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The Curse Of Randomized Townies
This is just a perspective forged of my own experiences. If anybody else out there likes the random townie system in The Sims 4, your stance is valid. Keep enjoying yourself đź’•
But for myself and others who feel the same way, I will be breaking down my stance on Sims 4 randomized townies, and the curse I find them to be on my game.
I have fond memories of a certain open world sims game. One of the most beautiful things to me about this game was the life it captured at all times. The idea that your sim was never alone in their world. All it took was a single button to instantly zoom out and gaze upon the entirety of the city your sim was part of.
The townies were evidence of that. They were alive. You could pan across town, click a random sim you had never seen, and follow them anywhere. The store rabbitholes, the public pool, their own home. There was life and movement around your own sim at all times. These townies had names. They had stories going on. They lived and walked in the same fashion as the player’s own.
Sims 4 did away with that. Gone are the days of community amongst modern sims. Now, we find them sealed away to derelict pocket dimensions known as “lots.”
And a pathetic amount of lots there are. To make up for the meager quantity of livingspace, Electronic Arts unleashed worldbuilding hell upon everyone.
Random Generated Townies. Strange and disoriented wanderers of the sims landscape, sporting an unregulated mash of Maxis assets and a few tragically enabled-for-random pieces of Custom Content. To populate the wasteland that is a town that can only house ten whole families, these corporately-deployed skinwalkers wander the sidewalks outside of homes and the halls of the few communal lots, eradicating any sense of consistency with their strange powers to pop into existence one day then vanish the next.
Have you ever made the mistake of falling in love with a random townie? Ask to move into their home, and you will be met with the eerie truth: there is no “home” for them. They are birthed from the void, and they return to the void.
The “life” they live is merely an illusion centered around you, to keep you feeling like you live in a world that is alive. But this illusion is not even skin-deep. A mere papercut is enough to sunder the suspension of disbelief in twain.
And for us worldbuilders: what of the world we wanted to make? The stories we wanted to tell? The lives we wanted to place in our worlds? They are unceasingly drowned out by a torrent of artificial, lifeless faces, destroying all semblance of theme, atmosphere, and continuity.
What is the biggest problem with the Sims 4, in your opinion?