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I used The Sims to perfect my apartment | Unraveled

Mar 04, 2020
*drum beat* THE SIMS! While other games take you through some hero's meticulously crafted story, this game lets you experience the joy that comes from creating your friends and family and then making them pee in rooms with no doors. I've been playing The Sims since I was a kid and it allowed me to imagine what I could become. A successful doctor, perhaps, with a mansion and a swimming pool from which he has no ladder to get out. And now that I'm a D-rated Internet video producer with a dirty

apartment

in New York City, I realized I was using The Sims for wish fulfillment.
i used the sims to perfect my apartment unraveled
Maybe there is a better way. I may 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 different considering most of it will be in-game footage, I mean... I don't need paper! Let me explain my methodology to you. We will have two subjects: simulated Brian and real Brian, which is me, I am real Brian. Here's my hypothesis: If simulated Brian's life situation can be

perfect

ed in The Sims, then Brian's life situation in reality can also be perfected by altering it in the same way in real life.
i used the sims to perfect my apartment unraveled

More Interesting Facts About,

i used the sims to perfect my apartment unraveled...

Now, you could try to do this in a โ€œperfectly controlled environment,โ€ but life is confusing and sometimes science has to be too. So before I can create my Sim... I have to measure my

apartment

. Obviously I have to work with what I currently have. And if I'm supposed to make an honest simulation of my living situation, I need to make sure it's to scale. I should also note that I live in a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates and a cat. And although they have their own rooms, I won't be modeling them in The Sims. Partly because I rarely spend time in their rooms, but more because I'm a good roommate who respects personal boundaries.
i used the sims to perfect my apartment unraveled
I will not redecorate your personal spaces. But I will exploit the common space for content. When you cut up my roommates' rooms, you can divide my apartment into 6 different sections. I

used

the basic Sims 4 because I didn't want simulated Brian to accidentally turn into a wizard, a skeleton, or a college student. The first step is to make an accurate description of myself, both in personality and appearance. This took quite a bit of time, but it was worth it when I created an exact 1-to-1 replica of myself in The Sims. Then, I built the space. I

