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The Most Monstrous Things Ever Done To Sims

by April Siese

You may not want to admit it, but if you've played The Sims you most certainly have a Sims story of doing your worst to virtual people. Launched as a "life simulation game" in 2000, the Sims has earned a mass following for its ever-expanding control of faux humans in a virtual house built by, you guessed it, you. Expansions include everything from wizardry to the Black Eyed Peas not just performing but re-recording their songs in Simlish — Simlish being the nonsense language that permeates the game, making it just distant enough to feel foreign but rarely in the uncanny valley.

Those free-for-all controls make for some pretty interesting game play. And thanks to Reddit, Sims users have shared some of the ways in which they've pushed their unsuspecting Sims to their brink. It begun with the simple "ask Reddit" question — "What is the worst thing you've ever done in The Sims series?"

What follows are tales of neat freak characters bested by their hyper cleanliness, multiple hauntings, and lots and lots of philandering. The Sims is currently on its fourth incarnation, and even offers a mobile game called The Sims Free Play. So, before you start building your next character, take a note from these users who've been down the darkest alleys of SimCity and back:

1. Killing Your Neat Freak Sim Via The Unclean And A Dead Hamster

I made a guy who was a compulsive neat freak. Put him in a really surreal little house with a wedding buffet and a hamster or something, deleted the door. Eventually he went insane from lack of cleanliness and depression over his little rodent friend dying, and starved to death once the banquet rotted. I put the resulting urn in the room. I then repeated an identical scenario several times, always keeping the urns in the room. Eventually the tenth iteration of this guy is up all night, every night, terrified of a parade of ghosts of himself.

2. Holding The Most Insensitive Funeral Ever

One time I killed a Sim by drowning. Then I made everyone show up to his funeral in swimwear.

3. Doing Some Home-Wrecking So You Don't Have To Build A Home

I was always too lazy to actually build my own home from scratch and so whenever I started a new file, my immediate goal was to move into the nicest house already on the map. Well I scoped it out, and a nice couple lived there. So, naturally, I:

  • Had an affair with the lady of the house
  • convinced her to divorce her husband and stay in the house
  • married her
  • moved into the house
  • knocked her up for good measure
  • divorced her and kicked her out of the house

It was a nice house.

4. Trying Your Hand At Reality Television

I think this was Sims 2, I made a reality TV show house full of stereotypes, left them on free will mode, and had someone "voted off" every three days based on whoever was the least popular. The person "voted off" was murdered, naturally.

5. Creating One Person Sim Islands Via Lots And Lots Of Swimming Pools

I made a house filled with swimming pools so that everything was on an island. With all of the constant swimming to eat, sleep, pee, play basketball, etc not to mention constantly changing from clothes to swimsuit and back, my sims spent their lives in perpetual exhaustion.

6. Getting A Little Too Busy And Killing Off Sims From Sexual Exhaustion

I recently found out you can kill old Sims by overexertion in the Sims 4. My Sim is going around town fucking all the old people to death and once death shows up she proceeds to make friends with him. I'm counting up graves until my Sim can bang death.

7. Ruining Your Pet Dog's Charm By Turning Him Into A Terrible Human

In Makin' Magic I had a brilliant dog called AJ who was loved by the whole family. He never had an off day and brought sheer joy to his owners. Decided to train my wizardry and get the spell that allowed you to turn pets into humans, so AJ could be even more a part of the family.He turned out to be the biggest fucking assbag as a person and was abusive to his family, so we had to take care of him. I built a monolithic tomb, and trapped him inside. The family stood out front playing music to him as he slowly starved. They bought a new dog and played with it happily outside his eternal resting place to torture his trapped soul. Eventually a dragon burnt down the house and killed them all.

What a game.

8. Taking Too Many Sims' Lives Instead Of Making Them

I built a haunted house and killed like 3 families for the cemetery. The game literally gave me a pop up saying the Sims is a life simulation, and that I'm killing too many Sims.

9. Getting Your Kids Taken Away Thanks To Inactivity

I briefly fell asleep while playing and when I awoke, CPS had taken the child away while the parents were gaming.

10. A Redemptive Story Of Catching An Art Thief

Worst? I got my best moment...My greaser jock type turned out to be a sensitive artsy type, never leaving home and working on masterpieces. One day, a thief broke in, and they got into a fight; though my guy got his ass kicked, the thief ran.A few days later, I was looking through his relationships, and there was a lady that didn't like him; no idea why, just they were angry at one another. So I called her up.They turned out to have a lot in common and got along really well, well enough that she was moving in a few days later.Career: burglar. That bitch.

Images: EA Maxis/The Sims (12)