I bought the original game back before it was popular. I loved it. I bought expansion pack after expansion pack after that. Didn't like that, so much. I bought The Sims 2 when it came out. Loved it, for a couple of days, before I realized I didn't have the time to play it if I wanted to continue my own life. I obviously avoided each and every ludicrous expansion pack after that, which diluted my enjoyment of the original game, anyway, since there's just so much stuff they yank out to sell to you later through expansion packs.
So then, years later, some strange force made me buy The Sims 3. Why? I don't know; I keep asking myself that very question. I guess the lure of the whole "one big neighborhood" thing really hooked me in. Also, my sister-in-law is also real big into it, and hearing her talk about it made me want it more.
So I popped the disc in, installed it on my desktop. Popped the disc in, installed it on my laptop (yay for included Mac versions!). I got to the character creation screen, and was baffled for quite some time. Exactly what character do I want to make? That's something I had never even thought about. I must have spent hours just trying to decide on what my family was going to be. I ultimately went with the very creative decision of making a more idealistic version of myself. I also had a sister. We were living together, jobless, for about 2 days before my interest was drawn away by some other story-driven games. Since then, I've tried to pick up the game again several times, but each time is on my laptop, which doesn't run the game so well.
But there's also another, more sinister, terrible thing, that is the reason why I secretly loathe this game. In the switch to the 3rd game, EA realized they were sitting on a goldmine. Now, not only were they going to strip out all the cool stuff you were used to from previous games with all of their respective expansion packs full of goodies, but now there was this little thing called microtransactions. You see, now the game ships with a pretty much incomplete library of furnishings for your home, and, on top of the $50 you were supposed to spend on the game at launch, you've now got to fork over $10 or more at a time for furniture sets. Fuck you, EA. Fuck you.
I've now finally learned my lesson. When The Sims 4 comes out, no matter how good it may look, I'll be keeping my money. Who knows:maybe by then I'll be broke and homeless from buying so many games I never end up playing. Nah, that's what Ebay is for.