Today while I contemplated my latest journal topic, I realized that lately I spend more time gardening within The SimsTM than with actual living plants. So I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the game that sucks up my time.
 When it comes to playing The SimsTM, I prefer to build houses over playing the actual game. The novelty of controlling fictional lives died off after the first few months of game ownership. Sure it was fun and therapeutic playing my parents or the families of past arch nemeses, but I quickly discovered that it was even more fun racking up tons of money (by cheating of course) and then building crazy, elaborate houses.
I used to have some kick ass Sims gardens. That was until I had to reinstall system software on this computer and I lost all my houses. Since then I've had to start over. In a way that was good because I've moved on to bigger and better things by wiping the slate clean. My new obsession is reconstructing TV sitcom houses and families. Sadly I really wanted to show off those lost gardens.
One great thing about The SimsTM is that you can use your imagination to build nearly anything you want in real life but can't have. A big yard with an apple orchard. An indoor greenhouse complete with sculpture garden, a topiary enclosed seating area, fountains, and potting table. Your fictional people can enjoy all that and more and you'll feel good because you gave it to them. It's all about coveting things you probably don't even want in real life... just because you CAN.
 There are drawbacks to building computer gardens. You have to actually play the game for a while so the flowers can bloom and the garden can grow. Just like real life. Only in The SimsTM my people are too busy keeping their hygiene and social levels up to have time for leisure activities such as gardening. The number of plants it takes to grow a nice garden is a heavy burden for a career-focussed nuclear family, so I always end up hiring a gardener to do the watering.
 Even with a gardener the burden can be heavy. A Sim can't hire multiple gardeners. They can "hire" a live-in, however an appropriate match isn't guaranteed. A Sim character can't be programmed to enjoy gardening, so it is chance if you happen to create one that really wants to do it. If they do enjoy it they whistle and their fun level increases. If they hate it, they sigh and their fun rating decreases. Just like in real life. If you don't keep up with gardening, plants wilt and then die. Again, just like in real life. Those game designers think of everything, eh?
 Another problem is the limitation of having only a select number of plants available. I'm growing tired of using the same 4 plants: daffodils, tulips, wildflowers and nasturtium. You can fill in space with bushes but that gets old really fast. Sims can't just hop in a car and go to the local nursery or garden centre. Actually I don't drive so neither can I. Again a real life scenerio. I am also limited to what I happen to find on my journeys sans car -- or what I find at the local corner store/garden centre.
 Finally there's the difficult task of replicating a natural habitat using a grid format. Everything is placed according to squares, and frankly plants just don't grow that way. Except of course in traditional public gardens or the suburbs. But even they are breaking out of that mold. The SimsTM was built as a program for building a suburban neighbourhood. Consequentially the landscaping looks like a suburban yard no matter how hard you try to fight it. I've tried putting in paths by staggering tiles, or mixing up the plants so it's not just rows of tulips or daffodils. In the end it's probably more fun that I get to pretend at the perfect suburban garden in a simulated land. My overall real-life aesthetic is a sort of messy imperfection, so it's kind of fun building slick, glossy landscapes I'd never want in real life. I was thinking while playing The SimsTM that although it's fun to build these homogeneous environments, in real life lots of people are actually striving to achieve that. For real. Creepy. When I play The SimsTM I'm actually playing The Stepford Wives.
Here's a bunch of larger photos of some Sims gardens I built recently.
So what do you think? Do you play The Sims?
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