Hello! In this video, I'll be examining all four
generations of the Sims to try and figure out which game has the most challenging economy for
Sims to survive in and how income and cost of living in The Sims compares to real life. Then, on
a more subjective note, I'll be discussing how the relative ease or struggle of economic survival in
The Sims impacts gameplay and what I might want to see in a future generation of the game. Alright,
let's get into it. In the later generations of the Sims, there are a lot more more ways to generate
income outside of a traditional job than there are in the original game but I want to have a
meaningful metric to compare across all four generations, so I'm going to be focusing only on
jobs found through the phone or computer that are done outside of the home. I also want something
that can be used as a point of comparison to real life a little later in this video, so I'm
going to be creating a proxy for the median wage of each game by taking the average of the pay at
the third level of three different careers that are present within every generation of the game:
Medicine, Culinary Arts, and Business. Obviously, this is not a true median and you could get a
lot fancier with methodology here. For example, you could assign probabilities to each type
of career and each level within careers and generate random samples of a hypothetical Sims
population and take the actual median from that. But I don't want to completely turn this into a
math video, so I'm not going to do anything more complicated than a little selective average.
So why use level three for the median wage proxy and not level five which would be the
middle of the career track? Like I said, I do eventually want to compare this to reality and,
in real life, most businesses or public agencies are structured in an organizational hierarchy
where you have a director or CEO at the top, some deputies or VPs below, division directors,
upper management, middle and lower management, and then everyone doing the work. There isn't
a route to the top levels for many people and, at any given time, the bulk of the population will
be closer to the base of this structure. So if we want a median salary we wouldn't take it from the
middle of this structure vertically, we would take it from the middle of the actual population. And
obviously we're talking medians and not averages because income inequality is so extreme that
the pay at the top levels received by a tiny amount of the population is astronomical, so it
inflates the average making it meaningless as a representation of the overall population. Which is
demonstrated here in this comparison of the median pay for Ford and GM workers versus the pay for the
CEOs of those companies which is about 280 to 360 times higher. And that's on capitalism. But I'm
not Robert Reich and that's not what this video is about, so let's get back to the game. In The Sims
1, pay is based on a daily rate. At level three of the medicine career, you would be a nurse making
340 simoleons per day. In business, you'd be a field sales representative making 250 and in the
culinary arts, you'd be a fast food shift manager making 130. Big shout out to the Sims wiki for
making all of this information readily available, saved me a lot of work. So 240 simoons is what
we'll call our median daily wage for The Sims 1. Unlike the other generations, The Sims 1 does not
have weekends. There's no distinction between the days at all, you just get up and go to work or
school every single day forever or until you die from unnatural causes such as burning, drowning,
or starvation because there's also no aging. So weekly earnings for The Sims 1 would be based on a
seven day work week. At level three of the jobs in our sample, you either work a 6 or 7 hour day with
the average being 6.3 hours, making the median hourly wage 38 Simoleons. And if we go off the
Sims 4 calendar which breaks seasons into weeks, making 4 weeks a year, the annual salary would
be 6,720 simoleons. So now let's take a look at the Sims 2. Weekends were one of the many
features added in The Sims 2 along with aging, new life stages, aspirations, and wants and fears.
So Sims no longer have a seven day work week but one thing that's interesting about the Sims
2, is that it maintains the same weekly pay for each job position as in The Sims 1, at least
for the jobs in our sample. So you earn in five days what you would have earned in seven in The
Sims 1. The number of hours worked per day is consistent as well, so the hourly rate is the
only thing adjusted up from 38 to 51 simoleons at our median level. As a side note, this could
be taken as a lesson for the modern workplace. If innovations in technology have allowed us
to, say, produce in 32 hours what would have previously required 40 or more, why not make 32
hours the standard work week while maintaining the same annual pay? Back to the game, even the job
titles are all mostly the the same in The Sims 2, so although it offers much more than the Sims 1 it
really feels like it's in the same universe which is less true for the other sequels. The Sims 3
maintains most of the innovations added by The Sims 2 in some form or another and adds an open
world to the game. At level three of the careers in our sample, Sims continue to work a five day
week with similar hours, so six or seven per day, but the titles and descriptions of the jobs have
all changed, so you get the sense that the Sims 3 is aware of its predecessors but it's a very
different beast. The median hourly wage in The Sims 3 is pretty much the same as the Sims 1,
so that adjustment upward made in The Sims 2 to account for weekends has essentially been reversed
meaning that your Sims will earn fewer simoleons on a weekly or annual basis than they would in
1 or 2 at the third level of these traditional jobs. It is a little different the farther you
get up the career tracks, but I'll speak to that in a minute. First, let's take a look at the Sims
4. Like I mentioned at the top of this section, there are plenty of ways to earn income outside of
traditional employment in later generations of the Sims, though with the Sims 4 in particular you may
have to purchase quite a few packs to get access to those features. That being said, when it comes
to traditional employment outside of the home, Sims 4 Sims have it pretty bad. In a departure
from all three previous generations, the standard work day at level three is 8 hours and that extra
time doesn't translate to increased earnings because the hourly rate is low as well with the
average being 28 simoleons for the jobs in our sample resulting in the lowest earnings across
the board on a daily, weekly, and annual basis. However, if you do manage to make it to the top of
your career track, your earnings would likely be the highest in The Sims 4. These are the averages
for the top of the culinary medicine and business tracks across all generations and, as you can see,
Sims 4 Sims would earn the most overall. Although, hourly wage at the top is highest in Sims 3 which
has an average work week of only 13.3 hours, less than half as many hours as you'd be working
in The Sims 4. So with the lowest median wages, highest top wages, and longest workday for the
average employee, The Sims 4 seems to be the biggest outlier in the group which likely comes
as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the development of the series and the early intentions
for the fourth generation. That being said, median wage on its own doesn't really tell us anything.
