A good many years ago a lady shared that a family member had gifted her a new game to try out; The Sims 2. She was amazed to discover that playing and immersing herself in the creative aspects helped her to cope with the loss of her husband. Over time I too have found this game to be helpful in many ways.

For one thing, the story telling option offers an enjoyable way to practice and improve writing skill.

And, along the way I have (and continue) to discover and chat and share with other players making this a social game.

And then for the past year I (and many others) have found ourselves pretty much isolated at home owing to the pandemic, (thankfully I am not alone at home!). There is plenty to keep me busy right where I am, so, it is not as if there is nothing to do. What my Sims does is to provide a place in my imagination to retreat into for a time each day. And best of all the creative aspects give a rest from some very serious real life concerns.

How has the Sims been a positive, helpful activity for you?

I have learned some phrases like mind over matter when a sim learned a logic skill. Otherwise it has thought me some computer and modding skill and a lot of patience because long loading times. I remember waiting half an hour just to load one university lot. All the bug and the corruptible mess that sims 2 is also has made me more patient.

I got this game as a child when I was in middle school. My routine became school, cross country practice, and then Sims until bedtime. It really impacted my life- it made me feel creative and not so lonely. It also made me fall in love with designing houses. Sims 2 made me want to be an architect and I soon learned in high school that I would need an art portfolio to apply to schools. From there I discovered my love for painting.
After I graduated high school, I took a gap year studying with an artist full time. Here's my work if anyone's interested in classical realism. I really struggled my senior year of high school. I had a bf and didn't know any better and he pretty much took control of my life. My friends turned on me too (high school drama- I couldn't even tell you what I did wrong since I kept to myself so much anyways) and I finished high school in a rut. The main reason I didn't go to college was because my boyfriend didn't want me to (he goes to a military academy and was worried if I went to college I would leave him for someone else) and I was afraid to trust people/socialize after my senior year. During my gap year when I wasn't at the studio I spent a lot of time playing Sims and Skyrim. They felt like the biggest escape. I really only socialized with my cat and two dogs I adopted that year other than the people I knew at the art studio.
Now, I'm in college studying biology and I want to become a veterinarian. I've made some changes to my life (gained confidence, realized I'm capable of being a doctor, ditched the high school boyfriend) and didn't touch Sims for my first two years of college because I was so busy. With my schedule I can never paint anymore - I don't have 7 hour blocks of free time to mix paint and get a pass on a painting done. Thanks to the quarantine, I only ever leave my apartment to walk my dogs or go grocery shopping. I'm in my bedroom on my laptop the entire day doing online classes, homework, and studying. Sims has become a major part of my life again. It's an escape from the terrible state of the world and provides me that creative outlet I need that I'm missing from not painting.
Sims is way more than just a video game to me. It's my world that I designed with stories I've written. It allows me to be an architect or an artist when I want to be, and I don't have to commit to that as my real-life career. It's always there when I need it.

Well said! And we can even travel a bit without leaving home (LOL). For some of us Sims2 is more than "just a game". It is a creative outlet. A healthy respite. And just plain old fashioned fun.

Happily there are ways to care for and to help the game up and running. MTS members offer much help that has made a real difference ( in my game anyways)

Having been a widow for 15 years, I have already spoken about how the game helped me through many dark and lonely nights - but it kept me sane. I will never forget how hard I struggled to figure out why a Sim could not go upstairs - there was floor tiles missing - but when I did, I was very proud of myself (my memory threatened to leave me at the time).

As a short story writer, I sometimes turn my characters into sims, which is quite fun at times.

As for the pandemic - it has not changed my life much, although I was supposed to be home most of the time and not drink any wine and so on. But at my age - I am almost 64 - I am not giving up living my life. (Don't take this as me being flippant - I am not, I take precautions and I look after myself, but our government came up with the most draconic rules in the world - we weren't even allowed to buy underwear or open-toed shoes or pies at one point). So I simply went out when I could (I even went to the dentist legally) and went to the shops to buy ingredients so that I could make my own pies every time I wanted to eat one. And since alcohol was (and still is partially) banned, I learned to make pineapple beer. Yet I did spend a lot of time playing sims, and I even downloaded default replacements for all the clothes; something I never bothered with before.

Like Justpetro, this game has kept me sane, especially during this time when one is not supposed to be doing much outside of the house. I was in isolation before the pandemic, and the game was always there for me to throw myself into.

But when I started playing the game, it wasn't with any sense of purpose at that time. It has grown in such for me, so that when I play it now, i can concentrate on the neighborhood and it's characters to the extent that I very carefully write down all their stories and actually care about them. It keeps my mind from wandering into a very dark and scary place at times.

Simming has kept me entertained for quite some time, and it's given me skills and knowledge I'd never had otherwise. I think it's driven several of my interests, too. It's gotten me through some tough times, and I think it's also helped me (through writing, and stories with sim characters) process quite a lot of things I've been struggling with over the years, perhaps vent some steam here and there, too. It's absolutely been a creative outlet, with writing, photographing, meshing and texturing.

I've practiced patience. Oh, you have no idea! Think it's a lot if the game takes 5, 10, 20 minutes to load? On my first laptop, mine took well over 3 hours, upwards of 4 on a bad day. On my stationary, at least an hour. Patience is something you just have to live with if you want a lot of CC, I guess...

It's also helped me a lot with my English skills (second language). Can't say I was extremely bad at English (I started reading books in English in my mid-teens, because fantasy/sci-fi books are generally really slow in getting translated and also partly lost in translation), but hanging out in the forums and writing stories definitely has kept my skills developing. Verbal skills still somewhat crappy, but brain is not be workable on a good-ish day, is may be at fault there... uhm... something like that (meaning verbal skills kinda equally crappy on a bad day in mother tongue, so probably just brain being brain and adding temporary memory loss with non-functional dictionary on top of that )

I've also learned to manage a forum and a site, both as a moderator and as a site admin/owner.

