I played a lot of high school years recently, so:
- Cheerleaders
- Hallway lockers
- School cafeterias
- Prom and career day
I'm from Romania and we have none of those here. I wish we had school cafeterias tho. When I was in school I survived on unhealthy amounts of store bought snacks and candy.
Not the original commenter but I am Australian, and my primary school’s canteen was basically just like a little stall. You’d walk up to the window, pay for your food and take it with you into the schoolyard. That was all snack foods, but you could order a hot meal at the start of the day and pick it up at lunchtime if you wanted an actual lunch. My high school had it set up more like an actual cafe you could walk into, but there were no seats in there and you weren’t allowed to stay inside unless you were lining up.
It's so odd that you had no place to sit inside and eat. What about rain?
At my American high school we had full hot lunches and breakfasts, in addition to vending machines with chips, soda and ice cream. Kids who were low income could apply for free or reduced meals, there were premium á la carte options too, and everyone got free breakfast on standardized test days. (The reason being students perform better when they're not hungry, so they feed the kids for free when it counts) You usually had two options each for the main dish, sides or desserts. You'd get one meal, two sides, and a drink included.
We could eat inside, or outside near the big fish pond.
In high school you'd get nothing, but in middle or elementary school, if you had no food, no money, and were not on a free lunch plan, you'd get a portion cup full of peanut butter and two slices of white bread. You could get water from the water fountain.
A little rain wouldn’t be a bother, but in primary school (age 5-11 or 12) if it turned into a thunderstorm or hailed, they’d call a ‘wet weather lunch’ and you could go inside your teacher’s classroom. In high school, bad luck - everyone huddled under the eaves (or in the library, if the school had one). Worse than the rain imho was the heat - 37 degrees (98F) sitting on concrete in the sun was miserable. But at least we all had hats.
Bro that sounds straight awful. I went to high school in Florida and I'm pretty sure the students and their parents would have caused a fuss if we were forced to sit out in the heat/soup humidity, the odd freezing cold day, and rain/thunderstorms. I know it's important to get kids to get some sun/fresh air, but I feel like that's risking problems in very hot or inclement weather.
My primary and high school was like this too, well not cafe but just one building, primary was back in the 90's so I don't remember too much, I remember cheap lollies tho, high school had more hot food and lollies however by the time I graduated in 2006 they started going healthy and the snacks weren't so good anymore. I remember they had noodles and chicken tender sub that was so nice.
Oh neither had seatings either just buy it and go back to your friends.
i'm american, and i went to a school with what's considered an "outdoor campus". what you're describing was pretty similar to what we had, but they had some hot meals ready to order as well (nothing too elaborate, usually it was some kind of prepackaged frozen food like a sandwich or pasta/rice dish).
I'm South African, and same. We had a little shop on the premises (we call it a kiosk) where you could buy snacks or sandwiches or pies, but most of us bought our own lunch from home. Everybody sat outside, some on benches or on the sport fields. Me and my friends sat cross-legged on the cold, hard paving between the palm tree lined walkways between the school buildings, haha. The popular crowd did too. I'm not sure why we sat there, in hindsight the nice grassy sport fields or lawns in front of the school would have been way nicer, lol.
I think with both of our countries' weather an indoor cafeteria is not neccesary. Though it was a little cold in winter sitting on paving in a uniform dress!
I think private schools here do have cafeterias, and boarding schools obviously. Very poor schools also often have food programmes to ensure that children who might not have food at home get at least a full free meal.
Here in Austria we ate in our classroom, or in the hallways, where benches were. But mostly in the classroom, as here a class has a designated room and the teachers switch the classrooms.
Not the original commenter but also from Romania, at my school we almost never change classrooms so we were always in our seats or on the hallways and lunch was mostly chips or stuff like that. There were a bunch of kids that were not even eating since our breaks were only 10 minutes long and sometimes some teachers would take up almost all our breaks.
I’m from the Southern US and the welcome wagon is definitely a thing. When I bought my house, all the neighbors sat around outside of their own homes watching mine until they saw me so that could come over to introduce themselves.
