January 7th 2011 – While all my friends got to talk about getting the best games of all time, the only thing I managed to get this year was a game, I didn’t even ask for – The Sims 3. When I told everyone about this, they seemed like I had just won a million dollars. All of their eyes lighted up and they asked me so much about it, of course I asked, “Is it really that good of a game?” My friend, Jeremy, basically yelled at me telling me to play the game, and so I did.
After creating a character, which I named “Dan Arin” because I always named my characters this, despite my name being Nicholas. I gave him a blue t-shirt, and I’m pretty sure he had tan pants and what else was there? Oh yeah I remember now, he had spiked hair.
To be honest I thought he looked kinda dumb, but I didn’t want to make another character or remake him so, he was going to be living on his own. My friends from school soon came over and they all had a look at this guy, I remember he had some kind of trait with loving food, I don’t completely remember. The rest of the day was spent looking at guides since I had no clue what to do.
January 8th 2011 – March 27th 2011 – I decided to get a job for my Sim, saying his house was more of a run down motel room, and until I got any money I couldn’t even afford to put a roof or wallpaper on the house. I somehow ended up following a guide some man named Jim Pickens made, though he often referred to himself as the “dear leader”. What a weirdo. But anyway, apparently the job I needed was at a place called Doo Peas, where I could be a coffee courier and this is when my disc started having issues.
After getting the job, I saved and then grinding for cash the next couple of weeks to afford literally anything. After a while, I was promoted to be a filing clerk which really helped with income. After a while, however, I noticed characters failing to load or render properly, this could be as small and insignificant as a random kid in the background doing a quick t-pose on a slide, to one as big and my own sim contorting his limbs in ways I didn’t even think the model could handle. This strange issue seemed to happen after my Sim had failed to clean a dish and gotten angry, throwing the dish on the ground and then stepping on it, shattering it. I told my friends, and they said that they have never even HEARD of this animation before, let alone seen it. My game would also crash without reason, sometimes I would make a sandwich, and all of a sudden the game would freeze.
Luckily, I always kept backup save files, at least 2 but most of the time I would have 4 of them. This cycle of me doing all this, eventually led to me realizing that I have an addiction to this game. Is this game really so good that even with all these issues, it’s still fun? No, I-I think something else is happening, I don’t feel quite right…
March 28th 2011 – Today, I began my day with the toilet, as all days of the Sim should start, when my game started glitching out again. At this point, I wasn’t even surprised anymore. I clicked on the television and then went to “watch channel” and all the channels were blank. I thought at first this was a slight issue with the text but that the function still worked. So I clicked normally where the “romantic” option was, as my Sim was preparing for a date with a girl named “Ani Tiki” but, of course when I clicked on it, the little click sound was made to ensure me I clicked the option, but nothing happened. After this, all other sound effects were muted, only some walking sound effects were heard and menu sound effects.
I paused the game, in order to save to see if reloading would work, but all the options were different, from top to bottom if read in one sentence it said, “Why did God abandon us?” With all the other options repeating “why” and at this point I was thinking, “What the hell?” and attempted to turn off my console. But when I reached for the console, I burned my hand! It was so hot, the Xbox looked like it was about to catch fire, so I went to unplug the console. As the light turned off on my Xbox, and the TV read “no input” I was extremely relieved.
An hour or so later, I plugged my console back in because I had the urge to play it. It was so bad I felt like I would die if I didn’t play it. After starting it up, all I saw was my character, Dan Arin, and he waved at me. I thought this was a cutscene so I waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Dan arin appeared mad and even at one point I saw his fist clenching, but eventually his eyes lit up, almost as if he just came up with a great idea. Dan arin pointed down, so I looked below my TV to see my headset with a microphone on it. It was this point I also noticed the webcam on the camera was lit green as if it were in use, but regardless I put on the headset and I heard a voice.
“Hello there, my name is Carson, I know you named me Dan Arin, but please just call me Carson.” I kinda giggled and he replied with a confused look.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I replied, “Just an inside joke, so anyway Jeremy, I knew you were good with electronics but this is ridiculous! How did you even set this up?” The figure on-screen again looked confused.
“Jeremy? I don’t think I know a Jeremy.” And that moment, my heart sank. There was no way this was Jeremy, obviously I didn’t realize that because he said he wasn’t, but from how he said it. Jeremy wouldn’t have said with that kind of expression in voice, he was a terrible liar.
“Are you okay?” Carson once again asks, my head was spinning, I felt like I was going to vomit.
“I feel terr-”
May 15th 2014 – I woke up like any other day. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth and went to my job. I work at a place called Doo Peas, and I was finishing up work when I was promoted from coffee courier to a filing clerk. I was excited, as more money meant I would be able to afford a better house, but something strange happened… I was driving home and at a red light, I noticed a park, where I saw a child on a slide, and he managed to get his arms and legs through a slide coming out it, to form some kind of a cross.
The next day, I saw my boss violently shaking on the ground, but everyone seemed to walk past him. I grabbed him, and put him in his chair, so he would smash his head on the floor. I yelled for someone to call 911, but no one even seemed to hear me. And from there, I turned on my phone to call an ambulance myself, with one of my hands on my bosses chest so he would fall out of the chair. But something even weirder happened. As soon as someone picked up on the other line, instead of a, “911 what’s your emergency?” everything around me froze, and it all turned black. I was so confused, I thought I was dreaming. I must have been. As I looked around, I saw what looked to be some white writing on the floor. It said, “An error occurred reading your Sims 3 DVD”