It can't be compared directly from one game to another because cost of living is not static
across all four generations. So a Simoleon is not necessarily worth the same in The Sims 1 as it
is in The Sims 4. Much like how what you could buy with $7.25 back in 2009, the last time the U.S.
federal minimum wage was raised, would now cost $9.93. Meaning that, ignoring taxes, something
with a cost equivalent to 40 hours of labor at that $7.25 rate back in 2009, would now require
about 55 hours of labor. Neat. So in the next section, we'll take a look at the cost of living
to determine what Sims' labor can buy them in each game. For this section, I've broken cost into two
main categories: one-time costs such as housing and furniture, and ongoing costs like bills,
food, childcare, and entertainment. For all of the games, I'll be looking at costs through the lens
of the same four-person family with two adults, one child, and one toddler. Or in the case of the
Sims 1, one baby that will have to be born during gameplay since the Sims 1 does not have a toddler
life stage. So let's start with our one-time costs, housing and furniture. Apartments are
not an option in The Sims 1, so, for continuity, I placed all versions of the family in a single
family home and built basically the exact same home in all four games. In all generations, I
went with the cheapest available lot and used the same square footage, same number and placement of
doors and windows, and as close to the same items, floors, and walls as possible. There are three
exceptions, one in every game except the Sims 3, so I'll speak to those as I go over the housing
costs in each game. So starting off with the Sims 1, the exception in this build is that it does not
contain a potty chair and has a second single bed instead of a crib or toddler bed because the
youngest child, Josie, will be going straight from the baby stage to the child stage. Here are
the housing and furniture costs for The Sims 1. I won't show this display for every game, but I
broke them out this way so I could separate out the portion that would typically be included in
the house price in real life - which I'll get into later - and so I could identify any potential
outliers for specific items. And guess what, they're mostly in The Sims 4. But our Sims 1
total cost is 19,202 simoleons and without the furniture and electronics, it is 14,218. Moving
on to the Sims 2. The one unique difference for this build is that you have to pay to level
the land in The Sims 2 in order to build on it. So that added 91 simoleons to the lot cost but
there was a cheaper lot available in this game, so land costs overall are lower than in The Sims
1. Build mode items were mostly the same as Sims 1 costs except the exterior door and windows
which were more expensive. And then in buy mode, a lot of the objects were the exact same price,
but the tub/shower combo was quite a bit more expensive as were the chairs, couch, and lamps.
So even though the lot cost is lower, both the overall cost and the house cost are a bit higher
in The Sims 2 at 20,516 and 14,826 simoleons, respectively. Now for The Sims 3. The lot cost
is the lowest in this game - there just happens to be a greater variety of lot sizes available
in the base neighborhoods in The Sims 3, so the cheapest option was a 19x29 tile lot that was only
1,200 simoleons. Build and buy mode items were all pretty similar, if not the same as, the Sims 1
and 2 prices. Just a few things were cheaper, like the computer and the chairs, and a few
things were more expensive, like the couch and the wardrobes. So since the lot cost is so low and
there aren't too many differences otherwise, we have our lowest total and house cost thus far at
18,239 and 12,379 simoleons, respectively. Okay, so the Sims 4. The one exception for this build is
that I did not place a phone in this house because there are no landline phones available in The
Sims 4 but they're only 50 simoleons or less in the other games, so it won't have a significant
impact on our results. In The Sims 1, 2, and 3, the cost of the walls and the landscaping, which
is just seven plots of flowers, are exactly the same. Four is the only game in which walls are not
70 simoleons per unit, they're 60. And overall, it had much lower cost for windows, doors,
wall coverings, and flooring. So when it comes to build mode, there is less continuity with the
previous generations in this game. Aesthetically, buy mode objects are pretty different than the
previous games as well but pricing was similar to The Sims 3. At 2,000 simoleons, the lot in The
Sims 4 was more expensive than the Sims 3 option, but since the build mode objects were so much
cheaper, the total cost and the house cost are the lowest for The Sims 4 house at 16,734 and 11,239
simoleons, respectively. So if we just look at simoleons, it looks like the Sims 4 house cost
the least and The Sims 2 house costs the most, but to actually compare across the games, we need
to incorporate the income data. So here we have the median annual income for each game from the
previous section, the total cost of the lot, and what I'm calling the house cost which includes the
land, the build mode items, and the buy mode items that would be part of an actual home price like
plumbing fixtures, counters, and appliances, but does not include the furniture and electronics.