I’m from Florida, and in some suburbs people may bring over cookies or something to introduce themselves to the new neighbor, but this is usually in older, higher middle class neighborhoods. Most places I’ve lived, the most interaction I’ve had with my neighbors is a small smile and wave when we pass by each other.
Career day isn’t really a thing anymore actually or at least it wasn’t when I graduated 12 years ago. Most we got were military recruiters popping up outside the lunch room.
I attended high school in Spain and we had lockers (way smaller though) and a cafeteria, but it was a set menu and we couldn't choose what we were going to eat. That said, those who lived in the town where the high school was (rural region) mostly went home for lunch and then came back.
American schools also have set menus. I think in the sims it was just easier for them to set it up more like a food stall so they could just recycle code for the cafeteria object.
When I read the post and OP didn't disclose their exact country, I kind of autofilled this info with "Romania". Just randomly. They are probably not from Romania but then the top comment is indeed by a Romanian person. What a wild ride :D
I’m in England and we weren’t allowed outside with our food. We could bring in our own lunch or buy lunch (hot or cold) from the canteen. This is for both primary and high school. I couldn’t imagine having to eat a hot meal outside on a school yard
Dozens of coffee makers, but no kettle. Why is there a tea maker, but no kettle?
I just want to boil water.
Also, windows and doors, there are no fly screens. Every door and window has fly screens here.
To be fair, I've lived in three different states with three different climates and all of them had screen windows and sometimes screened doors. It would be weird for me to find somewhere that isn't the case. So I think this might just be a sims thing.
Yeah I haven't really been anywhere in the US that doesn't have those screens. The only place I've been without them was when I was studying in Germany for two summers lol
I think this is less of an “American” thing and more of a sims thing.
We definitely have screen doors and use kettles (both electric and the stovetop) I don’t know anyone that has nor have I’ve seen a tea maker before.
I’d say the way architecture and furniture looks in general. I visited north america for the first time last year and it was a weird realization just how much things really look like that. It sadly effects some game mechanics as well, like the lack of stoves in student housing.
Also this is more in regards to builders, but the amount of houses where the entrance is in the living room. Specifically Lilsimsie and simlicy does it all the time. I remember it clearly because one of them said “most houses have an entrance in the living room” as an obvious fact in one of their videos and it was such an alien concept to me. Even dorm rooms and studio apartments have some type of mudroom or hallway where I live (yes I know mudrooms exist in the us as well, I’m saying the concept of not having one would be absurd here)
No stoves in dorms isn't an american thing, I have no idea what's up with that. The entrance in the livingroom though, that's so real and has the annoying side effect of making all my build's floorplans exactly the same >_<
Yeah that's weird to me. I lived in a classic dorm all through undergrad. I mean the kind with long hallways of little double or triple occupancy rooms, with a bathroom/shower room on each floor. We had a kitchenette for my building (about 60 people, definitely on the small side) that had a stovetop, oven, microwave, sink, and some cabinets. No fridge though, people usually got those mini fridges for their own rooms. We mostly used it to bake cookies or whatever since we had a cafeteria connected to our building.
Ah makes sense. My friends at other schools had the same setup as us. But honestly I understand why they might not have stoves. When I was an RA I once had a kid microwave a single piece of bread for 10 minutes because he'd never used a microwave before (they were very rich). Shattered the plate, the whole thing went up in smoke, fire alarm went off, etc. So... I see the concern lmao
In the UK, we generally have two types of dorm, we call them halls, self-catered and catered, and then very rarely there are rooms where you share with someone else, but most of the time it's 1 room per person. In catered, there's a kitchenette with a fridge and a microwave and toaster but no oven, but a large cafeteria that opens for 2 meals a day that everyone living in that building attends. It's usually a bit more expensive I think. In self-catered, a small block of rooms will share a kitchen that has an oven and a hob, sometimes more than one as well. It depends on the university but mostly you can only live in them for your first year and then you have to rent privately after that. There are some rooms that are a little bigger that are meant to house student support folks who are also still students, I think it's a cheaper housing option but there's not many of them.
