Wednesday 22 September 2004

Pic of the day: The first bulge. Welcome aboad the express train to parenthood! The ticket is one way only. There will be no stops before ... actually, there will be no stops ever. We wish you a pleasant journey ... yeah right! MUAHAHAHA!

Sims2: Oh, (a) baby!

The world is such a wonderful place, and particularly the happy home you have built together with your loving spouse. You feel a deep inner longing to invite a new soul into this world to partake of its beauty and richness of meaning. Yeah, you better be motivated! Or else may Will Wright have mercy on your little electric soul, for the nightmare begins here.
"Try for baby".

***

Functionally, Try for baby is the same as Woohoo. I believe the only difference is the chance of conception, which from my (sims') limited experience is very high indeed. It may also be more exhausting, so better do it in the evening. Even better, do it the evening before she has a day off.

(Working sims have two days off each week, but only teachers have them exactly on the weekends, it seems. So check first. You also earn 1 paid vacation day per week, which would have been great if you didn't live just 70 days if you're lucky. You'll want to save that vacation day, believe me.)

The next morning, if all goes well, the wife will suddenly run from the breakfast table to the nearest WC. Soon she'll have a thought bubble with a baby's pacifier and a question mark. This is a good sign. Through the day she will continue to throw up anything and nothing, and probably develop a new set of appropriate fears. You're not likely to find the Woohoo symbol on her wish list either...

One reason why overpopulation is not a big problem in the sim world: Pregnancy lasts three years! Or possibly four, but I counted at least three. And then you give birth to an immobile baby who spends a similar time before it even starts crawling and showing any sign of consciousness. Then four years as a toddler, learning to walk and talk and use the potty. By the time the little bundle of joy is ready to go to school, the family-oriented mother starts to wish for baby again, but I suspect most players will hit pause and think deeply first. By the time Nanna and Norman Vrimoen celebrated the first kid leveling up to school kid, their time remaining until Elder was down from 22 to 13. It should have added up to at least 10 days rather than 9, but my guess is that the platinum high (see previous articles) added a year to their life. They both had a 8000 point wish for baby, that's one of the strongest ambitions you can have.

But for now, let us return to our expecting sim. Sim Nation is a highly developed welfare state, and from the day wifey acquires a visible bulge, she's on maternity leave. And a good thing that is: As the sickness recedes, her appetite goes through the roof. She also gets increasingly drowsy, and of course she has to pee twice as often too. With the occasional shower when necessary, there is no longer a night where you can sleep till you're rested before you need to take care of something urgent. Most of your fun points may come from the espresso machine, not that this will do any good for the bladder. You waddle though the days in a haze, wondering how much bigger your abdomen can get before you split in two. And then one day exactly that happens.

The game will entertain you with a bloodless and irrelevant animation and talk about storks, while in truth this is where the child's DNA is assembled, not at conception. To the best of my knowledge sims never miscarry so it doesn't really matter. A child inherits all its traits, body and soul, from the two parents. But it is not an average! For instance, if the parents have two neighboring skin colors, the game will not devise a new color for the child; the same for eyes and hair. And personality is not locked to 25 points like when you create a sim manually. Little Nemo Vrimoen has all the highs of both his parents, so he is both as neat and active as his father, as outgoing as his mother, and serious but nice like both of them. But the opposite is also possible.

***

After birth, you get three days of further maternity leave. This is not Scandinavia, after all, so Dad gets nothing. Luckily the three days are workdays, and your two days off each week come in addition, as do any vacation days. If you had a decent income before you boarded this express train with no stops, you don't need to think about money. Hopefully your home is large enough to accommodate a crib and a "baby station" for changing diapers (though you can do without that last tool if you must).

Babies are improved from Sims1. There is no need to sing for them. Parental instincts are also upgraded. Sims will be happy to pick up the li'l bundle as it radiates social points. Once they have it in their arms, they will notice when it grows hungry, and bottle-feed it. They will *definitely* notice when the diapers need changing, and so will anyone nearby. (Smell is visualized in Sims2 as a green smoke, so even the player will know when the diaper's gone bad.) Don't be afraid to invite guests. They will enjoy picking up the baby, and they will not step on it even if you put it on the floor. (The baby won't mind any of the above either.)

The real fun begins when the baby levels up to toddler. And I'm not really sarcastic here. The baby has no self awareness and no goals, it is basically a larva. Toddlers, however, are real sims with wishes and fears and skills to improve. Now starts the mini-game of wish matching, which I trust you have already played with the parents. Now it's 3-way. For instance, the four wishes of Toddler may be: "Snuggled by Mom", "Read to by Mom", "Learn to walk", "Snuggled by Dad". Now you check the parents to see whether they have matching goals, in which case you get double aspiration reward for the same action, since you fulfill two wishes with one hug.

The three large goals of toddlers are: Potty training, Learn to walk, an Learn to talk. Each of these will net the toddler a substantial reward in aspiration points and likely catapult it into platinum super toddler mood. If one of the parents has the corresponding Teach wish at the time, they will be similarly elated. Be warned that each of these will take several training sessions by a parent, so you may want to lock that desire. Wishes come and go, especially when you sleep but also sometimes when you fulfill another wish. Make sure that the parent with that aspiration is the one to complete the training.

(If you plan to be a serial parent, wish maximizing is important: The aspiration points are the only way to buy Elixir of Life, which postpones aging. Having a parent die while the kids are still in school is likely to cause a trauma in the young ones that will make their life harder. (Not to mention finding a babysitter...) Once they are old enough to move out or fall in love, it is a lot safer to shed the mortal coils.)

Although a toddler is a toddler, they actually change over the course of four days. An older toddler is able to learn faster than a younger one. At the very end of the period they may start to think about increasing their permanent skills, such as logic and charisma. There are toddler toys that can do this, and toddlers will be happy to play even before they realize that they are building skills as well. Of course, if you don't buy them toys, they will be all too happy to play with the toilet instead. Speaking of which - babies can be bathed in a sink, but toddlers require a tub. The shower is not an option, thank you.

And then one happy day your pre(co)cious little toddler will jump into the air and land as a school kid. From now on the landscape should be familiar, and the fertile sim wife may be ready for a repeat performance. But a lot of work remains, to make sure that the growing Sim acquires the needed skills (and preferably some starting capital) to live on their own, fall in love and throw away their entire adult life on raising two kids of their own, and so on, world without end.