The ratio of the total lot cost to the median income is actually highest in The Sims 3 at 3.9
to 1, meaning the cost of the lot is equivalent to almost 4 years of work. That's because Sims
3 wages are quite low compared to Sims 1 and 2 and even though the land was much cheaper, the
price of build mode items was consistent with the previous generations. Whereas in The Sims 4,
which actually has the lowest wages, the price of build mode items is also quite low in comparison
to the other games, so it ends up being the second most expensive at 3.7 to 1. And since there were
no major differences in furniture costs, the trends pretty much stay the same when you exclude
those, with Sims 3 and 4 being more expensive than the Sims 1 and 2. Alright, now that we've looked
at our one-time costs of housing and furniture, let's take a look at the ongoing cost of daily
life. Comparison from game to game does become more challenging here, especially when it comes to
things like food and entertainment costs, because you have so many options in the later games that
aren't present in The Sims 1. But I've tried to create as close to the same scenarios as possible
for our four points of comparison: bills, food, childcare, and entertainment, and I'm going to
run through them by category rather than by game, starting with bills. So I played with our sample
family, the Small family, for two sim weeks in all four games. But I'm going to base their bill costs
off of the first bills received during gameplay, as this is when their homes would have been the
closest to the starting value, because the rate of depreciation seems to be different in every game
and I did add things to the houses over the two weeks. In The Sims 1, bills come every three days
so 2.3 times per week and, according to the Sims wiki, they are based on the value of the objects
on your lot and discounted by 10% for each child in your family. The cost of my first bills was 166
simoleons, for a weekly total of 387. In The Sims 2, we now have different days of the week and
bills come on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so twice a week. They are based on the value of both the
build and buy objects on your lot. My first bills for the Small family were only 68 simoleons,
for a weekly total of 136. In The Sims 3, bills also come twice a week, this time on Mondays and
Thursdays, and are also based on the value of your lot, though I couldn't find the exact formula.
My bills were 111 simoleons, for a weekly total of 222. And lastly, in The Sims 4, bills only come
once a week on Mondays. They include a lot tax as well as charges for your utility consumption for
the prior week, so you don't get them until your second Monday of gameplay with a new family. It
seems like you might have some ability to impact bills by adding things like solar panels to your
home, but overall, they are quite a bit higher and in my case they were 701 simoleons. This does
not include the 100 simoleon fine per day that I received for water consumption, but I'll address
that in the gameplay section of this video. Since I'm just looking at weekly cost for these ongoing
items, I'm comparing them to the hourly wage in each game to see how many hours you would have to
work per week to afford your weekly costs. And, as you can see here, The Sims 4 Sims have it
pretty bad as with their low wages and high bill costs they would have to work the most to cover
their bills at 25 hours per week, whereas The Sims 2 Sims are chilling at 2.6. Moving on to food.
This one is very different across the games, but since these are costs for a four-person family,
I'll be basing all of them off of cooking a family-sized meal at home, twice a day, seven days
a week. In The Sims 1, food is very simple. A meal is just a meal, it's not any specific dish, it's
always brown and green, and it costs 20 simoleons at the time of preparation. You don't have to
stock your fridge or anything. So weekly costs come out to 280 Simoleons. In The Sims 2, you can
prepare different meals and add more recipes to your repertoire the higher your cooking skill
is. Price is not assigned on a per meal basis, you just have a certain level of supplies in your
fridge and you restock when you need to. For the Small family, I went grocery shopping at the end
of the first week at which point my food levels were down to 40 from a starting point of 200, so I
had used 160 units of food. At the grocery store, one unit costs two simoleons, so that would be
a weekly cost of 320 simoleons. In The Sims 3, you can also prepare different meals but now they
are ingredient-based, so the cost of a meal varies significantly depending on its ingredients. And
obviously, if you have your own garden you can basically get food for free. Again, you learn more
recipes the higher your cooking skill, so I'll base cost off of one of the lower skill recipes
that you can make early on in the game - Goopy Carbonara. The ingredients for this are a single
onion. Just one onion for the whole dish which was 10 simoleons at the grocery store, making
our weekly cost to prepare this twice a day 140 simoleons. The Sims 4 is very similar to The Sims
3, dishes are ingredient-based and you learn more recipes with higher cooking skills. So, again,
I'll base the costs off one of the lower skill recipes which also only requires a single onion -
Franks and Beans. It's just an onion. In The Sims 4, an onion cost me 15 simoleons, bringing our
weekly total to 210 simoleons. When we compare all these costs to the median hourly wage, they're all
in a pretty close range. You would have to work between 6 and 7 and 1/2 hours per week to feed a
family, with Sims 4 at the top of the range and Sims 3 at the bottom. Now for childcare. In The
Sims 1, there is no option for hired childcare, so one of your Sims will have to forego work while
the child is a baby. Luckily, that only lasts 3 days, so I'm basing weekly child care costs off of
3 days of the median daily wage of 240 simoleons, which comes out to 720. In The Sims 2, you can
hire a nanny to track your work schedule, so no one has to stay home from work. The nanny costs
a flat fee of 10 simoleons, plus 15 simoleons per hour, so for five days of work, which are
6.3 hours long on average at level three, that comes out to 525 simoleons. In The Sims
3, you can hire a babysitter who charges a flat fee of 75 simoleons per visit regardless of how
long they're there. For the five-day work week, that comes out to a total of 375 Simoleons.
