Right now, 30% playing in live mode, 30% decorating, building and testing CC, 40% searching for CC, reading pages like this one and more.

I think I spend 50% playing my game, and sometime I just watch my Sims make a fool out of themselves. Then I spend about or near maybe 50% on this site MTS ( shameful )

Not enough time. I really need to stop messing around and do stuff!

At the moment, not very much, as my long blocks of time seem to be needed for other things. I expect this to change in the middle of next month.

I'm afraid you are right, at this point I'm even trying to speak EA's language with statments like:
"EA, please, please, please let me give you my money for a good sequel to Sims 2. I will buy it and every little bit of content you release for it, so will lots of other people. So please, please, please make it possible for us to give you our money. It's right there, a big pile of the collective gaming-money of a whole fanbase and can all be yours! All you have to do is release a good, quality sequel to Sims 2. We desperately want to give it to you. Why won't you let us? Is our money not good enough for you? It can be very useful and it's better than peanuts, because, unlike peanuts, you can exchange it for goods and services, like, for example, a good, quality sequel to Sims2. So please, please please let us give it to you!"

...but it doesn't seem to work

I spend way too much time reading/writing about the game, lately. Now understand, I don't mind reading/writing about it, but it *does* take away valuable playing time.
Also, though I've officially retired from modding, I'm still bothered by some things that I want to mod away. So I spend a lot of time in SimPE as well... Again time wasted that I can't spend playing.
And then there is my continuous dissatisfaction with the layout of my lots - the dumps that my sims reside in. But since whatever I try, the quality of those dumps will usually not improve, I try to choose to ignore that dissatisfied feeling. Which takes a lot of effort.

So overall, when asked how much of my time I actually spend playing, all I can say is: way too little, darnit!

1%. If that. I really do like playing the game but, well.. let me put it this way: I have the attention span of a gnat, even though I'm not sure just how much of an attention span a gnat actually has.

Seriously though, I do like to play. I want to play. I promise myself I'm going to play. Then I end up exiting the game to make something and the next thing I know it's 3 days later and I still haven't played. BUT I do end up having something new to (not) play with in game!

Whenever I first set up a fresh new game I spend maybe 25% of the time in actual Live Mode and the rest is spent building/editing lots and creating characters lol. But that gradually changes as I create everything I need and download necessary CC. Right now I'm in an established second generation rotational play, so I probably spend like 90% of the time on Live Mode.

10% I spent on MTS, 1% downloading mods/CC, 5% in Buy & Build Mode, and at least 75% in Live Mode. But that can change every week, like when I fell in love with default replacements for all the Maxis clothes I never used (at least 95% of it. Maxis clothes are so not my style). But I did something wrong (a teen grew up into a floating head, the headmaster's outfit has the wrong mesh now, and most of the boys' suits have the same problem), so I need to go back... but I don't really care, so I just let it be broken.

I've been known to forget what I was writing in the middle of a

That and walking into a room and immediately forgetting what you went in there for; thinking of something and/or remember something and knowing you need to write it down before you forget... and you forget before you can..

I've taken to saying that I need to upgrade my memory, but I can't quite figure out where the RAM slots are, lol. And even if I could figure that out, with the attention span I've got.. SQUIRRELS!!!! *runs off*

This is why I now write things down in my phone. It's like my outside brain. I would be lost without it.

A friend once explained the "forgetting something upon entering a room" thing, apparently its from the time when we were still hunter/foragers and when we enter a new location our brain prioritizes taking in impressions from that environment and sometimes drops the train of thought we've had as a consequence.

Our brains are very outdated operating software. We really should get an upgrade at one point.

Come on God, you know you want to try that free Brainwave 10 upgrade

Pretty much 100% of most game sessions is spent actively directing the lives of my Sims, although I will occasionally spend time on housing. I have a neighbourhood where I plan to keep a completely empty copy of each house I consider playable; I've only got the one- and two-bedroom houses done yet, so I'll need to do the bigger ones at some time. I tend to do that in a separate session, because by the time I've found and placed all the houses, then gone into them all and deleted all the furniture, I'm too burned out to play. And I recently spent an evening setting up a new downtown for Strangetown, complete with stores, parks, and housing geared to the small budgets of Sims just graduating from or dropping out of college (they have to graduate summa cum laude to get the full $20K, so most get less and the drop-outs get nothing except what little they saved from their grants); apart from moving the first two Sims in and getting them jobs, there was no actual play in that session.

I'd say 80% of my Simming time is actually spend playing my Sims. I only decorate out of necessity - I generally prefer to download houses that are already decorated in a way that I like, or I'll use a Maxis house and just use the crappy furniture that's already in it (I know, I'm gross). I really enjoy playing my families, especially in Sims 2 since I play a large rotation and I'm very emotionally invested in my neighborhood. I get bored while decorating and I don't think anyone can be worse at building a house in this game than I am - I genuinely appreciate those who share their talents with the community, otherwise my Sims would always live in hideous, plain houses.

this time; I think I spent more time out of the game than in it. and when I am in the game, I usually test stuff. so probably 0%.
past times; I have not kept count.

to original poster:: people would likely have their own definitions regardless of what is expressed.

I've been doing the Sims version of this a lot lately - starting the game to test an object, then sitting there staring at the screen wondering why I turned it on.

Nope, everyone is going to need to start using my definitions from now on. Seriously, I know, and haven't ever been trying to change anyone's mind about anything. My own play-style heavily features many of the things excluded by the question.

Honestly, a lot of my time is troubleshooting mods, because I throw stuff in willy-nilly. One time I started throwing regular clothing into my default folder and had to go sort it out again. The only time I've built was not good, so I've stayed away from it. It's a 50/50 between live mode and other stuff.

I spend about an hour ever evening after work playing. Of that hour, I'd say 5 minutes is loading screens. 10 if I switch towns and/or houses/ or visit a lot of community lots. The rest of it is game play. I snap photos during the game, then, when I'm at work on my breaks I post the stories using the photos. I usually download a lot of CC (clothing and houses) when I first start a neighborhood, then I add houses at the beginning of each new round. No building is allowed except at the beginning of the next round so that I don't move sims out and forger to play them at their new house. I do a round every three days to a week. If I have a weekend where I'm free to play I can play 2 to 5 hours and do a full round.

So given all that, I'd say 90% game play 10% CC and loading screens.

My actual playing is pretty on-and-off in periods. Sometimes I'll play for one or two hours every day, sometimes it's weeks without any playing at all. I tend to check what's up in here pretty much every day, and I check for nice things to download... once a month, perhaps, if even that. So I'd say it's fairly evenly distributed between forum-browsing and actual playing, with some minutes here and there on the forum, and larger chunks of playing, but more seldom. I do spend some time looking at pictures I've taken in the game, too.

I can honestly say that since my hood is decorated for Christmas (and I only mean the households I actually play), I am in live mode 100% of the time. This will change, of course, after the holidays when I have to take down and store the Christmas decorations. Or, of course, if I think of another business to build, then I would have to build the business, a house, and start another family to run the business.

I think it's about 1/2 and 1/2; I can be picky about what I want (did I mention my CC addiction?), and the game can be picky about working correctly.



We have phones from the 70s and 80s. (We got rid of the one from the 50s a year or so ago; it was rotary, black, and confused teenagers.) No writing on it!