Date Posted: 1st Aug 2024 at 12:53 PM

See part 1 for the introduction and breakdown of Family, Fortune and Knowledge aspirations.

Popularity has been one of the hardest aspirations to pin down for me. I swung between these sims are extroverts and do well with company (which I now tend to assign to Outgoing sims), to they like people and are interested in people, to they want to amass the most friends possible, or be famous, which is what the game description says, but that seemed very one-dimensional. Then I started people-watching in real life and I realised that there is a very clear type of person for whom it is very very important to fit in and be accepted, and this is a high enough proportion of people that it easily fits into the 15-30% aspiration metric, and I had my Popularity definition. Popularity sims are very aware of social status, and it is important to them to remain on the right side of it.

Ths was further backed up by the wants and fears research. Popularity sims are really VERY anxious about people not liking them. Only Romance sims are more bothered by rejection. Popularity sims also want everyone to be friends and are upset by conflict and drama. Interesting given that some of their wants do relate to power - they are more tolerant of drama if they are in control of it, which totally makes sense in the context of fearing rejection. They don't tend to want to stir things up just for fun, but they will sometimes roll wants to be at the top of some kind of hierarchy. I think that social acceptance is totally, totally the key to understanding Popularity sims. They care about their reputation more than anything else. Usually, they would like it to be good, but if it has to be bad, then it has to be to the point that they are intimidating and people are scared to express their disapproval, instead.

Pleasure is also a strange aspiration to try to understand. In the end, it turns out this is very simple. They are motivated by what is fun, and they prefer to avoid getting tied down where possible. The difference between this one and other aspirations is that all of the other aspirations are motivated by either long-term (family, fortune, knowledge) or medium-term (popularity, romance) goals, whereas Pleasure sims have very few longer-term goals. This essentially represents a person who is very laid-back and lives in the moment and likes to savour things. While everyone is motivated by fun, and indeed all sims have a fun motive bar, Pleasure sims are much more motivated by this than anything else and will generally get aspiration points from fun activities, too.

Pleasure wants and fears which surprised me included a love for drama or tricks - I think they are quite mischievous and don't take life too seriously. They tend to fear anything which will involve greater responsibility, so they are much less likely to roll wants for jobs, children, businesses, marriage, pets. However, they can also fear the consequences of not having fulfilled responsibilities - they want to stay home from work, but they don't want to be fired for it. They are very interesting and will probably have to be quite creative/unconventional, in order to live fulfilling lives. Ideally, they would have all the proceeds of hard work, without having done any work themselves. So they could be quite unpopular with other sims!

Romance being the final of the six main aspirations, again a tricky one to pin down. My first impression is that these sims simply have a high "woohoo" drive and are motivated by woohoo mainly. This feels very boring to me (IRL I have a very low "woohoo" drive ). The name is also misleading and I felt I was doing these sims a disservice and perhaps even feeling faintly disapproving of them! This felt unfair, since in the Sims, all woohoo appears to be consensual, and what is wrong with having safe, sane, consensual fun? I couldn't quite get behind the idea of the "romance" side, though, because I felt this was disingenuous. Monogomous-but-passionate romance sims simply are difficult to play and I felt like this didn't fit. Some people write Romance sims as being highly emotional, even artistic and creative. I liked that interpretation, although I wasn't hugely keen on working all creativity into Romance. Of course many of the famous artists were famously promiscuous, too. But a lot of famous creatives have not been that way. So I thought, OK, perhaps they are ego-driven. And this, I think, is the one. So I see Romance sims as yes, having a high woohoo drive. But they are also prone to being lead by their hearts rather than their heads - they can be emotional, and impulsive. But their ego - this is a huge driver for them. In fact, what they want is to be desired and admired above all else. They greatly fear rejection. So they are appearance-conscious. They want to be attractive. They can be a little manipulative. They can have a lust for power, fame and glory. And they do feel very deeply and are more prone to being drawn in by their feelings, where other sims might be a little more disciplined.

Their wants and fears are interesting in this context. Yes there are all the woohoo, kiss, hug, flirt wants. But there are also various appearance-related wants and fears. They do not want others to see them in an unattractive state. Rejection is devastating to them. I also liked some of the wants which I had not realised were Romance-coded - they want to light a fire, buy a sofa to cuddle up on, and see rain. Plenty of date activities are also wants for them. It is quite sweet. I can now see them as more affectionate, rather than lecherous, and they simply tend to have a very different idea of boundaries around woohoo and romantic socials. To them these are such benign and wonderful activities that why should they be restricted to one partner.