And finally, in The Sims 4, the nanny charges a flat fee of 60 simoleons plus 10 simoleons
per hour. If all adults are leaving the house, there is an option to send the child to daycare
which basically disappears them while you're gone and they come back in a less than great mood. And
that's free, but it's not really comparable to the other options in which the child stays at home
and you can either care for them or control them, so I'm going to use the nanny for comparison. And
since the Sims 4 has an eight-hour work day, that comes out to 700 simoleons for the five-day work
week. And again, The Sims 4 comes out as the most expensive option when you compare childcare costs
to the median hourly wage. You would have to work 25 hours per week to cover childcare costs in 4,
whereas The Sims 2 and 3 are around 10 hours, and The Sims 1 is about 19. And now, entertainment.
If you want a night out in The Sims 1, you can take a cab downtown to visit parks, play arcade
games. go shopping. or eat at a restaurant. At the diner style restaurant, the mid-tier option is
a two course meal of a salad and entree that costs 65 simoleons per Sim. The cab ride also costs 50
simoleons. So for two sims to go out to dinner, the cost would be 180. In The Sims 2, the cab
to go downtown is free. If you go to an upscale restaurant and skip the salad course to go for
the most expensive entree, the Lobster Thermidor, that will cost you 35 simoleons per sim,
for a total of 70. In The Sims 3, it's an open world so you don't need to call a cab or go
through a loading screen to visit a restaurant, although that restaurant will be a rabbit hole
unless you want to shell out for some DLC from The Sims 3 store. At the more upscale bistro option,
dinner is 75 simoleons per sim for a total of 150. With the Sims 4, I'll just address the elephant
in the room right now. EA being the ill-reputed, unrefuted, king of the shameless cash grab that it
is, put sit down restaurants in a dedicated game pack rather than releasing them in a much larger
nightlife or business ownership type of expansion pack, as would have been customary for 1 or 2. And
I'm not about to pay 20 bucks just so my Sims can eat a restaurant, so I just sent the Smalls to the
pub where a burger and a cocktail came out to 23 simoleons per person, so 46 in total. This time
the Sims 1 comes out as the most costly. While the dining experience was more expensive in The
Sims 3, which has the same median hourly wage, the 50 simoleon cab ride in The Sims 1 put
it over the top. Though, like I mentioned, I don't know what it costs to eat a restaurant
in The Sims 4 because the price is too high for me personally. If we add up all of the weekly
costs, The Sims 4 has the highest cost just in terms of simoleons, but it also has the lowest
median hourly wage, meaning it far outpaces the other games in terms of how many hours you would
have to work to meet the weekly costs of a family of four with two children. So the longer work
days in The Sims 4 - which if you recall from the wages section are all 8 hours rather than the
6.3 hour average of all the previous games - are essentially necessary for Sims 4 Sims to make ends
meet. So to answer the question of which Sims game has the toughest economy, it depends on the cost
pressure. For housing, in comparison to wages, The Sims 3 has the highest costs. But Sims 4
Sims will by far have the hardest time covering their bills. Food costs will also be toughest to
meet in The Sims 4, but the Sims 1 is very close behind. Childcare costs would be most challenging
in The Sims 4, assuming you use a nanny. And The Sims 1 has the highest entertainment cost, given
the cost of transportation. So, on most counts, the Sims 4 has the toughest economy. But how do
these games compare to real life? For comparison to reality in this section, I'm going to be
focusing on United States data because that's where I am so that's what I know. But I would
love to see someone else do this comparison for their own country. Also, the real data points I'll
be referencing obviously change over time so the numbers and ratios may be different by the time
you're watching this video, but I've linked all sources in the description for reference. Although
the Sims is a life simulation game, it is a game, so it's obviously quite different from reality.
I've tried to choose data points and ways of looking at them that can translate from The Sims
to real life, but there are a lot of different directions you could take this in and I'm not an
economist by any means, so I'm sure someone else could produce a much more thorough and accurate
analysis. That being said, I have come up with a few points of comparison starting with income
inequality. For this one, we have our proxy median salary for each game compared to the average
top, level 10 salary for the three careers in the median sample. For Sims 1 through 3, the top
to median ratio is between 4 and 5 to 1. So top earners make four to five times as much as most
Sims. Sims 4 is the outlier at about 9 to 1, with both the lowest median and highest top salaries.
