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Creator’s Commentary: “WORTHY: A Sims 4 Story” (Dec. 1, 2020 – Nov. 30, 2022)

Sulsul & dagdag~

This is the start of a creator commentary series that I have wanted to write about for my Sims content! Learning about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into any kind of media always fascinated me, so I decided to give my Nefarious commentary on a Sims story I created years ago for Simstagram called WORTHY. In this series, I will break down the ideas, scenes, and technical work that formed this little story during the pandemic…

Recently, I announced a forthcoming remaster of the story, to be published on my other account (IG: @nefarious.trait) so that it can coincide with its sequel on my main IG account. It seemed like a good opportunity to actually start this commentary to explain the origins of WORTHY, what the creation process was like (the first time around) and what I plan to do in the remastered version; but for the most part, the lore and characters will remain the same.

Thank you in advance for reading through my long ramblings~

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THE CONTEXT (or, Coming Back to My Childhood Hobby For Comfort)

It was the time of covid-19 and quarantine.

It had been years since I played The Sims games, with 1 & 2 being my favorite iterations. I liked creating stories to entertain myself while playing Simgod with my Sims. I was also inspired by Sims 2 machinima, in the early days of Youtube, to create my own series… but long story short (I will explain in a later post), my old computer got a virus that corrupted my files, leading me to get a new computer but never re-installing any Sims games for an unknown reason. It would take over a decade to come back to the game in its 4th iteration, around the time of the pandemic in 2020.

The lockdown brought me back to Sims. It started with installing The Sims 2 via CD-ROM on my computer (with its 8GB of RAM) and remembering the controls and camera movements. (At the time, I wanted to recreate ‘The Black Lodge’ from Twins Peaks, which I started watching for the first time in 2020.) Then I was told about The Sims 4 on sale for digital download through the Origin app… “what?” was my reaction to the news. I was so out-of-the-loop with the world of gaming that the thought of getting games without a physical disc required was mind-blowing!! (Then again, I wasn’t the gamer in the family; my brother was the OG gamer and I was the passenger-side viewer at his desktop when we were growing up.)

Almost every day during quarantine, I was playing Sims 4 for 8-10 hours. At the time, I was in my second semester of grad school. Already having one semester of in-person classes, we had to switch to remote learning in the following semesters. Given these strange circumstances, my “online” class meetings and assignments were reduced in number, which allowed me more time to play the game. (This went on until 2022, when campus opened up again for hybrid/in-person classes.)

I relocated my PC tower to my brother’s old desktop in the dining room of our house and used his old 24-inch monitor to view the pixels in higher quality; it was a total upgrade from a smaller monitor that was used for school assignments and Youtube videos. To me, at the time, I was enjoying a childhood hobby of quirky simulation that was nearly forgotten as the outside reality grew bleak and terrifying… until I experienced simultaneous events that tremendously impacted my mental health, including a breakup.

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THE CONCEPT (or, How The Sims 4 Became An Emotional Crutch)

It was also the time of heartbreak.

WORTHY became one of the ideas I had for a fiction story, to explain my personal experiences of social isolation and heartbreak. While dealing with the inhibition of forming personal connections with my graduate cohort via in-person spaces, I was also going through the stages of grief over a breakup. Without divulging in details of that past relationship (of which I am still recovering), it had a profound impact on my life that made me explore through story what it means to form genuine bonds with people of different backgrounds, especially in times of crisis.

As someone who spent over a decade studying the craft of writing to make it my whole personality, identity, and life’s purpose, I always found comfort in hiding behind fiction to speak truths that I was too scared to say directly. Using Sims to tell the story added an extra layer of protection and another level of creativity that unlocked my inner filmmaker (another dream I want to realize and manifest).

Before WORTHY, I was learning how to do Sims storytelling. In August 2020, I created a separate Instagram account to post my Sims gameplay (it felt too embarrassing to share my screenshots on my personal account, amidst other posts of others’ IRL updates on social feeds). I had no idea that there was a whole community of Simmers on IG that curated Sims content, including legacy challenges or original/adapted stories. But I tried my hand at posting short stories with my Sims while figuring out how to hide the green Plumbob above their heads while taking screenshots. Or position my Sims “manipulating” their movements into certain spots without cheats or mods. Or try to get my Sims in the right mood to be able to take screens that fit the tone of my poorly-edited scripts. It would take a few years to eventually learn the technical ropes of Sims storytelling, but the most important thing was to have a story as the foundation.

