After practicing guitar a few times to build up a skill point or two, we found the first in-game day got away from us, and a few peanut butter sandwiches and bathroom breaks later, our sim was asleep, then awake again after we set the game to its fastest speed setting to skip through his good night’s sleep. The next day, we woke up at the stroke of 10:00AM to start practicing the guitar again until our carpool arrived for the first day of our entry-level music job, which we chose to spend “schmoozing with the rest of the band members” instead of working particularly hard. After getting back, we grabbed a bite to eat from the fridge, played some more guitar, and made the difficult (but ultimately, noble) decision to send our little guy back to bed.

The next day, we woke up took up at the go-getter hour of 11:30AM and decided to take our sim up on his next wish of heading downtown to look over a book at the library. In The Sims 3, every character has a mobile phone that can call a taxi cab that automatically arrives to whisk you away to whichever outdoor destination you choose, and in this case, we sent our wannabe virtuoso downtown to hit the library. When sims “use” lot services in this way, they can gain skill bonuses, just like using skill items at home, but they’re taken out of the world and can’t be sent to do other tasks or meet other people. Our own sim successfully borrowed his book, but appeared to be getting bored, so we sent him along to the nearby city park to seek the company of like-minded individuals and mooch as much money as possible.

GDC 2009: GameSpot’s The Sims 3 Updated Hands-On – Role-Playing and Short Attention Spans