That's still a far cry from the 362 to1 ratio of GM CEO Mary Barra's pay to that of the median GM
worker, but that particular level of egregious, atrocious, absolutely unconscionable hoarding
of wealth is not actually the norm for the top percentage of earners. That's more .01% of the
1% territory. So for comparison to real life, I'm using the threshold hold for the top 1% in the
U.S. So the lowest amount you would need to make to be considered in the 1%. This value varies
significantly from state to state - it's over $950,000 in Connecticut and under $370,000 in
West Virginia - but the nationwide threshold is about $653,000. This is a household level figure,
so for comparison, I'm using the household median income rather than the individual income which
I used on the Sim side of things. That median is $74,580 in 2022, giving us a ratio of 8.8 to 1 -
very very close to the Sims 4. So congrats to the Sims 4 on your realistic income inequality. Next
up, housing. For this one, we'll have the ratio of the house price of the same two-bed, one-bath home
which was built across all four games compared to our median annual income. These were all pretty
close, but highest here is the Sims 3 at a ratio of 2.6 to 1. That ratio is based on individual
income, not household. So for comparison, in the U.S., the median individual income is $40,480 and
the median home price from recent sales data is about $410,000, so essentially equivalent to 10
years of work at a median income level. Though, I would note that that 40K figure is gross income
inclusive of things that don't exist in The Sims like health insurance, pensions, and federal and
state taxes, so your take home would be quite a bit less than that. And then, obviously, one
big difference between the Sims and real life is there's no debt or credit or mortgage in The Sims,
so you have to have the cash on hand if you want to buy something. In real life, you would likely
be taking on a mortgage which means you will end up paying a lot more than the actual price of
your home, because you'll be paying interest every month throughout the life of the loan. So
really, none of the Sims games are realistic on this front, nor would I want them to be. But we'll
give it to the Sims 3 since it is the highest ratio. Let's move on to the daily costs of life,
starting with bills. For all of the ongoing costs, on the U.S. side I'm going to be comparing annual
expenses to median household income, so we need a median household income on the sim side as well.
In the U.S., about 50 to 60% of households are dual income. So for our Sims median household
income, we'll assume 55% of families have two earners. So this is what weekly household income
would look like, here's our weekly bill costs, and this is the percent that would be dedicated
to bills in each game. Obviously ,the Sims 4 is the big outlier here with a whopping 40% of
weekly income going to bills. For our comparison, we have U.S. median household income and
the amount spent on utilities annually based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. So
in reality, only about 6.1% of gross income is dedicated to utilities. So this one goes to the
Sims 2 which got the closest at 5.2%. Next up, food. Based on our weekly household income and
weekly food cost, here are the percentages of weekly income dedicated to food in The Sims.
And on the U.S. side, with annual food costs around $9,343, about 12.5% of gross income is
dedicated to food. Though I would note that percent might be a little bit higher than usual
given recent inflation. So this one also goes to the Sims 2. And now on to childcare. In the U.S.,
childcare costs vary significantly depending on your location, the age of your child, and whether
you utilize a home-based or center-based daycare. Based on a report published by the Department of
Labor back in January, the annual price in 2022 for full-time care for one child can range from
about $5,400 for a school-age child in home-based care in a very small county, to a little over
$17,000 for an infant in center-based care in a large county. While this is the market-based
price, absent any public subsidies, most children in the U.S. do not receive public subsidies
for childcare. The U.S. ranks 35th out of 37 OECD countries on expenditures for early care and
education for 0 to 5-year-olds. For the subsidies that do exist, federal eligibility is limited to
those with the lowest income and states may adopt stricter guidelines, meaning fewer than one out of
five children under 13 are even eligible, and even fewer of those actually receive subsidies as funds
provided through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) are capped. So many families are on
waitlists to receive support. All that to say, I think it's okay for us to use the market price
data here, and based on those numbers, childcare costs are about 8 to 19.3% of median income.
And so this one once again goes to - say it with me - the Sims 2! Though I would note that those
costs are for a single child and, because they are so high, many families do go The Sims 1 route and
have one adult forego employment to stay home with the bébé. Now moving on to our final category:
entertainment. Based on one night out per week in The Sims, here are the percentages of weekly
income dedicated to entertainment in the U.S. Again, based on BLS data, households spend about
$3,458 on entertainment annually, so approximately 4.6% of income. So it's a close race, but this one
also goes to the Sims 2. So to answer the question of which Sims game has the most realistic economy,
again, it depends. The income inequality in The Sims 4 is very close to reality, none of the games
are realistic when it comes to housing costs but Sims 3 is the most expensive in comparison
to wages, and then the Sims 2 absolutely dominates when it comes to cost pressures in
daily life such as bills, food, childcare, and entertainment. I do feel the need to note that
healthcare was not a component of this comparison although it is a significant portion of individual
spending in the U.S. It's also a big portion of U.S. spending overall, largely driven by the fact
that private health insurance is so prominent here. But although your Sim can be a doctor, Sims
don't really have healthcare costs. And much like housing, this is an area where I really would not
want realism in the game because the reality is a nightmare. So overall, toughest economy goes
to the Sims 4 and most realistic goes to the Sims 2. I did find these results surprising,
especially on the difficulty side. I haven't played The Sims 4 much and I recall when the Sims
3 came out, that it felt pretty easy to get by, so I thought that that trend would have continued
and I would have found the Sims 4 to be lacking in difficulty. But in playing the same family
in the same house across all four games, that was not the case for me. So in the next
section, I'm going to share just my own little thoughts on how the relative difficulty or realism
of financial survival in each of the four games impacts how enjoyable the gameplay is, and also
a bit about what I'd like to see in the future. [Music] So in this section, I'm switching modes from
objective analysis to my subjective opinions and experiences as a fan of the games. I'll
try to stay as focused on economics as I can, though that is hard to do since financial survival
interacts with other aspects of gameplay. I'll touch on 1 through 3 first, but I'll probably
take the most time on 4 since I do want to talk about what I'd like to see in the future sims
games and with 4 being the most recent version, for better or worse, it will likely be a
big point of reference in the development of a future generation. I'm not going to
engage in any speculation on what might actually be in store for The Sims 5 or Project
Rene, there are plenty of channels that have that covered. I just want to talk about my own
hopes and dreams. So as far as gameplay goes, none of the games were too hard at the very
beginning because of the starting funds. For a family of four, you start with anywhere between
20 and 28,000 simoleons, depending on the game. If I had done more of a rag to riches kind of
challenge where you start with no resources, this would be a totally different story and
I think the differences between the games, and the difficulty within each, would be way
more extreme. Maybe something to try later, but not the assignment for this video. So I didn't
feel a sense of failure or struggle right off the bat in any of the games. Where that did show
up, it would be after the first couple days. So, starting with my experience in The Sims 1.
