Hey, look at that! It's the 10th anniversary of The Sims 4 today! Does that make it retro? I mean, Super Mario 64 was considered "retro" by the time Super Mario Galaxy came out, but there hasn't been another Sims game released since then, unless you count that gacha shite for Android. What I want to know is, when are they going to do the HQ remake of The Sims: Bustin' Out? Maybe it's best that they don't, considering how big into generative stuff EA Games is right now.
There's hardly a day goes by that I don't play some Sims game or other; my preferred game at the moment is The Sims Complete Collection from 2005—the core game, all 7 EPs, and some player-made content for The Sims 1 smashed together into 4 CD-ROMs. Like I said on the Myshuno page, I was learning how to play the piano at the same time I was playing The Sims for several hours a day, and as a result, the game's soundtrack left an indelible impression on my musical ability. At the time, I never imagined anyone having the necessary skill to actually write videogame music, let alone that I would be doing it myself by 2010. As I started taking music composition more and more seriously, I started learning more and more about the procedure; not just the process of actually sitting at the keyboard and coming up with the notation, but about the technlogy that game composers were using to generate scores. It wasn't even until 2002 that I realised what a MIDI sequence was. It took another year thereafter to learn about workstations, which at the time meant a single keyboard controlling a rack full of synth modules, rather than a fully-computerised setup like FL Studio or Logic Pro. Still, from the first day I recorded anything into a computer, I knew I wanted to put music into The Sims. I didn't know how I was going to do it, just that I wanted to.
"But, why The Sims, though? Why not Doom or something more interesting?" Well, I have done Doom music. I wrote 9 MIDI songs for a Doom II remap project and, of course, there was Source Port. But The Sims is more immediate. In The Sims 1 and 2, you can just load any old MP3 into the game's music folders and it'll play in the game. The Sims 3 takes a bit more preparation, in that you almost have to treat that game like Doom; doing a certain amount of scripting or overriding files from the nametable; and music customisation in any meaningful manner is impossible in The Sims 4. I don't care about the stereo, I spend most of my time building, don't I? And that's the big thing, really, is building. Depending on how much detail I want to go to or how much I change my mind about things, I can easily spend 6 hours at a stretch in Build Mode—more so in The Sims 4, because of the level of micromanagement you can reach. Considering the level of detail I used to see from other builders on ModTheSims, I imagine that other people also spend hours and hours on a single lot, who, unlike me and my independently-running Sims playlist running in Windows Media Player, have to deal with that single looping song that Ilon Eshkeri wrote. Or that "E-MU Modern Symphonic Orchestra Desperate Housewives" score that Steve Jablonsky wrote for The Sims 3, that somehow always managed to get overlooked whenever a new piece of DLC was released. By combining the scores from The Sims 1, 2, and Bustin' Out; SimCity 3000, 4, and Rush Hour, and a selection from SimCity Societies, with Myshuno, Real Life Fast Travel, and the untitled 25th anniversary project stuff, I can spend about 10 hours building before I hear any repetition from the playlist. Obviously, there are players who don't ever build; they just use stuff from the Gallery, and that's fine. Those players are more interested in the game than the architectural simulator, and that's their play style. However, I'm here for people who do spend 50%+ of their time building stuff, because that's my play style.
It's like someone on Tumblr said once, "make art for yourself and the 2 or 3 perverts who follow you". They said that in reference to kink and ship art, but it applies across the board, really. If I were interested in attracting a wider audience, then I probably wouldn't be writing Sims music. I'd be writing soulless, subtextless prolefeed with the chart-topper chord progression in the key of B. I'd probably be a lot richer, too; but my work wouldn't be as fulfilling as it is now. As it stands, I'm writing music that I like, at my own pace. Even though sometimes that pace is like the University of Queensland Pitch-Drop Experiment, I don't feel pressured to perform like a trained animal for a talentless hack in Oakleys and an Italian sport-coat, writing music designed to skyrocket a generic white girl who did numbers on TikTok for 6 months before the industry moves onto a new one.