The Sims 3 on a podcast about strategy gaming? Of course!
Listen here.
Great podcast! It’s a lively discussion and some great observations about the game come out of it. It’s hard enough for me to manage one sim’s time, I couldn’t imagine a whole family. As a result, my Sim is a bit of a homebody that gets out occasionally. That means she’s rarely stressed at or from work. However, I thought working my way up the criminal ladder would be more lucrative, but she’s mostly mired in the middle class. She doesn’t even have a car yet. She car pools and uses taxis.
I loved it when Bruce tried to shoehorn in a reference to Tony Reali in response to Tom talking about interns.
What type of aging should we use for good ole boomturtle? I run on epic personally should I turn it off or shorten the lifespan at all ?
Also your on I like a good challenge!
Tom, in reference to you continued bewilderment as to why people would choose traits like clumsy or unlucky: Humor.
Finally got to finish the podcast today, the lone benefit of a longer drive to and from work I guess. Great podcast and a nice shout out for roBurky. Some comments though:
-
You gotta love Bruce. He plays the straight man comedy routine well. I’m sure even Bruce could eventually find something he did like about the Sims but I can completely understand his point of view. When you get X time off from a long day, why spend it doing Y if Y seems too much like real life™.
-
You guys docking Troy for the longer age setting, shame on you. It’s the min/max in you that’s holding you back from phase 2 of Sims enjoyment … learning to let go. After you start doing that a bit you’ll find that the complete picture of the Sims as a game includes the storytelling (or active story-watching in this case.) It’s the “what if?” in there that really opens it up for some fun. Like Blue mentioned, you pick the other traits for just that … humor (or in my case, more humorous stories.) I seriously played Sims 1 in min/max mode. I didn’t understand the immense popularity, mostly because I thought I had “finished” it and moved on. It wasn’t until Sims 2 that I opened up and started lifting my finger off the lifeline thread a bit and let my sims be sims. Perhaps that’s less RTS, or less strategic overall, but without it, you only experience a small slice of a very big game.
-
I can totally understand your premise of why it’s a strategy game or strategy-lite if you want to compare it that way. But it’s also a sandbox, a storyboard, and yes, like Bruce mentioned, even a dollhouse.
Ouch! You hit too close to home. I’d begun to suspect this … but it’s hard to admit that your instincts are not those of a “fun” person. ;-)
I’m with Bruce. Fuck dishwashing!
In The Sims 3, you can do both!
-Tom