Did you have this on your 2024 predictions list?

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Hello again! Not sure if anyone will still read this but hi!!

I am back (ish) and so are the Dayes in their first new post and their second new post for nine (!) years. More posts will be coming soon – there are about four posts’ worth of content I have screenshots for now – but I’ve broken myself a bit doing this one so need to pace my pain management.

The Knights will also be popping up to finish their adventure, but I played them before my accident so I have to try and piece together the memories of what was going on all those years ago!

For those who have only discovered us after 2015, I fell in a supermarket and broke my right elbow (having only had surgery on my left shoulder two weeks before) and damaged my knees. What I thought would be a few weeks out of action turned out to be a life-changing event as I could barely use my arms for years due to pain and mobility issues.

A LOT of physio and exercise and learning to manage my pain then took place over several years. I couldn’t play The Sims as I was mostly reliant on using voice software and could only do limited computer use. And being part of the community got hard both physically to read stuff and because it was frustrating not being able to play. So I dropped off ‘the planet’.

During that time I also completed a Creative Writing MA (thanks to Sims for getting me back into writing) and took on a bunch more stuff at work and in hobby time so life got fuller.

I still missed playing though.

During the lockdowns in 2020 I managed to play a little, but my arms still weren’t really having it. But the last few months my mobility has improved a lot (due to more exercise stuff) and I’ve been playing a bit more regularly, enough that I feel confident to say we’re back. Although don’t go expecting super frequent up-daye-tes because my life is still pretty full on and my arms are never going to be fully right and I still have to use voice software a lot. And rest a lot. And blogging isn’t super-easy to do with my condition.

I have also been playing TS4 a bit. I don’t enjoy it as much as TS3 but my computer loves it, it runs so fast and loads easily without crashing. But then I have no mods or CC installed, only some of the EPs/GPs/SPs and I don’t have a multi-generation legacy going! I’m just playing with a household for fun at the moment, I haven’t really been taking pics of them (though this is one of their teens). I might do some sort of TS4 challenges at some point but for now I’m having fun playing it on a low-key level whilst also focusing on trying to finish the Dayes… and keep the rest of my life going on!

Anyway, if you’re reading, a big hello from me and all my sims! We missed you 🙂

(PS Hi Mare’s! Anyone else out there still blogging from ye olden days?)

Still alive, but a bit broken!

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Just a quick explanation for those of you who have been wondering why I haven’t posted anything lately and for any of you who tried to access my work-based site and need to discover it’s down-I’ve not fallen off the planet. However, I have fallen! At the start of June I had surgery on my left shoulder for an injury that been plaguing me for a couple of years.

Less than a fortnight after my surgery and the day before I was due to return to work, I tripped over a crate left on the floor of the supermarket and fell face first, fracturing my elbow in the process-on the opposite arm to my bad shoulder! As you can imagine, having two arms out of action for a while has been incredibly difficult. I’ve been having physio and hospital appointments and both arms have got a decent range of movements now-however, I’m still struggling quite a bit with pain and it will be some time before they’re both at full strength.

In the meantime, I forgot to renew the hosting on my work-based website and it went off-line and I haven’t managed to put it back online again because using computers is not the easiest thing right now. I went back to work today on a phased return, but it will be sometime before back to full capacity-and the same is true of simming. I’m entering into Boolprop’s Next Top Model because it is a pretty easy thing to do, but at the moment any sustained computer use is a bit difficult, and writing my Sims blogs is no exception. I have played further and have more to post: including the final entry of the Knights which has been played through in game, and I can’t wait to show you the last gen (if I can remember their names after all this time!) Although I am managing to write lengthy blog posts and Word documents using voice software, I haven’t quite figured out how to use that to do the picture heavy updates that the sim blogs require so as soon as I can get my arms working properly, I’ll be back updating them, playing and generally being a bit more lively than I have been for the past few weeks.

Hope you’re all well 🙂

And another Daye update!

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I haven’t been well this week, so I’ve been working at home and I haven’t been out anywhere in the evenings or weekends – which has meant my evenings and weekends have been spent simming (inbetween sleeping)… and that means another Daye update, a mere week after the last one! Enjoy as we go back and forth between the future, the present and island living…

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas! Have a never-used shot from the last round of Boolprop’s Next Top Model by way of a card! The Dayes are back with a shocking turn of events and I also snuck out a Knights update, 8. Knock on Wood, a couple of weeks ago. A combination of real life and crashy games has meant I’ve not been around writing or reading as much as I would have liked this year but rest assured the Dayes and Knights are still going. I’m not sure if I will get Sims 4 or not yet, and I still have a lot to do with my research data, but we’ll see how the game is looking by the time I end the prettacy and I might get it then. In the meantime, the Dayes still have loads of TS3 to play with and we may not even get to the end of all that before TS5 is out!

