*drum beat*
THE SIMS! While other games push you through the meticulously crafted story
of some hero, this game allows you to experience the joy that comes from crafting your friends and family
and then making them pee themselves in doorless rooms.
I’ve been playing The Sims since I was a kid, and it allowed me to imagine what I might become.
A successful doctor, perhaps, with a mansion
and a pool that doesn’t have a ladder to get out of it.
And now that I’m a D-list internet video producer with a grungy apartment in New York City,
I’ve realized that I was using The Sims as wish fulfillment.
Perhaps there’s a better way.
I might only have one life, but my Sim can live many, many lives.
I was playing a game.
I should have been doing an experiment.
So today, I’m going to use The Sims to perfect my living situation.
*music stops*
Oh what a surprise!
Now, this Unraveled will be a little bit different
considering most of it is going to be game footage, meaning...
I don’t need any paper!
Let me explain my methodology. We will have two subjects:
Simulated Brian, and reality Brian, which is me, I’m Reality Brian.
Here’s my hypothesis: If Simulated Brian’s living situation can be perfected in the Sims,
then Reality Brian’s living situation can also be perfected by altering it the same way in real life.
Now, I could try to do this in a “perfectly controlled environment,” but life is messy and sometimes
science has to be messy, too. So before I can create my Sim...
I gotta measure my apartment.
Obviously, I have to work with what I currently have. And if I’m supposed to make an honest
simulacrum of my living situation I gotta make sure it’s to scale.
I should also point out that I live in a three bedroom apartment with two roommates and a cat. And although
they have rooms of their own, I will not be modeling them in the Sims.
Partially because I rarely spend any time in their rooms, but it’s more because I am a good roommate
who respects personal boundaries. I will not redecorate their personal spaces.
But I will exploit the common space for content.
When you cut my roommates rooms, you can split my apartment into 6 different sections.
I used vanilla Sims 4, because I didn’t want Simulated Brian to accidentally become a wizard, or a skeleton,
or a college student.
The first step is to make an accurate depiction of myself, both in personality and in appearance.
This took a good chunk of time, but it was worth it when I crafted an exact 1 to 1 replica
of myself in the Sims. Then, I built the space. I used my measurements and gave myself close
to unlimited funds to create the apartment, and bought myself the cheapest appliances
just like my landlord did.
At the end of this, I had a pretty exact reproduction.
Then it was test time.
I gave myself a career similar to my own, and then I let Simulated Brian do his thing.
My rule was that I had to have little to no interaction.
But after a few days, it became clear that there were flaws with my experiment.
One, it was too slow.
If I want a longitudinal look at Simulated Brian’s living situation, I need to see his ENTIRE life.
Two, this experiment is meant to perfect my living situation, not my job.
And currently, Sim Brian is finding enough fulfillment in his career, which is an uncontrolled space.
Sim Brian needs to stay in his apartment, and that means no job.
Three, Sim Brian was perfectly content reading books,
and everyone knows that books are BORING!
So I obviously need to fix whatever personality flaw turned my Sim into a dweeb.
I addressed the first flaw by downloading a mod that would allow me to put on Ultra Fast Speed.
I also altered my sim's personality to reflect my own… and I accepted that Simulated Brian’s appearance
wasn’t all that accurate in the first trial, so I fixed that as well.
With the new personality traits and the ultra fast speed mod, this trial was far more accurate.
I spent a lot of time standing in my bathroom, staring at the wall, or sadly contemplating my reflection.
And then Sim Brian died of starvation after 4 days.
Which is a MASSIVE SUCCESS!
I got to see the entirety of my Sim's life!
In trial 3, I took a hands-off approach.
I popped on ultra fast speed, and I let it ride.
In this trial, I die of starvation after just 2 and a half days.
Which makes me think that this mod might be so fast that Sim Brian can’t feed himself.
So in trial 4, I start on normal fast speed,
and I decide I’ll only jump to lightspeed when I’m bored.
And things start well enough!
Sim Brian manages to socialize and stay happy for two days.
It starts to break down on Tuesday, when I find my sim
sadly eating a grilled cheese in his empty kitchen.
And then on Wednesday, Sim Brian sadly eats cereal while staring out the kitchen window.
Things get real bad at 2 am on Thursday,
when he stares in the mirror for hours.
The ennui has set in.
That afternoon, he stands in front of some dirty dishes on the coffee table,
too depressed to wash them in the sink, which is mere feet away.
Sim Brian goes through the same motions for the next week.
Watching TV. Staring in the mirror. Sleeping at random intervals. He seems devastatingly unhappy.