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So, that's my detailed breakdown of the six main aspirations. I didn't do grilled cheese, because it is very one-dimensional: Basically, all their wants revolve around eating cheese, serving cheese and cooking. That's why I decided to keep it only as a very rare aspiration and not include it in the general analysis.

In future, I'll look at aspiration combinations, relationship compatability, what I feel about primary vs secondary, and maybe share my aspiration calculator.

Date Posted: 1st Aug 2024 at 12:47 PM

Aspirations are the part of a sim which drives them and motivates them, the part of them which denotes what they care about, what their fears are, and what they don't care about. In human psychology, I would say that the closest thing to aspiration is probably the Enneagram, although aspiration is a bit more blatant about certain desires.

Since I struggled to understand some of the aspirations (Romance, Popularity and Pleasure in particular) and I kept trying to quantify what they really were supposed to represent and/or how they would manifest in gameplay, I decided to investigate. I really thought about each one and what it could mean. I looked at people I saw out and about, and groups of people, and tried to pick out different aspirations among real people that I know. I also used a very helpful chart at C. Syde's website to look at all the wants and fears which roll (or don't roll) for different aspirations, to see what these aspirations actually mean in gameplay.

If all aspirations appear equally, then each primary aspiration represents 16.6667% of people.
If you count secondary aspirations, discounting cheese, which I choose to be a rare option, then it's 33.333% of all people which have this aspiration.

Therefore, I am running with a rough calculation that each primary aspiration represents the 85th+ centile of that trait, and including secondaries, the aspiration represents the 67th+ centile of that trait. Which means that you don't NEED to be a family sim to want children, but if the strength of you wanting children is average or less than average, then you probably aren't a family sim.

Due to the character limit, I had to split this into two posts. I'll start with Family, Fortune, and Knowledge.

Family was easy for me - this represents broodiness. IRL, some people have a very strong internal drive to have children some day. They might know this from a very young age. (This was definitely me, by the way!) It can't necessarily be explained WHAT exactly they want or expect from having children, they just know, absolutely, this is an experience that I want to have in my life. Whereas many people feel more ambiguous, say they will decide later, feel worried about the responsibility, or know for sure that they definitely do not want to have children at all. So I think that family aspiration represents the 15-30% of people who definitely want to have children.

The wants and fears research uncovered a different side of Family sims, which was perhaps obvious to everyone except me - they are extremely caring and responsible. Many of their wants relate to caring for others, especially family members, and about living up to family expectations. They also had some unexpected wants like caring for a garden and wanting to cook, a lot. They tend to fear bad things happening to their family, or anything which implicates them in having failed at some responsibility. Most of their pet-related wants are about being a responsible pet owner - teaching commands, etc. It helped me see what teenage Family sims would be motivated by - pleasing their parents, and playing a responsible role in the family by helping out at home.

Fortune was easy for me. Some people are very motivated by money, whether that is because they like what it brings for them, or whether that is because they are afraid of destitution. So that's basically it, although it is less "Moneybags, muahahahaha I can swim in my billions of simoleons!" and more about financial security, and what money represents in terms of purchasing power, opportunity, or even power over others. Fortune represents the 15-30% of people who are very clear that money talks.

The wants and fears are interesting. They are, of course, pleased by anything which will make them money, whether that is through their own hard work or somebody else's. In fact, their wants relating to children, pets and friends only seem to relate to money reasons. They are much less likely to roll wants for things which might be seen as "time wasting" or frivolous, although they do like to spend their money on luxury things which benefit them. They are more likely than other aspirations to want to be generous with money, in terms of they like giving gifts, giving tips, and buying things for others. They very much fear insolvency, but also, they fear being irresponsible or damage being caused as a result of lack of preparation. This aspiration, when you look at the wants and fears, comes across as being extremely disciplined, principled and driven.

Knowledge was also simple. They are pretty much your classic geeks, or more intelligent than average. They are curious. They ask why where others don't. They thirst for knowledge and will seek it wherever they can. They are much less aware of or interested in social norms, rules, or approval of others. I would place myself in this category, even though at some point, I would have put that secondary into Popularity, I changed my view on this (I will explain in part 2!) Although Knowledge sims are often represented as being introverts, I don't know that they necessarily are. I think it's just more that they are less interested in what other sims think of them than any of the other aspirations.

Knowledge wants are some of the most obvious because they differ so much from other aspirations' wants. All other aspirations tend to fear things related to the supernatural, whereas Knowledge sims crave this. They also want to skill and have wants relating to education or training (e.g. pets, children), and they tend to have wants relating to doing good in the world generally, like wants relating to the environment, or jobs like Medicine.

To be continued, the next 3 aspirations in part two.