I tried to figure out a long-form story that could work with Sims and allow more consistent posting on the account. At that point, I had two ideas that I felt enthusiastic about: a drama sequel to my (technically) first Sims story that featured my Simself, her best friend, and their mutual love interest (see TNE.stories, “Close Encounters” and “Cheap Thrills”); or, a dark story about a failed romance with horror themes. The latter felt more attractive to me, given my headspace at the time…

A line kept echoing in my mind: “You’re another monster I created in my head…” I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a tagline or a line of dialogue, but I thought of how to expand that idea into a story. It made me think of how we perceive someone differently after going through a breakup – one moment, they are the soft light filled with love and joy in our lives; later on, they become a thorn of emotional pain and horror that stained our peace of mind. Those scary thoughts and feelings of low self-worth, anger, sadness, loneliness, alienation/isolation consume you, sometimes manifested into physical inhibitions or sloven modes of everyday living. But what if those thoughts actually turned you into a literal monster, wanting to seek revenge? How would it feel justified at the end, once and if it happens…?

It sounded pretty dark, even for a Sims story. But I was drawn to an inner darkness that crawled its way to the surface of my artistic mind, and it became a challenge for me to craft it into a story with the game. Part of it was an unwilling stubbornness to pass on the idea (given the overall landscape of Sims storytelling with legacy family-focused stories or love drama-centered plotlines). But largely, it was an emotional outlet to turn heartbreak into art, to sort out and funnel my entangled thoughts and feelings through different characters.

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THE REWORK (or, Why Come Back To This Story Now?)

It has been almost 4 years since WORTHY ended.

After finishing that project, I tried to move on with another story, a spinoff for one of the original characters called HOUSE of MARKUS. But my increasingly busy schedule of thesis/capstone work and family/home responsibilities took a lot of energy and motivation from me to work on the story, ultimately leading me to cancel it all together… For me, it was a warning for what could happen to my future content with the Sims.

Other things happened between that time and now, especially after transitioning into a post-covid way of living. I found myself unable to write about… well, anything, as if my brain underwent a shadow-software update that automatically shuts off whenever I attempted to write in a journal or read a book of any genre. I felt turned off by literature – was it because of grad studies, from doing intensive reading and writing outside of my preferred genre (fiction)? was it because of brain fog, my enviromental conditions pervaded by screens of distractions that discouraged critical thought of engagement with analog content? was it because of family, the lack of personal time or privacy because filial piety and guilt made me forget that I can have my own hobbies and work that matters to me?

In terms of Sims, the morale declined with the EA buyout and recent updates to the game (such as the Marketplace) that made it more difficult to return to the game for either leisure play or story work. I started questioning the state of the game and the community, even thinking about alternate ways to continue my current story JUNIPER (sequel to WORTHY) elsewhere, in a different format that would not rely too much on Sims.

A lot can happen in 4 years. Not all of it was positive, but somehow I survived through plenty of moments that could have been an exit out of this simulation… There was still this stubbornness to keep going because of my unfinished business, which was the writing. Who else is going to publish what I’ve put so much of my life into? Whether it’s a silly little Sims story on the Internet, a blog post added to the digitial archive of my life, or a manuscript that will become physical copies for readers someday – no one will put it all together, except me.

WORTHY was my first completed project made public. The decision to come back to my first major Sims story was based on a desire to create again and a reminder that the Writer still exists and can still work with what is available to make the Thing. In the past 4 years, I feel like I gained a better sense of narrative writing and visual presentation than in my earlier years pre-content creation. This story meant a lot to me, during my time of heartbreak and quarantine, so it felt appropriate to give this a proper burial of all the emotions attached to it. A remastered version will also help me to continue the sequel story by forming new ideas and connecting old ones so that there will be stronger continuity between the two.

My next commentary will present the original outline for WORTHY and a breakdown of each section.