim wants to befriend a townie, or date a townie, or marry one?

There should be rules, of course. Or at least, I need rules or else I'd play them all! Marriage is one of those rules for many of us, but what happens when the couple isn't married before the baby comes along? Or even living together? So parenthood to a soon-to-be born-in-game sim (of TS2 legacy heritage via the Shaw family, no less) is what gave Aliyah her instant resident status when I'd only just introduced her to the story. That’s okay, because I like her anyway.

But I could have been content to leave her family as characters on paper to stop me from creating even more townie sims! Or if not that, I could have created them but left them to live in the townie bin. Lucky for the Sylvester family, I do actually have some gaps that need to be filled in the world.

I don’t like to just create parents for sims without anything for them to do. I actually really hate creating grown adult sims who start off with no job, no traits, no skills, and no personality history. It’s such a chore to decide and cheat in a lifetime worth of personality and experience. But I had a job that needed to be filled, an open position as dean of SNU, and none of my existing sims were able/qualified to do it, so I envisioned her mother, Deirdre. Her father, Raymond, I have loose plans for as well.

I also have a severe gender imbalance in the 19-25 age group, somehow, favoring females over males by 22 to 13! I don't even know how that happened, lol! So she got two insta-brothers to make a start at evening things out. Her brothers came out gorgeous, too, and their personalities stood out immediately for me. Andre (age 21) has a really interesting backstory that I hope he'll get to tell some day. Marcus (age 18) is less defined, but I have some ideas for him, too. He's in his final year of high school.

So this family is probably a best case scenario for how a townie-turned-resident sim gets a family, and everybody in that family has a purpose and something to contribute to the town. I have to admit that I’ve made families for other sims before and they just end up sitting in their house, taking up space because they're not suited to any job I need in the world. I hardly know them because I haven't been following them for their whole life, and I don't know what to do with them. (Like Amy's parents, who I made so they could attend her wedding, because it's just so sad for a sim to have no family of their own to attend their wedding! But I've hardly touched her parents since that wedding. Although, I will say that I'm glad I have Amy’s shirtless brother who amuses me, lol!)

So, I need to have some rules for how townies can become residents and when they can't, and who they might bring with them. Feel free to tell me your rules, too, so I can "borrow" them. ;)


Rules for Citizenship and Residence:

Instant Permanent Resident Status
* only resident sims can purchase property, start businesses, and become head of a household

- a baby born in game from at least one resident sim parent (technically, I have NO children townies under the age of 18 in my game at all, and no story progression active to make them, either, so there should never be any children conceived by two townies.)

- becoming pregnant with or fathering a soon-to-be born resident sim

- is a recreation of a legacy resident sim from TS2, TS3, or SFP (I have pretty much everyone made that I intend to make, so there shouldn't be many more of these kind.)

- dating one or more existing resident sims over a period lasting longer than seven years

- former townie sims under age 36 can bring two parents and up to two siblings ONLY if each sim created can fulfill a needed role in the town

Temporary Resident Status
* these sims cannot own their own property or start a business, but they may move into another sim's home or apartments/dorms where space is available. If things don't work out, they have to go back to the townie bin

- a serious committed relationship to an existing resident sim, made permanent after the relationship lasts more than seven years and/or parenthood/marriage

- a sim created to fill a very specific and crucial skilled role that no existing sim is qualified to fill, made permanent after seven years

- applying to college or military for an open spot, age 19-25 only, can be extended upon graduation if there is a significant job placement, made permanent after seven years, parenthood, or marriage

Non-Resident Sims (Townies)
* these sims live in the townie bin and are "ageless" until they form a relationship or purpose. I make or edit all of my townies and delete the ones the game spawns.

***

My rules are in effect from this point forward, of course. I have done a terrible job of limiting newcomers in the past couple of years, which is why I have 213 sims in my game after only playing this version for two years! Now I'm far too attached to most of them to send them back to the townie bin, but I'm going to have to start sending some back if the relationships and jobs don't work out.

At 213 sims, my game feels fine. Load times have grown from under a minute to about 2-3 minutes, which is no biggie, really, compared to the waits I have endured for previous games. This is a happy amount of sims for me since I have decided that NOT every household will get a story every round. I do try to visit them all for gameplay, which is doable—it’s the blogging, not the gameplay, that slows me down.

Hopefully, for space and for sanity, some of these rules might put some checks on my incessant need to adopt all of the outcasts and throw-aways that my game presents me.