used

my measurements and gave myself almost unlimited funds to build the apartment, and I bought the cheapest appliances, just like my landlord did.
i used the sims to perfect my apartment unraveled
At the end of this, I had a pretty accurate reproduction. Then it was time for the test. I gave myself a career similar to mine and then 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 my experiment was flawed. One, it was too slow. If I want a longitudinal look at Brian Mock's life situation, I need to see his WHOLE life. Second, this experiment is meant to perfect my living situation, not my job. And currently, Sim Brian is finding enough satisfaction in his career, which is an uncontrolled space.
Sim Brian needs to stay in his apartment and that means he won't have a job. Three, Sim Brian was perfectly content reading books, and everyone knows books are BORING! So I obviously need to fix whatever personality flaws have turned my Sim into a fool. I fixed the first flaw by downloading a mod that would allow me to use ultra-fast speed. I also altered my sim's personality to reflect my own... and accepted that simulated Brian's appearance wasn't as accurate in the first test, so I fixed that too. With the new personality traits and the super-fast mod, this test was much more accurate.
I spent a lot of time standing in the bathroom, staring at the wall or staring sadly at my reflection. And then Sim Brian died of starvation after 4 days. Which is a BIG SUCCESS! I got to see my Sim's entire life! In test 3, I took a hands-off approach. I hit super-high speed and let it run. In this test, I starve after only 2 and a half days. Which makes me think this mod might be so fast that Sim Brian can't feed himself. So in test 4, I start at normal fast speed and decide that I'll only jump to light speed when I'm bored.
And things start off pretty well! Sim Brian manages to socialize and stay happy for two days. He 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 he looks out the kitchen window. Things get really bad at 2 a.m. on Thursday, when he stares in the mirror for hours. Boredom has taken over him. That afternoon, he finds himself staring at some dirty dishes on the coffee table, too depressed to wash them in the sink, which is just a few feet away.
Sim Brian makes the same moves for the next week. Watching TV. Looking at the mirror. Sleep at random intervals. He looks devastatingly unhappy. But he manages to live a much fuller life than the last two versions! It takes almost another week for him to starve! Except he doesn't actually die. In an effort to speed up the death sequence, I accidentally reached ultra-fast speed and for some reason, this ended in death. I waited, hoping the reaper would reappear, but no. So I hurried the days. Waiting for someone to find my collapsed body in the strange corner of my creepy hallway, but the only people who noticed my quote-unquote "death" were the utility companies.
I took this moment to look around my neighborhood. Most of the houses were much nicer. I was alone in a little box surrounded by neighbors who had forgotten me, or perhaps never knew I existed. Until death he had forgotten me. I watched my slumped body remain in limbo while nothing changed. After a week, I resigned myself to quitting. And then on test 5, I peed myself! A LOT! Wow, Exhibit 5 exemplifies how much my apartment needs an upgrade. At the beginning of the test, my sim left the house to socialize. And he was so happy not to be in his tiny apartment that he stayed outside for 12 hours, ignoring his bodily functions, and at 9 p.m., while talking to a potential new friend, he wet himself.
Does this make the Sim, embarrassed and uncomfortable, walk in? NO. Sim Brian hates his living space so much that he decides to stay out all night surfing the Internet, until he wets himself again right before having a flirtatious conversation with his friend Terri. Dirty, dirty Terri. After another full day outdoors, hunger, tiredness, and the need to pee FINALLY make Sim Brian go home. He was more willing to spend two nights soaked in urine than spend a single minute inside his apartment. Great humor. The rest of his life was typical. Mirror. Standing. Starve. After 5 control tests, it was time to know the results.
Here's what I learned: First, I'd rather spend time outside my house in repulsive conditions than spend time inside my house. Something needs to change. Second, the only thing that ever managed to make Sim Brian happy was โ€œgood decoration.โ€ I need to redecorate. And third, Sim Brian managed his basic needs until he was devastated by the lack of social interaction. A hole so deep he couldn't go anywhere but down. And this makes me believe that what killed me was not hunger, but feeling so alone 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!
Brian simulated he was happier in these terrible tests when the decorations were good, and that's something I can fix in real life. But before we do, let's establish some ground rules: One, I cannot modify any of the rooms in my apartment or I would lose my security deposit. Two, I can't change the furniture because my roommates bought it and then they would hate me. And three, the money. I had considered giving my sim a budget similar to mine, but money can't buy happiness. And if this is true, then money, compared to happiness, has no correlation. Therefore, money is not an issue and my sim should be allowed to buy anything regardless of price.
Infinite money. Sims decorations show how many environment 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 whole hour giving my apartment as much decoration as possible. Let me give you a first-person tour. The living room now has many beautiful paintings. The Weird Nook is now meant to be The JAZZ Room, because for some reason, Sims have A LOT OF JAZZ PAINTINGS. The TV has to stay, but now I have three maps around it to say: "Sometimes I'm smart too." The kitchen has not changed because it is small and there is no space to hang anything.