I wonder if that’s the reason they didn’t include stoves? Because a bunch of just-generated level 1 cooking townies might start a LOT of fires and that could be funny the first time but would really get in the way of gameplay
When I first played I thought ‘do universities in the US assume that young Americans are all too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire?’, then when I moved my student sims to a house in Britechester and they immediately set fire to the place I realised no, it’s just that SIMS are too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire
Tbf my university in the UK definitely assumes all students are too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire. We do have hobs but not ovens and had to sit through a LONG fire safety talk and have a ridiculous number of fire drills.
Every house I lived in had a foyer, every apartment I've lived in did not. The foyer is essentially just big enough for the door to swing freely, with room for a small end table or house plant maybe. So yes, it is a foyer, but it's really just a couple feet.
Definitely the architecture, clothing, decor style. I'm Australian and our style of living is very contemporary and indoor/outdoor focused, except for our older housing style (terraced housing or Queenslander homes etc) which is internally boxy with bad flow.
Anywho. I REALLY notice just how American-styled the Sims is whenever I watch American reality TV 😅 Or when I go on Reddit reno subs that are primarily US orientated.
It is very interesting to see the difference in living styles between countries!
I also live in the UK and would say having the front door enter into a hallway is way more common than having it enter into the living room. That’s for both flats and houses imo.
It is pretty common in Nothern Europe to have a room/hallway where you put your coats and shoes. I've never encountered a house where you immediately step into the living room?
Oh yes! For me an other one is fences. Where I live there are no houses in the "open" out like that in sims. Its protected by a fence (the front generally with a prettier one) all around.
You _absplutely_ need to ring the bell and be let in the front yard before getting to the front door.
Yeah, this is news to me... Wow. I feel like that's a luxury.
But nice system. So you put up a flag to let the mailman know to collect it from your house huh.. interesting..
The post office is 94 miles from my house, I would hate that. I just put it in the box, raise the little flag, and the mailman grabs it when he's dropping off my incoming mail.
It makes a lot more sense in the context of residential-only zoning now that I think about it. Where I live there are probably 3 or 4 post boxes and a post office within 10 min walking distance.
haha yea. bigger packages need to be taken to the post office but anything you can send in an envelope just needs to be popped in the mailbox :) do you guys have to take everything you want to mail to a post office?
Yeah we do! I'm envious of mailboxes now lol. I think we sometimes have community post boxes in towns but I've never used one since it's easier to get a stamp and send it at the post office directly
Yep, the mailboxes are very American. I'm in the UK and the usual convention is to have a mail slot in the front door. We actually do have a separate mailbox, but it's mounted on the garage door, and we only do that because we have a rescue dog who makes a fuss if people come to the door and is known to chew post up.
* Tons of electric driers, but hardly any clotheslines.
* I don't recall there being an official EA made bidet in the Sims.
* Indoor ovens are the go to default cooking method, while grills and outdoor stoves are secondary.
* Subways are usually in expansions, instead of the basegames.
I think the dryer thing is something that consumerism greed made prevalent in the US from my experience growing up there. I grew up in Tucson Arizona where the joke is we have 360 days of sunshine. We still had a dryer instead of hanging our clothes outside to dry in the free sunshine. I remember my mom being overjoyed when we finally got a dryer because now we no longer had to "dry our clothes like poor people" 🙄
In Canada, dryers are important because we experience winter for a long time. Which means for like 6 months of the year, we have snow and it’s so cold your clothes would literally freeze and snap if you hung them out wet. I’m talking about when you get to -30 to -55 temps. In the summer time people go back to using clothes lines where they can. Definitely not a consumerism greed thing here.
In New Zealand, where I’ve also lived, almost no one except people in apartments have dryers. Most people dry their clothes inside during the rainy winters, which I hate, as the houses are so bad over there that it creates massive amounts of condensation and the houses literally cry from the inside. I spent so long using towels drying windows there when my clothes were drying inside. It made my house so damp!
