I'm cheating on Sims with Vintage Story, and I even made a couple of mods there.

I'm creeping back into being interested in doing, well, anything at all about anything.

This month of nausea and vomiting has given me a fresh perspective on degrees of depression. I am very well aware that I have a strong excapist coping mechanism that can get out of hand. I remember the awful year my baby girl was born -- she had frightening health issues, my MIL died while I was pregnant and kicked off a horrifically painful family feud, my wife's job imploded, and I developed anxiety with self-harm. Then we moved across the country. After that, I played Sims every spare moment for months, with a single-minded obsession that freaked my wife out so badly that she staged an intervention. Since then, I've been aware that this is something to keep an eye on -- it's a sort of cocoon I wrap myself in that is genuinely healing but can get out of hand.

BUT, there's a deeper level where I don't even want escapism, and I end up taking naps because I have time to kill and nothing I can think of anything to fill it with that doesn't sound awful. That's where I was at the end of this medication nausea thing. The fact that I even want to open up a video game or a film editing project feels liberating.

And then when I find something I do need to download, I have to rename my Sims 3 folder because the store does not allow you to download anything without running Sims 3 inside EA App. Then, when I'm done downloading, I have to go into my process manager to kill the two sneaky processes that EA App leaves running when you close it. UGH. I'm not as optimistic as some in the fandom about how Inzoi or Paralives are going to rival Sims, but it would be nice if Paralives at least ends up being fun because an indie software developer is much more likely to be trustworthy about what they try to do on my computer.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/five-joyful-ways-to-spend-time-online/682418/

The lead anecdote was, copy-pasted so you don't have to deal with paywalls:

In moments of chaos, I want to play The Sims. Lately, I’ve been playing it a lot. I’ve had various iterations of the game since I was a child, when there was such a thing as a “computer room” and games were bought at Best Buy as very precious, very scratchable CD-ROMs.

Give me the soothing, dulcet tones of the “Create a Sim” music while I pick my Sim’s new party outfit and personality traits (Art Lover, Nosy, Lactose Intolerant). Or the cheap thrill of having everyone at the same virtual table eat the same food at the same time (harder than you might think). Or the humble reminder that a kitchen stove can catch fire at a moment’s notice.

What better salve for reality than micromanaging other people’s lives, in which there are truly no stakes? Even if that stove does catch fire, you can “rosebud” your way to a better one. The cheat codes even extend life itself: I’ve turned off the game’s aging feature because my Sims family has a dog, and I just can’t deal with that right now.

— Jinae West, senior podcast producer

Yeah, that touches my soul.

WHY THE HECK DO SO MANY CC CREATORS THINK THAT ONLY YAs ARE WORTH CREATING FOR?

Tons of folks must just open this game to have gorgeous digital models to dress up and pose.

Which, sigh, is a totally legit use case for this game. It's just that so many cc creators seem to fall into this category. I can't count how many times a cc creator I've followed has asked for requests, and I just say, "Anything you like for any age other than adult," and the creator answers, "Oh, I don't do that stuff."

TS4 didn't help by making the teen category nonexistent, so that 4to3 conversions completely skip an age category out of hand. (That wouldn't even necessarily be so bad if TS4 teens didn't look exactly like adults; when I play TS4, I use the shorter teens mod.)

Also, did I mention that EA is just as bad as fan creators??

The correct answer is always to do it yourself. We're all volunteers who do the stuff we like, and nobody owes anybody anything. I've worked my way through some age conversion tutorials and produced some hair I felt was usable, but my clothes have never passed muster. I'm just a much better script modder than I am a modeler or an animator.

@nocturnalazure tagged me in. Thanks 💖

My resolutions are simple, I guess.

I want to post again. I have the game running on my new computer, but I honestly I'm not even required to play for a bit because I have a ton of screenshots.

I want to get the Warriors mod out. It's almost feature-complete. It was out for alpha testing and got good feedback. It needs a lot of balancing for things like skill gain, which is a pain in the butt. The amount of work left compared to the whole project is really small. I really want to get back in the groove and wrap up this big pets project that I'm very proud of.

Pushing a little further, I have a shot at at least completing gameplay for the Samples. That would make me very happy. I don't like leaving things undone. Of course, I have to PLAY to do that, but you know what I mean 😉