No Family Trees in The Sims 4: My Thoughts

Family trees have always been one of my favorite user interfaces in The Sims game series.  

The Sims 2

The Sims 3

I know a lot of people play only one family or only one generation, but my preferred type of play involves creating large towns with many families, and watching them all grow and develop amongst each other over generations.  I have always loved seeing how kids age up and what kind of adults they become, and then I always want to know how they will parent, and just the same, how their kids will develop and change with age as well.  It’s always rewarding for me to see my sims’ relations over the years, and maybe that’s because I just happen to be “family oriented” myself.  Whatever the case, I was disappointed when I discovered that there is no “family tree” feature in The Sims 4. 

There are relationships – don’t get me wrong.  Sims still have “mothers” and “fathers” and “sisters” and “brothers,” they still have “grandparents” and “cousins” and “aunts” and “uncles,” but there is no visual representation of the interlocking relationships readily available for your own reference.  In the grand scheme of things, I’m sure this won’t really change my gameplay, but I know I’m already keeping track of my sims’ relationships independently from the game, on either some other computer program or on a spare piece of paper.  It isn’t important for a lot of people, but I do like to see how my sims’ families are comprised, and I like the visual nature of the family tree.  My sims know who their relations are – they know their parents versus other family members versus strangers – but I know that, if I do build a great town that develops and lasts over generations, I will eventually lose track of who is related to whom, and I’ll find myself frustrated by this missing feature.  It’s easy with just a few households of relatively simple, nuclear families, but once the kids grow up and create families of their own, I’m sure it’ll get more complicated.  That used to be one of my favorite times in The Sims, but I’m afraid this version of the game will bring with it a whole new stress that I have no interest in dealing with. 

I’m still learning to play Sims 4 – I’ve only had it a few days and I’m still not fully comfortable with all the new nuances of the game – so I don’t know whether this will really bother me, as I delve deeper into the game and start creating my own worlds.  Right now, it’s a little bit of a bother.

Welcome to Sims 4!

Welcome to my first-ever gaming blog!  Over the years, I’ve owned all the base game incarnations of The Sims, so I was really excited to hear that a fourth Sims was coming out, and even more excited to finally get it for myself!  Just a disclaimer: this blog isn’t affiliated with EA games or Maxis or with The Sims – it’s just a fan blog, for me to share my thoughts and feelings about the game, and also for me to share stories from my own personal gameplay. 

                                           

I’m still learning how to play right now – the controls are quite different from The Sims 3 and it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to.  I do love the game though, even with all its differences.  The differences I’ll talk about include (but are probably not limited to) toddlers, family trees, pools, babies, relationships, woohoo, pregnancy, careers, Create A Sim, open world, build mode, buy mode, and more.

Right now, there are a lot of things I’m still trying to figure out in this game, so I’m playing around a lot and just working with a bunch of families.  Right now on my screen: the Lindstrom & Kotters families.  In Create A Sim, I created two female young adult roommates: Reese Lindstrom, who is active, a foodie, family oriented, and domestic, and who wants a successful lineage; and Allison Kotter, a serial romantic who tends to be romantic, a perfectionist, family-oriented, and alluring.  Reese and Allison started out, just friends in a small, pre-built house within their budget.  Allison went out on the town first, with her sizzling red hair and her sexiest outfit, she was hot and ready to flirt.  She met a few townies and made a few friends, but the first guy she really clicked with was a man called Rodrigo Carrier.  I’ve never played Rodrigo, but Allison was a fan, and they immediately hit it off and started a casual romantic relationship.  Allison and Rodrigo had a child together, a boy named Harrison, but the couple broke up shortly after his birth.  Meanwhile, Reese was taking it slow with another townie, a guy named Yahir Fitch.  They inevitably hooked up and made a baby of their own (daughter Shayleen), but Allison and Yahir had a quick fling not much after that, and Allison got pregnant as well (with daughter Helen).  To get over Yahir, Reese started seeing an older gentleman who she fell for hard and fast: Tory Fisher.  Tory and Reese are still seeing each other and still very much in love.  Reese wanted to continue adding to her family, and they are now expecting a child as well.  I know it’s all kind of crazy, but the goal here was not to make realistic families or realistic people or anything the like.  The goal really was just to create some people and develop some relationships, and obviously it got out of hand, haha.  I wanted to try some romantic relationships, and I wanted to build some little families.  It was actually easier than I expected to build those romantic relationships, and it was actually easier to make babies (all over the place, with everyone in the town, almost…) pretty quickly.  I was surprised by that.  I almost feel like the relationships were built much faster in this game than in Sims 3.  So that was my blurb about relationships in Sims 4.  

I'm excited to create some more realistic families and learn more about playing this awesome new game!