While the Sims 1 was not technically the most difficult economically (and consistent with the
data, I did truly have the hardest time in 4), financial survival is more central to the game in
1 because the motive decay is so extreme. So more money means better objects means better mood.
Which is a basic formula present in all of the games, but it's most prominent here. Not only do
the little motive bars seem to go down faster in relation to the other games, but you also have a
"Room" and "Comfort" bar which are not present in 3 and 4. So the quality of the objects you buy and
place in your home is incredibly important, which makes sense given the initial inspiration for the
game. According to Wikipedia - so take it with a grain of salt - after losing his home in the
Oakland Firestorm of 1991 and having to replace all his possessions, Will Wright was inspired to
adapt that experience into a game centered around, essentially, a virtual dollhouse. And at least
in the base game, that is very much what the Sims is. There are also other features that lean into
that sense of playing house such as the budget display and the house score. So building a nice,
comfortable home to keep your Sims happy is kind of the central struggle. The game seems aware
of the level of challenge it creates though, because it does try to help you along a
little bit with windfalls. Essentially, you'll get phone calls and receive a sum of money
for some random reason. And that happened to my family I think three times over the two weeks.
So some of the things that were really important for them to not be absolutely miserable all
the time, particularly the ability to afford a second bathroom, would not have been possible
without the windfalls because, at the beginning, my Sims weren't progressing in their careers very
quickly because they had to take care of the baby. So someone would have to miss work and both were
always in bad moods. So overall, I would say the Sims 1 is pretty balanced in terms of creating
enough challenge to keep things interesting but still allowing you to feel some sense of agency
and ability to progress. My biggest critique would just be the lack of weekends. It doesn't matter
so much with just the base game because, frankly, there's not all that much to do and the workday
isn't too long. But as expansion packs are added, you kind of need a day off to take advantage
of all the added elements of gameplay. But as anyone who played these games as expansion packs
were still being released can probably relate to, you're likely not going to wait for your Sims to
have enough money to take advantage of all the new stuff. You're just going to cheat for money
and go have fun. Now for The Sims 2, weekends are obviously a welcome change. Motive Decay was still
a big challenge. It was really hard for my Sims to get their fun bar up initially, so one of the
first things I bought was a better TV. But nothing ever felt too hard financially and I also didn't
get bored - I didn't use three-speed like at all. By raising the hourly wage to match the earnings
of the seven-day Sims 1 work week while adding in the weekends, you have enough earnings and time
to take advantage of activities outside of the home. So it seems like, in development, they were
kind of backwards planning with the understanding that expansion packs would be coming to provide
more diversity to the gameplay. I did have some setbacks that kept things interesting as well.
For example, my sim got demoted from her hostess position at work for kicking an elderly couple
out of their seats, so that was kind of fun. I love the little pieces of realism that were added
like buying groceries at an actual grocery store that's not even a rabbit hole and having to go out
and buy clothes. I didn't really take advantage of it much with this family because they are based on
cartoon characters and cartoon characters have one outfit. But the fact that you have to pay for
clothes and you can't just use your wardrobe to access the entire catalog of clothing is one
of my favorite features in this game. Not only is it more realistic, it's useful for curating
and building characters and stories. And it's also just convenient functionally to not have to
scroll through hundreds of options you would never use. Though I would say, pretty much all of the
clothing in The Sims 2 is great anyway. The really questionable taste levels and cartoony aesthetics
don't kick in until 3 and 4. But yeah, I just don't really have any complaints and since this
one was the most realistic on quite a few counts, it makes me wonder if it just weren't for housing
costs, healthcare costs, and the 40-hour work week, life might be kind of fun. On to the Sims 3.