But he manages to live a much fuller life than the past two iterations!
It takes him nearly a week longer to die of starvation!
Except, he doesn’t really die.
In an effort to expedite the death sequence, I accidentally hit ultra fast speed,
and for some reason,
this killed death.
I waited, hoping the reaper would respawn, but no.
So I rushed through the days.
Waiting for someone to find my collapsed body in the weird corner of my creepy hallway,
but the only people who noticed my quote unquote "death"
were the utility companies.
I used this moment to look around my neighborhood.
Most houses were far nicer.
I was alone in a little box surrounded by neighbors who had forgotten me, or perhaps never knew I existed.
Even death had forgotten me.
I watched my slumped body linger in limbo as nothing changed.
After a week, I resigned myself to quitting.
And then in trial 5 I peed myself!
A LOT!
Boy, trial 5 exemplifies how much my apartment needs an upgrade.
At the beginning of the trial, my sim left the house to socialize.
And he was so happy not being in his tiny apartment that he stayed outside for 12 hours,
ignoring his bodily functions, and at 9pm, while speaking to a potential new friend,
he peed himself.
Does this make the embarrassed and uncomfortable Sim go inside?
NO.
Sim Brian so loathes his living space that he decides to stand outside all night browsing the internet,
until again, he pees himself right before having a flirty conversation with his friend Terri.
Dirty, dirty Terri.
After another full day outside,
hunger, exhaustion, and the need to pee FINALLY make Sim Brian go home.
He was more willing to spend two nights soaked in piss before spending a single minute inside his apartment.
Big Mood.
The rest of his life was typical. Mirror. Standing. Dying of starvation.
After 5 control trials, it was time for the results.
Here’s what I learned:
One, I’d rather spend time outside my house in repulsive conditions than spend time inside my house.
Something needs to change.
Two, the only thing that ever managed to make Sim Brian happy
was “good decoration.”
I need to redecorate.
And three, Sim Brian managed his basic needs until he became desolate due to a lack of social interaction.
A hole so deep he couldn’t go anywhere but down.
And this makes me believe that the thing that killed me was not starvation,
but rather becoming so lonely that I no longer sought to fix my situation.
But that has nothing to do with my apartment,
so let’s focus on the things we can change!
Simulated Brian was happiest in these terrible trials when the decorations were good,
and that’s something I can fix in real life.
But before I do, let’s set some ground rules:
One, I can't alter any of the rooms in my apartment, or I'd lose my security deposit.
Two, I can't change the furniture, because my roommates bought it, and then they’d hate me.
And three, the money. I had considered giving my sim a budget similar to my own,
but money cannot buy happiness.
And if this is true, then money, when compared to happiness, has no correlation.
Therefore, money is no object, and my sim should be allowed to purchase anything regardless of price.
Infinite money.
Sims decorations show how many environmental points they are worth.
By this logic, it doesn’t matter how well a room is decorated…
it matters how MUCH a room is decorated.
So I spent a solid hour giving my apartment the most decorations possible.
Allow me to give you a first person tour.
The Living Room now has lots of beautiful paintings.
The Weird Nook now has a purpose as The JAZZ Room, because for some reason,
the Sims has SO MANY JAZZ PAINTINGS.
The TV has to stay, but now I have three maps around it to say, “I’m also smart sometimes.”
The Kitchen hasn’t changed because it’s small and there’s no space to hang anything.
The creepiness of the hallway has crystallized into Sad Clowns.
No one wanted to spend much time in this hallway before,
and now they REALLY don’t want to.
In my room, a bunch of portraits, an apple wall, and a pear wall.
This should remind my sim to eat food.
And finally, in the bathroom, I installed a second mirror so I can’t just stare at the wall.
Now let’s see it in action.
In the first trial, I did another hands off approach on ultra fast speed,
and my sim once again died of starvation super quickly.
So, yeah, maybe the mod is too strong.
BUT! In trial 2, things go way better.
For the first time in any of the trials,
my sim manages to go from Very Sad to Happy, thanks to the tasteful decorations!
Though Sim Brian has moments of ennui and loneliness, for the most part, the house is making him happier.
Sim Brian does so well that he survives after the utilities shut off his power and water,
and he dies of starvation after more than two weeks.
That’s nearly DOUBLE the length of any of the other trials!
MY DECORATIONS WORKED!
Yeah, I still die of starvation, but I’m living TWICE AS LONG!
And that’s all the proof I need that this is the perfect form of my apartment.
All I gotta do now is make it in real life.