Research update

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My Sims 4 post-release survey has now closed – thanks for everyone who completed either this or the pre-release survey.    I will possibly run another survey after Christmas and/or after the first EP release.  I gave another presentation today, this time I was mainly looking at the marketing and PR – not sure how much sense the slides will make in isolation but here they are if you want them!

Now to start analysing all the data and writing the findings… will keep you all posted.

New Dayes

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Yes, after a couple of months because I was in another play, the Dayes are back in I’ll have a blue Ice Pop in which they get to Isla Paradiso. Or some of them, anyway.

The Knight kids are teenagers now so expect an update soon-ish.

I’m presenting another Sims 4 paper this week and will put the slides online later. The surveys have closed now, so I have a few months of analysing the data and writing about things – am keeping an interested eye on developments too…

Sims 4 research updates and other things

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The-Sims-4-release-dateI just got back from London where I presented some of the very preliminary findings from the Sims 4 pre-release work several of you took part in.  You can access the slides here. The post-release survey is still open until the end of October – I would love to hear from everyone, whether you have the game or not, on your responses to it since it’s come out – either through playing it or through seeing what others have done with it.

As for my own sims, I have been away so many weekends lately – and no real let up until November – so I’ve barely played them. I miss those Dayes and Knights though (although the Knights crash out on me every single time at the moment) and am looking forward to playing them.

By the way, I don’t have TS4 myself yet – I will maybe get it eventually but there is so much TS3 I have left to explore that I’m in no rush.

Sims 4 post-release survey now live!

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babyglitchI have now closed the Sims 4 pre-release survey with around 800 completions and will be working my way through the data.

Now The Sims 4 is out (in most of the world anyway…) the post-release survey is live. I’d love as many people as possible to complete it – whether or not you have TS4, and whether or not you completed the earlier survey.

There will be two types of questions – a set for those who have played TS4 and a set for those who haven’t. The survey will be live until the end of October. If you are planning on getting it before then, please can you wait until you have played before completing it? But if you have already played or you know you won’t be getting it before the end of October, go right ahead!

As before, it’s entirely anonymous (and this survey is a bit shorter too). Results from the pre-release survey are likely to be available late September and I’ll keep people posted about the results of this one.

http://pinto.hallam.shu.ac.uk/limesurvey/index.php/549839/lang-en

Many thanks

Rad

Sims 4 surveys – I need your input!

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As most of you know, I have an alter ego as a Principal Lecturer in Media at Sheffield Hallam University, and part of my job involves lots of different kinds of research relating to different aspects of the media. Some of you may remember, a couple of years ago, completing surveys and interviews for me for some research I was doing on Sims fans. Some of those findings are in a paper I presented at the Internet Research conference last year (slides here, short paper here), some aspects were mentioned in a paper I co-authored in Participations journal. I have also written an article using these findings which will be published in the journal Transformative Works and Cultures next year and have another 2-3 articles in progress.

Given the release of Sims 4, I wanted to use this opportunity to gather player opinions on the new game, both before and after its release, and so I’m asking anyone who can to fill in two short(ish) anonymous surveys relating to the game. The pre-release survey is now live and I would appreciate you recirculating the link so I can get as many people as possible to complete it (I had around 1.5K responses last time – thanks all!): http://pinto.hallam.shu.ac.uk/limesurvey/index.php/298684/lang-en

The second survey will be posted after the game is released (probably within the first week rather than on the day of release as I’ll need to discover what its features actually are so I can create appropriate questions). I’ll post reminders when it goes live, but the address is: http://pinto.hallam.shu.ac.uk/limesurvey/index.php/549839/lang-en Please note, this survey and its follow-up are entirely anonymous.

If you want any more details, you can email me: r.a.deller@shu.ac.uk or visit my website. Thanks!

The Knights are back! (As are the Dayes)

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I am very aware of the irony of an ultra-speedy legacy being the least frequently updated thing ever, but the Knights are back in 6. It’s hip to be square. Gen 7 are children now, so you may see them this side of Christmas.

The Dayes are also back, in Ten’s Nervous Headache.

Also, for those interested the the research side of things, I’ve submitted a paper about Simblr that will hopefully come out next year, am working on one about Electronic Arts which I’m intending to submit once TS4 is out and I have a couple more planned to work on over the next few months. Will keep you posted.