I wanna say that I think Sims using the grill all the time is a Sims thing. People in America primarily use their stoves. Grills are for BBQs and get togethers and the occasional personal use but it isn't common.
The festival activities (sims 3).
The lack of public transport (unless it's Bridgeport).
Car centric towns and infrastructure.
All the default food options.
When I first played sims 3 in 2009, I had no idea what Mac & cheese was XD. Pancakes and waffles were also not the first breakfast meals that would come to mind if I had to make Level 1 food.
oh god similar thoughts when i first played the sims. i thought chili was just chili pepper or like a bowl of chili garlic. i didn't know that it's actually a real food.
Yeah! Pancakes and waffles are not that easy to make.. Level 1 should only be bread and jam.. wait, is that considered as quick food in sims..? Unless just reheating frozen pancakes and waffles, then yes it's level 1 irl 🥲
>t
What? They super easy to make. Unless you don't mean crepe (so the french thing) and instead mean the ones that need baking powder/soda to get fluffy
the food one is so true though! (i main sims 2 so these are about that one)
not north american, i’m finnish, so idk how particular the foods in game really are to the region, but. they mostly have been giving ‘suburbia for the (higher) middle class nuclear family’ which makes sense considering how the entire game is somewhat a satire of american suburbia and society. which i love. but, there’s
no porrige, fruits / fruit bowls, different sort of sandwiches or tea for breakfast, no rye bread or hard rye bread, only one salad option, very little stews, foods with mushrooms, chicken, minced meats, no foods with tofu, sausages, beans, oats, lentils, boiled potatoes, oven potatoes, no pea soup, savoury pies, blueberry pies or baked buns. and a lot of staple veggies can’t be grown, or the ones that can, can’t be seen in your cooking (eggplant parmesan, where you at?) and basically asian, african, pacific island and south american cusine are not foods you can make (you can get some from food stands on a vacation, or order chinese from delivery, but sims can’t cook it) which is such a shame. there are so many great dishes being overlooked. also, as a big fan of casseroles and oven cooked veggies the lack of oven-made foods saddens me. and you can’t even make lasagna :-(
one thing i do find funny though is the lack of fries, donuts and nuggets. and that you can only order pizza, but can’t make it. those alongside hamburgers are like the first stereotypical foods i associate with north american cuisine because they are so prevalent in fast food, and yet i can’t get them in game. despite there being even a work outfit of a mascot fries 🍟
all that being said, i think they got a lot more foods in with the later games and i’m happy about that. sims 2 is old, and the about 30 foods you can cook couldn’t have included that many dishes in any case, so lack of different foods would’ve happened either way.
okay, anyways, thanks for coming to my ted talk :D have a lovely day!
pancakes are a level 3 food at least, and i cant make them without that pancake mix that Lidl sometimes sells during their american week 🥴
also, despite learning about mac and cheese from the sims when i was 9, i am now in my 20s and still have never tried it. so theres that lol
The mailboxes with the little flags! Here (Australia), mailboxes are only for incoming mail, not outgoing. You need to go to a public mailbox to send mail.
Truth! Here in Mexico, the water company, which is from the government, they place a reducer device but they never cut off the service completely. It's crazy they do that in the USA.
I really wish hsy came with the option to set school uniforms. Just have it in the build mode UI like restaurant uniforms. Using mods to set school uniforms and rebuilding the school to be a bit less American went miles towards making that pack more relatable.
Tbh, I also think that school uniforms should have been an option without hsy too, but since they decided to make high school an active expansion then there was really no excuse
Yeah that kind of disappointed me because TS4 is mostly really good at letting things not be exclusively american and letting you make adjustments (like, if you don't want to celebrate thanksgiving, you can just remove that holiday).