Polygon said that they wouldn’t reimburse me for purchasing thousands of dollars worth of paintings,
even though I TOLD them it would make me more productive,
so I gave myself a budget.
Then I went to a lot of thrift stores to purchase
as many paintings as I could find.
Some fit the aesthetic. Others would need alterations.
But I got a lot of things! Or, I thought I had, until I got home and realized
it wasn’t even going to cover one of my walls, let alone all six rooms.
So I dug around my apartment to find anything that could be stuck on the walls.
In the end, I was able to fill the entrance, but the rest of the living room was pretty sparse.
In the Jazz room I put up a papier mache man playing the piano, a dart board that felt pretty jazz to me,
and a skeleton wearing a tank top that says "I heart my Daddy,"
because...
I honestly didn’t know where else I could put that.
In my own room, I put up the appletini painting and
hung a huge self portrait from my senior year of high school.
And that was it.
That’s all I had in terms of decorations.
I took the day off to do this, but I was done in an hour.
I even put on my suit in order to film the results of the trial,
but my house felt as empty as it had when I began.
I couldn’t start the live experiment because I couldn’t recreate my sim’s house.
But I wasn’t giving up.
If I couldn’t purchase the decorations I needed, I figured I could make them myself.
So I bought a bunch of washable paint and 1000 feet of butcher paper.
“I don't need any paper!”
I lied.
It was a week before Thanksgiving. I was going to be out of town
and I needed to finish this part of the video before I left.
That meant I had to create about 70 large paintings in less than three days.
I got a solid start, painting all of the apples and pears.
I even managed to edit the two paintings I got from the thrift store into Sad Clowns.
But I was halfway through the second Sad Clown when this process started weighing on me.
If I had to spend a few hours on 10 of the simplest paintings,
there was no way I was gonna get this finished before deadline.
I was alone in an apartment making shitty paintings for a video that wasn’t gonna get made in time.
I got a stress migraine, so I turned off the camera, and I went to lie down.
When I woke up from that heinous nap,
I decided to do one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do for an Unraveled:
I asked for help.
And if you’ve never had to ask your friends and coworkers
to help you paint terrible paintings for a stupid video,
let me say you’re not missing out on much.
It’s an uncomfortable thing to ask people to do.
And honestly, the weirdest part of this whole process is that...
people said yes.
People said they'd come help me paint.
And, and they said yes just because they wanted to,
and also 'cause I said I’d buy pizza,
but you gotta grease the wheels somehow.
So I turned my house into a painting factory. I cut the paper. I moved the furniture.
And that night, people came over. Not just my roommate and my coworkers but my friends,
and friends of those friends.
I was expecting one or two people to help me, but I ended up with 10 people in my house,
all painting large scale portraits
and REALLY GOOD SAD CLOWNS.
Seriously, who knew that my friends were SO GOOD at painting sad clowns?
I don’t 100% know how to feel about how good my friends are at painting sad clowns,
but I'm glad I gave 'em an outlet.
All of these people came over just to make my apartment happier.
To lend a hand when I was overwhelmed.
And not only were they helping me make my apartment happier by decorating it,
they made it happier just by being there.
This task that had given me a stress migraine became a really fun time.
And it reminded me that, although it can sometimes feel uncomfortable or embarrassing,
if you ask for help, more often than not,
people are willing to help
you paint large pictures of jazz men.
In three hours, a task that seemed insurmountable by myself was complete.
And I was so excited that I did the walkthrough while they were all still there.
The Living room with fabulous landscapes,
The Jazz room’s huge murals.
The Creepy clown hallway that was way too good.
My room with its amazing portraits and fruit walls.
And the bathroom, where I stared at myself,
not considering my flaws or my apartment, but just smiling.
That’s it.
Just smiling.
It’s been well over two weeks since my apartment was redecorated,
which is longer than I survived in the Sims trials,
so it’s been an incredible success.
My apartment is perfected, I’m happier with it, and it’s all thanks to the redecoration.
Or at least, that’s part of it.
I think that part of the reason I find so much joy in my apartment is knowing
that the decorations were made by people I care about.
There’s a story behind it.
Simulated Brian fell further into sadness due to his isolation,
but the paint night turned Reality Brian’s terrible situation into something joyous.
So I have to wonder:
Does my newly perfected apartment make me happier because of the decorations,
or because of the people who helped me decorate it?
Trick question, it’s obviously the decorations.
*club beat*
*saxophone solo*
*mouth trumpet noises*
*dart rebounds off the board*
JESUS!