THE MOST TOYS
In a game you can’t win, expansions are inevitable.
Iwas a frank four-year-old. At the house of a preschool friend, I remarked, “What a mess,” and was never invited back. At the more empathetic age of 42, I can appreciate that the collection of paraphernalia I’d witnessed was the manifestation of a complex and difficult issue; hoarding. I don’t have a healthy relationship with The Sims, but I struggle to define it. It’s not an addiction, because my engagement now lasts mere hours after the release of a gameplay heavy expansion. Am I a fan? A collector? A hoarder? Some amalgamation of these things?
As always, when I fired up The Sims 4 recently, I noticed a new expansion; Eco Living. I was so annoyed with myself for yoinking it, I immediately yoinked the Nifty Knitting stuff pack, too. As my Sims’ hippy house filled to the brim with fabricated wall decals and woollen tortoises, I pondered their purpose. List them on Plopsy, for simoleons? Pretend they are precious? I’m not sure if it’s normal for a Sim’s interdimensional pockets to have 600 beetles in them. As well as new crafting options, Eco Living allows you to raise insects for food.
I’ve read that one of hoarding’s characteristics can be to not (genuinely) value your stuff. Did I enjoy these new packs? I loved The Sweater Curse, which is a prolonged Tense moodlet from giving a romantically involved Sim a hand knitted sweater and they hate it. In real life, I’m knitting my husband a disappointing Covid scarf that looks more like a trapesium, so I get the joke. But I did not enjoy Eco Living’s Neighbourhood Action Plans. If you have no friends, like my sims, you’ll end up suffering through every half-baked, do-gooder idea that’s voted in.
Some NAPs are OK, like Promoting the Creative Arts, which allows sims to gain influence from writing novels and so on. Free Love is interesting, in which all jealousy from romantic intersections is removed. (Or so I believe. I can’t even be bothered with monogamous simsrelationships, so I didn’t try it out.) Sadly, my neighbourhood kept voting to fine me for using the shower, then to cut off power and water every Thursday. Generators are a complete pain to upgrade, fuel and maintain, even if solar panels and dew collectors are more useful.
Is it possible to be a hoarder if your stuff is digital? Certainly, The Sims 4 demands so much space on my laptop that all of my (actually precious) COVIDrecorded, teaching resources have been relegated to an external drive. The Sims is not cluttering the hallway or keeping the kids’ friends away, but this automatic accumulation (currently, for The Sims 4, amounting to the base game, nine expansions, nine game packs and seventeen stuff packs) feels entirely out of control. Why do I keep buying more game packs if they don’t “spark joy”, in the words of Marie Kondo?
Many videogame enthusiasts will collect the games they love forever, but how many franchises have delivered a constant stream of (mostly) unchanging content for 21 years? Definitely some; Civilization, Mario, Pokemon? My colleague Terrence Jarrad tells me, “If you play World of Warcraft, you buy all of the expansions.” On Twitter, I received more responses to the question of which games people buy, long term, than I could read. I’m not sure what precise intersection of sustainable living, knitting and hoarding finally made me stop to think about this, yet here we are.
I considered concluding this column with a grand promise to actually stop. Stop buying, stop playing (unless I want to). While mustering the courage to do so, I noticed the new Snowy Escape pack. Snow, my weakness. By the time you read this, it will have been released and I will own it. My dad bought the very first Sims game, didn’t like it and handed it to me, Forcebonding it to me forever. My sad destiny is inevitable; my descendents will never know (or care) that I collected all the stupid parts of an imaginary sims lightsaber. Nor should they.
Meghann O’Neill has collected every PC Powerplay she has ever contributed to on a shelf above her desk. If her grandchildren are reading this, she’d like them to know she did (at least) value the sims items with silly names. The “I Dream of Sous” Chef Station. Classic.