I love this game, but like I alluded to earlier, there are things about the Sims 3 that feel a
little too easy. There are a lot of collectible items in the world that you can sell for large
sums of money. I did not take advantage of the most overpriced ones, like the flowers, because
those do just feel like straight up cheating. But Brendon did get the little opportunity task
to collect gems and metals and I think he found both a Sun and Moonstone which are worth quite a
lot. Then, even if you can't afford fun objects like playground equipment or a computer, given
the open world, you can easily go to a lot that has that stuff. Which, to be clear, I would not
change. I love that aspect of this game and, in reviewing the gameplay footage, I was all
over the map constantly. But when you combine that with the slower motive decay and the lack
of a comfort or environment bar (which disappear after the Sims 2), it means your Sims will
pretty much always be in a good mood. Which was probably somewhat intentional so that players
could really take advantage of the open world, but it does also mean that your Sims will advance
up their career tracks pretty quickly. And when you combine that with the collectibles and the
relatively low bills, food, and childcare costs, your Sims will most likely never experience
any serious financial struggle. So if I was a Sim personally, I would want to be a Sims 3 Sim.
But as far as the economic playing experience, I don't know if 3 is more interesting than 2.
Okay, moving on to 4. Now we know from all of the data analysis in the earlier sections that this is
just a different game. And given what information there is on the development of this game, it's
hard to speculate on to what extent, if at all, a view of the progression of the series as a whole
was considered with regard to decisions about how the economy would function. That being said, the
increased level of difficulty when it comes to financial survival could have been intended
to make up for some of the lack of gameplay elements from the previous generations. The open
world is gone, so were toddlers, ghosts, pools, and cars. Some of those things have been added
since release, some have not. Obviously, the open world thing you can't really do retroactively.
Also, because, unlike the other Sims games which were more or less released as finished products,
with the Sims 4, major features are added through updates, it's honestly hard to analyze this
game at all because it's always a moving target. That being said, the difficulty is definitely
apparent. This is the only game in which I hit zero simoleons and not just once. And even though
this wasn't a rags to riches challenge, this game did have me engaging in rags to riches behavior -
running around the neighborhood in a thunderstorm, picking up any collectible I could find just to
feed my family. Now, I'm sure some of you out there who have more experience with this game than
I do, could tell me dozens of ways I could have made simoleons faster. But that was not the point
of this exercise. I wanted to see what everyday life was like without like creating a cult to
paint 24/7 or devoting all my time to simfluencing and selling things on Depop. So, financially,
it was difficult. Which is something I said was missing from the Sims 3. But did that make it fun?
Uh, no. And there are some big reasons for that. Remember, I'm just trying to focus on economics
here. So first: proportionality. I mentioned earlier that I got hit with a 100 simoleon fine
every single day for water consumption. Remember our median daily wage was 224 simoleons and
my wages were actually lower because I wasn't at level three in my career yet. So on top of
the bills that would be somewhere around 40% of household income, I now had a daily fine that was
about half of one of my Sims income. It's starting to feel like a trap. So here I think - like with
penalties, charges - some realism and attention to detail with the proportion would have been nice.
And this charge did run me the wrong way for other reasons. Now I know this is just a game, but video
games are an art form and I think it's generally good to be intentional with your art, especially
if you have a lot of resources behind it and you know it might reach a wide audience. Given that
we are facing a climate crisis which is already taking lives and displacing communities, I would
say it is discouraging to see EA lazily give in to the bad faith, and frankly inaccurate, zero-sum
framing that what's good for the environment is bad for the economy, and then sell that in
an expansion pack called "Eco Lifestyle." But honestly, all of the options in this neighborhood
voting thing were so deeply unserious. As with a lot of things in this game, it seems like -
in conceptualizing this feature - they just threw everything they could at the wall, scrubbed
anything that might be considered mature because this is a family-friendly product, and upped
the goofiness level on anything left to ensure they couldn't be perceived as taking a stance on
literally any topic- art, environment, politics, etc. So I don't think they were trying to say
anything with this water fine because there's no overarching logic to this universe at all. But
that's beyond our scope here. And I will just say, like with many features in The Sims 4, I like the
idea of the neighborhood voting thing and I think it could be a good addition to the game, just
like dessert can be a good addition to a meal, but if the only option is a store-bought vanilla
cake that's 90% frosting, I'd rather have nothing. So even though I paid for the pack, I'll probably
just turn that feature off in the future and I'm glad they made that an option at least. Also, I
did get a 500 Simoleon fine for putting it in my Sim's queue to call the fire department during
one of my kitchen fires because I thought the smoke alarm wasn't working. So two firefighters
were called and that mistake is on me, but again, the proportionality - 500 simoleons is over two
days of pay on top of everything else. I know that fine is not unique to The Sims 4, but these things
do really start to add up when compared to the low wages. So bills and fines are just one example of
the proportionality and logic I think is missing from the economics of this game. The other issue
I had was the sense of a lack of control. A lot of what I could say on this topic of control
specific to The Sims 4 is probably better articulated with regard to video games in general
in the "Girl Games" episode of the podcast, Sentimental Garbage. So if you haven't heard that,
I would highly recommend it and I will be echoing some of the points made in that episode. But with