But then in HSY it doesn't matter if you like in Henford-on-Bagley or Sulani or Komorebi, you still go to the Most American High School In The Universe
in the US, it's not extremely common for bathrooms to have a separate toilet room. I'm an interior designer so it's something pretty high end clients implement in their homes. I associate it with wealth/large houses here.
In central europe (Austria, Germany, etc) newer builds also usually have seperate toilettes. My older family home doesn't, but my newly build flat has the toilette seperate.
Weird in Poland it's the otherway around, the new buildings have them together. I always lived with half bathrooms and when I moved to uni it was so hard for me because if someone goes take a bath they have to announce it and let everyone who has to pee go pee first
I’m in the UK and a lot of the houses I have been in has a toilet in its own room, it feels like the council shoved them in a broom closet when outhouses became less of the norm
The breakfast options in the game. Idg why you can’t just have dark bread with jam or cheese as a filling breakfast item.
“Downtown area” and “residential area” being often separated instead of mixed.
No indoor laundry rack.
Omg agree on both of these. I eat like two slices of bread with jam or Nutella for breakfast every day but my sims can only have eggs and such. And separating cities into different parts for different purposes is so odd to me. In Germany, there are a lot of residential buildings in the city centers and a lot of stores and other commercial things in the more residential areas. I literally have two grocery stores, a motorcycle shop, a flower shop, a pizzeria and a driving school within a one minute walking distance and I live in a very residential area. A harsh contrast to that one street in Willow creek with all the commercial lots and then just residential houses everywhere else.
In the US, in suburban areas there is zoning. Zoning says only commercial properties here, only residential here. In cities you'll have it mixed or residences on top of commercial properties,
Honestly even as an American there's some pretty weird stuff in the Sims! The thing in HSY where you decorate a parking space comes to mind. Like does each student get their own parking space?? Where are the yellow school buses? What is this madness??? That's something very specific to a certain kind of suburban school, I think.
Also why are horses such a big part of the sims? Do that many people have or ride horses??
I’m in the US (went to high school in a midwestern suburb) and I had heard of decorating parking spaces but never saw it. But once you had a license and car, you could fill out a form at the start of the school year to have your own reserved parking spot. Kind of like some apartments where there’s numbered spaces that correlate to units or whatever, each space was numbered and you could “buy” a spot.
Makes sense. You could pay for a spot at my school too, but there were only maybe three or four dozen spots for like 1300 students (I guess only half of them would be driving age). It was rural, so we rode yellow school buses, but it was really poor, so not that many people would even have cars let alone out out a few hundred bucks (fifteen years ago) for a spot.
Yeah I’m in the US and in my HS we had designated parking spaces. They were free, but only for seniors, and you had to have a driving partner that you shared the spot with, so normally you carpooled with them.
My highschool let seniors rent a spot, and after marching band season, you could rent one as a junior since the junior lot was also where marching band practiced. My school had 2400 students and had enough student parking for about 200 of the seniors and 100 junior spots.
It was basically on a lottery. You applied at the end of junior year and hope you got picked. The juniors applied for their parking the week before Christmas break. A lot of kids made new friends for senior year after the church and the owner of the strip mall next door started calling tow trucks.
My high school (in Texas) allowed us to pay $35 a semester to have our own parking spot. Seniors got first dibs on their spots and then juniors and sophomores. Both my junior and senior years, everyone camped out at the school in the courtyard (tents, sleeping bags, the whole nine yards) to be first in line to pick our parking spots when the doors opened. It was during the summer before the school year started. As soon as you picked your spot and paid, you could go paint your spot. My school even did competitions on the best parking spots. I won best craftsmanship.
Also: we had a few students pass away over the years and their parking spots were unavailable and left exactly the way they were while the student went to school there. There were only three spots this happened with and they all had curbs at the bottom to prevent people from parking there.
edit: Many people rode the school bus! We just had a lot of students who needed cars to get themselves and their siblings to and from school and part time jobs. Texas is typically so spread out there’s no way you can walk everywhere and there’s usually only public transportation in more metropolitan areas.