The creepiness of the hallway has crystallized in 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, a wall of apples and a wall of pears. This should remind my sim that he should eat. And finally, in the bathroom, I installed a second mirror so I couldn't just stare at the wall. Now let's see it in action. In the first test, I did another hands-off approach at ultra-fast speed, and my sim once again starved super-fast. So yeah, maybe the mod is too strong.
BUT! In test 2, things go much better. For the first time in any of the tests, my sim manages to go from Very Sad to Happy, thanks to the fancy decorations! Although Sim Brian has moments of boredom and loneliness, for the most part, the house makes him happier. Sim Brian does so well that he survives after the utilities cut off his electricity and water, and he starves to death after more than two weeks. That's almost DOUBLE the length of any of the other tests! MY DECORATIONS WORKED! Yes, I'm still starving, but I'm living TWICE AS LONG! And that's all the proof I need that this is the perfect fit for my apartment.
All I have to do now is do it in real life. Polygon said they wouldn't reimburse me for thousands of dollars worth of paint purchases, even though I TOLD them it would make me more productive, so I gave myself a quote. Then I went to many second-hand stores to buy all the paintings I could find. Some fit the aesthetic. Others would need modifications. But I have a lot of things! Or so I thought, until I got home and realized it wasn't even going to cover one of my walls, let alone all six rooms. So I searched my apartment to find anything that might be stuck to the walls.
I was eventually able to fill the entryway, but the rest of the living room was pretty sparse. In the Jazz room I put a paper mache man playing the piano, a dart board that looked pretty jazzy to me, and a skeleton in a tank top that said "I love my dad," because...honestly, I didn't. . I 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 decoration. I took the day off to do this, but I finished in an hour.
I even put on the suit to film the results of the trial, but my house felt as empty as when I started. I couldn't start the live experiment because I couldn't recreate my sim's house. But I wouldn't give up. If I couldn't buy 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 needed to finish this part of the video before I left.
That meant I had to create around 70 large paintings in less than three days. I got off to a solid start, painting all the apples and pears. I even managed to edit the two paintings I bought at the thrift store at Sad Clowns. But I was already halfway through the second Sad Clown when this process began to weigh on me. If I had to spend a few hours on 10 of the simplest paintings, there would be no way I would finish this before the deadline. I was alone in an apartment making shitty paintings for a video that wasn't going to be filmed on time.
I had a stress migraine, so I turned off the camera and went to bed. When I woke up from that awful nap, I decided to do one of the hardest things I've ever had to do on an Unraveled: I asked for help. And if you've never had to ask your friends and coworkers to help you paint terrible pictures for a stupid video, let me tell you, you're not missing much. It's an awkward thing to ask people to do. And honestly, the weirdest part of this whole process is that... people said yes. People said thatThey would come help me paint.
And they said yes only because they wanted to, and also because I said I would buy pizza, but you have to grease the wheels somehow. So I turned my house into a paint factory. I cut the paper. I moved the furniture. And that night people came. Not just my roommate and my coworkers, but my friends and those friends' friends. I was hoping for one or two people to help me, but I ended up with 10 people in my house, all painting large-scale portraits and REALLY COOL SAD CLOWNS. Seriously, who knew my friends were SO GOOD at painting sad clowns?
I'm not 100% sure how to feel about how good my friends are at painting sad clowns, but I'm glad I gave them an outlet. All these people came just to make my department happier. To lend a hand when I felt overwhelmed. And not only did they help 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 turned into a really fun time. And it reminded me that, although it can sometimes be uncomfortable or embarrassing, if you ask for help, most of the time people are willing to help you paint great paintings of jazz men.
In three hours, a task that seemed insurmountable to me was completed. And I was so excited that I took the tour while everyone was still there. The Living Room with fabulous landscapes, The JazzThe huge murals in the room. The creepy clown hallway that was too good. My room with its incredible portraits and walls of fruits. And the bathroom, where I looked at myself, not considering my flaws or my apartment, just smiling. That's all. Just smiling. It's been over two weeks since my apartment was redecorated, which is longer than I survived The Sims trials, so it's been an incredible success.
My apartment is perfected, I am happier with it and all thanks to the redecoration. Or at least that's part of it. I think 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 is a story behind this. Simulated Brian fell further into sadness due to his isolation, but the painting night turned Reality Brian's dire situation into something cheerful. So I have to ask myself: Does my newly perfected apartment make me happier because of the decor or because of the people who helped me decorate it?
Tricky question, obviously it's the decorations. *club beat* *saxophone solo* *mouth trumpet noises* *dart bounces off board* JESUS!

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