And I've learned some very basic coding. I kind of finally understand basic Hex, at least what's used in TS2, which took me a while (and I probably don't understand all of it - there's probably a whole lot more going on), but it finally clicked one day and I suddenly understood more of the seemingly "random" numbers used for the ages/genders and all of that are built up and how it all goes together, without having it all explained to me. Probably took a while longer than it should've, though (I used to be better at numbers and all that...). Still, it's fun.

If you told me back in 2005 (before I bought TS2) that in 10+ years I'd be making things for a game, posting stories, managing a forum, and doing all of this in English, I'd probably stare at you like you were insane...

I am a very kept-to-myself kind of person, for better or worse depending on who you ask. I don't have many friends, and those I do are online. I find that my sims fill that space, especially the longer I play them and like watching them grow from babies to death and having been there for their entire life. I'll never say never but at least the way things seem for my social ineptness I don't see it likely I'll have any sort of relationship, marriage, children the like. But my sims can. Every few months my grandma will be like "Just making sure you know they aren't real, right?" and I have to be like well yeah obviously. But I think the level of actual love and attachment you can have for these little pixel people you can't understand that if you aren't a simmer yourself.

I've been playing sims for at least 18 years, give or take, and I'm only 24 which means I've been playing this game for really my entire life. The longest chunk of time I've ever not played for is about 3 months when I was going through some dark times where I had no interest in doing much of anything. But it was actually me loading up the game and playing just for about 20 minutes that was what brought me out of that and back to my normal self.

I also think it's good for memory. All of the useless information I've stored in my brain for all 4 versions of the game. For patience, the sheer number of times I've bork'd something and had to spend days, weeks fixing things.

But primarily that it's just it's what I do. I can't imagine my life without sims. It makes me happy.

Well this one time in Accounting class I knew the word "depreciation" simply bc we use it in the community. Also, I have a feeling sims' businesses could potentially be good practice for the stuff I'm currently (supposed to be) learning in business school.

I left out something important - the building!

Taking part in contests have taught me more than I ever thought I'd knew - not only the techniques, but a knowledge of architecture, which has now become a real interest in my life. I can honestly say that I had never heard of a Painted Lady before a contest demanded me building one (not around where I live, although I actually found one in my country later!) - and it was also a learning curve to be a judge once; that made me understand how difficult it is to win a building contest, because all the entries are great and one has to go and look at the tiniest of things at times in order to give it a score. (I am, of course, not nearly on the same level as some of the best builders on this site, but I am learning a lot from them).

It's given me a community that I know I can always trust to be respectful and give great insights into the game (psst that's you guys). It probably also encouraged my interest in being tech savvy, as I started playing at around 10 years old, and I slowly picked up on all that you can do with mods, even getting confidant enough early on to change existing mods to suit my game better. It's the one game I know that even though I'm playing alone, I can turn it on and feel connected to something greater, because I have entire functioning hoods that are all socially connected with one another.

This is a thought-provoking question it's taken me some time to approach. On the surface, it's provided hours (years) of entertainment. Underneath it has given me a sense of control when my day to day reality felt beyond my control. That is just the game though, the community here has provided much more than I can put into words. I doubt I would still be playing this game some 16 or so years later without the community.

I know I wouldn't still be playing it actually as I would never have found the mod to put a stop to that evil debilitating virus known as the "sea shanty".

I never play a game before except the games that window already have on their system. I came across the Sims 2 one day at a store being very nosey when I over heard two people talking about the Sims 2. I politely went up to the two people and ask them more about the Sims 2 they was kind and explained the game to me, and told me what to buy and start with like the base game. After that I was on my way to playing the Sims 2 from that day way back in 2007 to now 2020. This game really help me from missing my one and only child who had graduated from College / university and, later move out, into the world to be his own man and start his career. ( yes naturally as a mother I still miss my son ) but it's good to know he can stand on his own.

Also moving with my son from the East Coast from all family members and now living on the West Coast really help me to be more independent on my own to meet new people and new friends and along the line of losing family members from sickness or death the Sims 2 game was here for me to play and to communicate with other players. But one thing I have learn is whatever game we play be it the Sims or another game we all have to find the inner strength to survive, and face our true realities of today world we are living in. The Sims for me and maybe for other players help one to enter a fantasy world that we all can create with our rules or not. It's a breath of fresh air from the real world the Sims for me "Loud And Clear Say Time Out." Let's play a bit and be happy.

I'm getting the benefit of running a while town as a political leader and managing the social safety net in my town which is in the form of having my custom built subsidized rental housing as apartment lots and my game is Modded out to insane levels and I've got so much CC that it would've taken my ten minutes on my older laptop to load with less than half of when I use now and I currently have the game loading up in less than two minutes even on a horribly bad day on my 8 year old laptop which needs a new cooling pad now since the old one's fan is getting worn out.

My older teens would tell you that I put the family control freak traits into playing Sims and not onto them, and "Thank you very much, Momma, for letting us do things because we're interested in them and not because we ought to."

I learned bunch of english phrases/words when i played this series first time

I've been playing since Sims1, when I had a full-time job, and my husband thought I was loosing it...Then when I retired I told him YES I've lost my mind, but who cares! Still have NOT lost mind (well, I misplace it now & then) and I don't play every day, but when I do it can be 20 hours straight. It helps me avoid hard work outside - like wheelbarrows of dirt, digging trenches...what's with handy-men that don't show up? And since I love architecture I really love to try to create accurate periods. Thank God for all the craftsmen & Victorian CC!