Should We Apply the Sims’ ‘Needs’ to Our Own Lives?

The Sims’ ‘Needs’ bar is essential for a Sims well being in their lives — consisting of 8 different needs: Hunger, Fun, Comfort, Social, Bladder, Hygiene, Energy and Environment. If any of these gets below the ‘green’ level, it can affect your Sims “mood,” affecting their productivity and basically their will to live, making it really important to keep all of them maxed out. Some needs are more consequential than others, such as falling asleep from lack of Energy, wetting themselves from having a full Bladder (which also, understandably also lowers their hygiene) or… dying from Hunger.

Those are not different to what would happen to any human being in real life though. We have been taught that the 3 basic necessities of life are Food, Shelter and Clothing (and maybe an internet connection nowadays) but are they really? Do all these make you happy?

For example, when there are dirty dishes or rubbish lying around in a sims’ home will lower their Environment need, making them unhappy, or lack of Fun will cause your sim to really stress out. Both of these would result in your sim being sad and unable to focus or anything else. Maybe you can relate to how your messy room can lead you to be unable to focus (and end up on procrastinating on exam or work by cleaning), or if you don’t take time to relax, you can burn yourself out.

There’s also different ‘speeds’ to how some actions that improve a ‘need’ faster than others. An example is the how it is actually more beneficial to interact and talk with another sim rather than calling or emailing to fill up the Social need. Thus, the sims also teach us to be more efficient with our actions; such as, not only does interacting with someone improve your social, but also boasts your friendship a great deal also.

In the game, when a sim needs to replenish a need, it is easy for the player to just drop what they are doing and tend to that — but for some reason, it seems harder to do that in real life. You hear of people who spend all their time working 24/7 and neglect their social life, lack of sleep and just in general, being depressed probably from the stress of working all the time.

So in short, like in The Sims, we need to really learn how to balance all our needs out in order to be healthy and happy.

Somehow, The Sims teaches us to live happier, and healthier lives — just don’t play it for too long, you also need to be active.

What do you think? Do you find yourself neglecting any of the Sims’ ‘needs’ in your life?