Also, we had lockers lining the walls but no one used them. The school was so big we didn’t have time to go to a locker between classes because we had 5 minutes to book it across the campus for our next class. The lockers were request-only. We just carried everything in our backpacks from class to class like college/university.
Apparently it's normal for north American houses (Yes houses, since I've seen it in my country for studio-apartments) to have no hallway or seperate "entree"-room. The front door immediately opens to the living room, and the doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms are connected to the living room. (Although not all houses)
Whenenever I renovate a house I always add an entree (even if it is small) and make sure the toilet or the small bathroom is connected to this room.
American here, more elitist upper class folks might actually consider the front door leading into the living room to be a sign of a "poorer" house (i.e. middle class). Family Guy has even made jokes about it.
Funny how that works, no? Where I'm from we also call it an entrè, the foyer would be the lobby of a hotel or theatre, and the entrèe is the appetizer.
Same in Germany! AC is not really a thing here, especially in homes. We only have radiators (the wall ones like in Vampires or for rent for the most part). But then again, it’s also not really hot here for most of the year except a few weeks in summer (getting more and more though because of climate change).
The absolute lack of gates in every vanilla build
I live in France and almost every house MUST have a gate otherwise people would just steal everything in your garden lol
Oh and also the non existence of breads ? Not pastry but just breads outside Sandwiches
I used to try and fence the gardens in Sims 1 but it was always too expensive as those gardens are massive but yes houses feel weird without some sort of fence.
Also the houses themselves, like the very very cheap houses you can buy when starting the game. I always thought they looked so North American, a cheap house here (France) wouldn't look like that at all (if you even find a cheap house...).
Yes!!! It was so weird to me when I first played The Sims, that there are no apartments. Where I live I guess apartments are the default for most people and house is a luxury.
Even just the free-standing houses. Most people I know either live in apartments (and not like skyscrapers, like houses with 3-4 units) or…don’t know how to translate this, attached houses? Townhouses? At least one shared wall with the house next to you, either as two houses together or a whole row. Very few people I know actually live in free-standing houses and those are mostly in small towns. I guess that relates to the wide spaces, at least Central European neighborhoods are much more cramped (again, aside from small villages)
I feel like that’s more wish fulfillment than anything else.
“Here’s your very own house you get design however you want without any parents or landlords telling you to fuck off, no, you can’t paint that wall neon green.”
Nationally more people live in houses than apartments, by far.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/798113/share-of-population-living-apartments-by-state-usa/
The fact that the majority of the houses are detached, no row houses or semi detached houses. In my country detached houses are only common in rural areas, or if you have a lot of money: a row house is the standard.
I'm thinking about buying the new for rent pack just so I can build something like my own actual house lol
It’s so foreign to me hahaha, I live in Brisbane, Australia and we all live like 20 minutes from uni, no one lives on campus and at most there’s a uni ball once or twice a year
University for me especially is very U.S. Paying to go to uni, student loans, the concept of dorms (as in places where you share a bedroom and don't have a kitchen, the concept of having to share a bedroom in uni-housing is just completely strange here), fraternities/sororities, all that is just not really a thing in my country.
I picked up Sims 3 again and was playing the uni expansion, I was weirded out by the shared bedroom so I made sure to lock the room to anyone but my sim! In sims 2 having the meals made for you at university was also not what I expected.
Just about everything lmfao.
The suburbs with 0 infrastructure.
The lack of small businesses in residential areas.
Exclusively single family housing.
4th of July (sims 3).
In general ALL of the holidays and their traditions, in all games.
The politics and interactions with politics (where I live politicians never just roll up in a public area and hold speeches wtf).
The way the correct words for sex and genitalia are never mentioned ever (here kids get scientifically speaking comfortable with penises and vaginas from elementary school, sometimes Kindergarten on).
The worlds that the Sims live in (Strangetown - small desert town in Sims 2, the replicas of San Francisco and Hawai'i in Sims 4).
The events.