the Sims 4, I'm locked into these expensive bills, I'm locked into this fine until I can get enough
free time to go out and rally the votes to repeal it - and this kind of takes us outside of purely
the economics - but I'm also having to pay to replace my stove multiple times a week because,
even though my sim has level five cooking skill and we don't have the cheapest stove, she set a
fire once and that made her afraid of fire and now she's prone to setting more? I guess until she can
successfully extinguish one - which okay, makes no sense, but anyway, I'm spending a lot on stoves
and yes, I did attempt to turn wants and fears off. It took them off of my traits but my Sims
kept getting the fears anyway. But I've got these super low wages at the bottom of the career, but
super high wages if I can get to the top. After my eight-hour workday, I have a take-home assignment
that's the same thing every single day but, apparently, if I get it done daily, it can help me
climb the ladder which I desperately need to do at this point. So basically, what I'm getting at is
this game is now more or less telling me what to do with all of my time through economic means and
other mechanisms. And that's not why I play The Sims. I will note that there are some attempts
at self-aware tongue in cheek humor about the economic struggle in this game, like within the
job descriptions. But given the overall tone and presentation of the game, to me, these feel like
your boss sharing "work sucks" memes with you, which like - yeah it does, someone should do
something about that. But back to the point of control, the Sims is and has always been a form of
escapism for a lot of people, partially because it allows you to have control over things you can't
control in real life. So while you do want it to resemble life in some ways, you don't want to
feel overly directed by the game. Just like how in Breath of the Wild, you could just go from
Divine Beast to Divine Beast to Divine beast, but you're not going to do that because that's
what the man wants you to do and the game gives you other options. I want to run around all day
and night and gather food and climb mountains and talk to strangers because I can't do that in my
own life without the very real threat of bodily harm. And that sense of agency and freedom and
possibility that was almost too unaccompanied in 3 has taken too much of a backseat in 4,
economically and otherwise. So for future Sims games, how can we keep some economic difficulty
but get the agency back without putting it all behind a pay wall? obviously you don't want
a perfectly blank slate with no challenge. Some established context and limitations can be
conducive to creativity. The community of people who play The Sims 4 and come up with challenges
and create mods and CC are a perfect example of this. But they shouldn't have to do all the
work. So, in addition to just paying a little more attention to the proportion of income
and costs than 4 does, here are a couple of my little ideas about just the financial side of
gameplay. There's a lot more to be said about this topic and about the game in general, but not here
because this video is way too long already. So, first off, just incorporating some basic levels
of difficulty in the game options - Easy, Medium, and Hard sliders for specific aspects of the
game like how many collectibles pop up in the environment, your probability for windfalls,
your motive decay - things like that. Second, more malleability in working conditions that
can be achieved through union representation. So essentially, you could opt to pay a small fee from
your wages and devote some extra time to meetings periodically to have some control in negotiations
for things like higher hourly wages, shorter work days, more days off, and maybe quality of life
improvements that keep your motives high at work - you get the idea. So you could still start
out with the terrible pay and long work days, but there's a path to change that at any level of
your career, should you choose to take it, which could hold true for anyone in that save file for
that neighborhood. So if you switch households, what was negotiated for that job position would
be maintained creating more ability to build a world and a story. Third, bring back the Sims 2
clothes purchasing structure. Simple. And fourth and final, I really like the consignment stores
in The Sims 3 and the flea market in The Sims 4, so keep those kinds of options, but in addition,
why not have a dedicated subsection of buy mode that's essentially craigslist? So you could sort
by category within it and just access it when you're making other changes to the home already,
but it would have used objects. So you can't choose the swatch or the color - though I think
you should have some ability to recolor for a fee after purchase just like in The Sims 2, though
I think that fee should vary by item. This buy mode subsection could also have broken plumbing
and electronics items, so you could get a really deep discount on stuff if you can put in the
work to fix it. That way if you're, for example, playing on hard mode for motive decay, you could
still possibly afford high quality items if they pop up in the secondhand section of buy mode
which could update every day with randomized items or something. And as an added bonus, I think
this could help with the decision paralysis that can happen when it comes to interior design. So
like, if there is one high quality bed available at a cheap price, now you know how to direct the
design of your bedroom. So yeah, I think the idea with all these little things is just put the
whole wide world of options out there, but give people the agency to set their own limitations
and curate the experience that they want. Cheat codes and mods will always be out there to break
down the walls completely, but it would be nice to have the ability to build your own little walls
specifically where you want them. But those are just some small, little ideas. I'm sure others
have stated similar things before - the internet is so vast, it's rare to have a thought that you
can't find some record of someone else saying before if you look hard enough. But I would
love to hear your ideas in the comments as well because I'm sure some of you think about
this stuff and know a lot more about the Sims 4 than I do. I don't even have all the expansion
packs. But that's pretty much it for this video, I'll probably have another up in a week or
two. Maybe different from this one, but still within the universe of the Sims. Oh, and just one
last complaint about the Sims 4 - what is this? [Music]
