“The money’s the same, whether you earn it or scam it. “~ Bobby Heenan
Throughout much of 2007, I was introduced to a brand new addiction of playing Sims 2. It was in the most purest definition an addiction for me as I played night and day.
I remember splitting some of the costs to buy each and every expansion pack that was released. And somehow, I knew when each one was coming out. I think it was an e-mailing list. I don’t remember any more as I no longer receive them. Plus, they have Sims 3 out to play currently.
Between myself and my ex-girlfriend, we pretty much had each and every expansion pack known to exist.
But it didn’t stop there. There were websites in which you could download modifications to the game. Different styles of different items that was just simply modified. I remember there was even one website that had thousands of downloads for the game that were…. shall we say… x-rated? But those mods were a constant annoyance as it was virtually just a bug on the computer. And most of that had to be deleted in order for the modifications to all work and I could play the game.
We would get character modifications that looked like Hollywood celebrities. Or certain buildings and houses, such as the Amityville house to live in, and so on.
My ex loved to build homes from scratch. But on the other hand, I enjoyed both creating homes and characters and then playing them out until they were either dead or I got bored with what they were doing.
We had so many modifications and cheats on one computer that whenever I started the game, it literally took 18-22 minutes to load to the point where I could begin creating or playing.
As I said– addicted.
And then I remember creating a male character named Sleuth. I started him out as a single person, then got him married, gave him the best of the best of created houses that I could think of, and I think throughout the course of playing out his character… he had children that grew up and about to move on to higher education.
Then suddenly the Sleuth character was “sick” and it was suggested that he rest. And so as Sleuth laid in bed, he suddenly got up in the middle of the night. The lights turned on, and his wife and children were surrounding him, wailing and crying, and I had no idea what was going on. The Sleuth character had actually died.
Suddenly I would learn about how to “KILL” a Sims character, as there were over a dozen ways in which one could die.
I played for weeks and months. Learning the game, learning how to not get caught doing something naughty or wrong (such as cheating on another love interest) and everything else.
With the ending of Sleuth, I believe that I just moved out the remaining members of his family and never played them again, and started over.
I created another male Sims character that would end up being married to at least ten different other female characters, had children with them all, and moved in and out of households like it was nothing. Soon, I would have an entire cast of characters to deal with. Mothers with children and no love interest and everything else in between. The male character simply was horrible as he went from one female to the next. 
And then I got bored with it all, and used the knowledge that I had to get rid of characters by having them die in unusual ways.
About this time, my ex had been on my back about how she never was able to play any more and that I was hogging the computer. So then she had her turn to play. But as I stated, all she did was create homes and characters and virtually did nothing with them.
In the meantime, I remembered the story for each and every character that I had played through until I decided to knock them off. I began to write about it. Weeks later I had a rough draft of a story that was nearly 200,000 words in length. I gave detail to each and every person that was involved, talked about all of the children that were born, and how each character had met their fateful ending. But I fictionalized most of it by writing that the main male character had a sexually transmitted disease and was not aware of it. And so with all of the women that he hooked up with and the children born to him, they were infected as well and it caused everyone to go to their end.
The thing of it is that Sims 2 doesn’t have the option to “DIE OF AN STD”. So it was something made up.
Fast forward all that time until this weekend when I was talking about it with someone that I had played this addicting video game for months and it was enough of an idea for a story of fiction. A few hours later, I was told that they were in contact with a publishing company and that they had talked about my story to the company and now the company wants to re-write the story (as I have lost the original document) and they want to publish it.
As someone who has taken a lot of time to write both in this blog and as creative projects on my own, hearing something like that was definitely music to my ears.
However that was all that I was told. Until I started asking questions about which publishing company and what not. And that’s when things started to not add up.
After asking so many questions, I looked up the name of the publishing company. It existed, but no longer. Its not in conjunction with any other publishers either. The names of people and places, also were not to be found.
I immediately began to think that this was all just a lie, a scam. And because of the fact that I had fallen victim to nasty and vicious scam by rapunzelmodels.com over a year ago, I knew better this time to research what I had been told. It just sucks to know that I heard something I’ve thought that I would love to hear….. only to find out that its a lie. 
I went back and told the guy via e-mail that if this publishing company wanted to publish my story, that I wanted a contract. Which probably would have to happen in the first place. And until I actually SEE that contract, I will not go back and re-write anything.
Although I have always thought that the story that I was able to write that came from the experiences of playing Sims 2 would always make for a fantastic story as it had just about everything in it. Betrayal, love, harassment, revenge, and everything else. It was not the similar kinds of stories that I had been writing at the time which was just a short story of one or two scenes, riddled with a bunch of sex.
When I left my ex-girlfriend and came back, I ended up with a $100 gift card, and I wanted to see if I could play Sims 2 yet again. I bought the game and as many expansion packs that I could with the plan of collecting them all eventually. But the computer that I had bought from craigslist didn’t have the sufficient video card or whatever in order for me to be able to play it correctly.
I was hoping to go back and use all of the modifications that I had used so many years ago, but it was not to happen. And now there’s Sims 3 which I understand is far different than Sims 2. But until I find myself with a new machine, I’ll simply have to do without. And if I decide to re-write the story, it will be only for recreational purposes and practice in my writing abilities. Wish me luck!!!!!!
Dambreaker 