It all really started on July 13, 2020, when my then-boyfriend, now husband, and I decided to create a small YouTube channel as a couple who would play games together. We played not only co-op games but also single-player games, taking turns and commenting on each other’s gameplay. Even though the channel never made any money and had only a small audience, we had a lot of fun with it. Through creating content for YouTube, I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro and many other tools – including photo editing software – which turned out to be incredibly useful in a future I didn’t yet see coming.
Since I had always been a fan of The Sims series, while my husband never really felt much of a connection to it – I suggested that, from time to time, we could each record our own solo episodes for the channel. That way, we could each play the games we loved most. I took on The Sims, starting from the very first game. My plan was to recreate the lives of the original characters and continue their stories, moving through each game in the series in chronological order. I wanted to focus on Sims who had never been expanded on by EA, characters who had quietly disappeared from later games. One such character was Claire Charming, and she became the star of my first solo episodes.
Hoping to reach more Sims fans, on May 7, 2021, I created an account on the Polish forum Simtopia – a place that was already a bit dusty and abandoned at the time. There, I wrote about my episodes and linked forum readers to the YouTube channel I co-ran with my husband. In my videos, I told Claire Charming’s story, rebuilt her house, and even in The Sims 2, I designed a villa for her to live in with her husband, whom she had married back in The Sims 1.
I can’t remember exactly when, but not long after I joined the forum, I was noticed by a woman I had never heard of before. She invited me to try my hand at being a builder for The Sims Resource, generously opening up a world of possibilities to me.
I had known The Sims Resource for years – it was the site I used to download mods from as a kid. Many of the creator nicknames I remembered from back then are still publishing there today. It felt surreal to think I could stand alongside them, with my own houses appearing on the homepage right next to theirs! Of course, it took some time before I became even slightly recognizable in the Sims building community.
But that’s a story for another post. In the next entry, I’ll share how I started practicing and improving my building skills – which, to be honest, were not very impressive at the start. I knew I had some potential and a bit of an eye for aesthetics, but my builds were still far from anything that could truly catch someone’s attention. 🙂
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