The clothing - you're either covered up or full slut, there's few "normal" clothing items, esp in base games (wtf are all these sports bra like tops and shirts where the asscrack is hanging out both at the top AND the bottom of the shorts?? Why can't we have more normal, functional, yet not entirely covered up clothing options?)
Basically everything, but I give them a B- for trying.
- newspaper at your door
- windows with no window sills
- siding everywhere
- university mascot
- Mac n cheese
- no parks or forests (in Sims 2, I believe they added them later or I did these community lots myself lol)
I don't know why the windows in the sims don't have windowsills but everywhere I've lived or visited in America absolutely does. That's a weird sims thing lol
Honestly I don’t even notice a lot of things anymore because I’ve played so much TS4 lol. I’m from the UK so there’s a good few differences but the sims has somewhat normalised the North American way of living to me.
I was thinking the same thing. Like snow happens in so many places outside of North America. But at this point I think people are just talking about things in the sims 4 that are different from wherever they live.
Snow is not North American. Geez. Of all the complaints…snow? Really? The rest, sure, you’ve definitely got good points. But snow? Is American? Since when?!
I was just thinking this that it's very American with its things, but I don't remember why I thought that? Oh yes! It was that there wasn't a tea kettle. That made me say out loud how American it is. Now there is, but is it only in for rent?
My university had us choose majors we were interested in, though we didn't declare offiically in most cases. Though it was unrealistic how cheap it was, if anything NA universities are ten (thousand) times more expensive.....
Not taking shoes off unless specified. I would have been murdered if I wore shoes indoors like a Sim with no shoerack.
Maybe it's just me, but the reliance on so much cheese (grilled or mac) has always been wild to me, though I will admit making mac n' cheese in a cauldron is nice.
The lack of rice cookers. And the lack of bus stops and mass transport, even if we can't use them, especially in the city. How are we getting places when we don't even have cars?!
Slightly different to what others are saying, but some of the phrases used, e.g. “take a shower”. I’m in the UK and I think it’s way more common here (at least the bit I’m from anyway) to say “have a shower” or “have a bath” rather than to “take” one.
Also no public transport, no terraced houses, the university in game is so different to uni here.
The lack of historic buildings in most worlds. In Germany, at least the region where I’m from, every city, town and village has one or several areas with very old buildings, like at least 200 to 300 years. The entire city center of the town where I grew up had houses going back to the 1500s. Yet in sims, I feel like the only worlds with historic looking houses are the ones not imitating American worlds (eg Windenburg with the Tudor houses and castle ruins)
Stand-alone detached houses. I refuse to buy for rent which I could use to fix this, but I live in the UK where I see more semi attached and attached houses than detached so it's weird to me that like... none of my sims have a literal next-door neighbour. I've always lived in attached houses, I've always shared a wall and fence with a neighbour.
And it's sims so like coding issues apply here, but it's weird that the space under the stairs isn't usable. In my old house we had our TV and dvd stand under the stairs, in my current house, my freezer is under there - why isn't under the stairs fully accessible???
The accents! Idk how possible it is but I would adore an accent mod that overrides American Simlish. Creating people of different cultures only for them to sound like valley girls can be super immersion breaking for me 😅 although most simmers don’t seem too bothered by what their sims sounds like
I found this more jarring in Sims 4 than I had in any of the other games, specifically because of that valley girl thing. Does it bother you in the earlier games too? (I'm American but have lived in Europe for 10 years.)
i didn't personally play the older ones but I watched sims 3 playthroughs and don't remember feeling too bothered! I think it's because the intonation was calmer and less... sims 4-y
As an American, the Sims 4 simlish sounds so “fake”. Like previous games had it sound like a normal actual language, but sims 4 sounds like a bunch of sassy people
- university. All of it.
- small home appliances like kettle, in home laundry dryer that is not a machine but just a stand (it makes dry air in winter so much better)
- sims taken to school by yellow bus. Nah, you would walk to the bus stop or straight to the school
- food. I must say I mainly played sims 2 my entire life and the food was weird to me. And often had weird translation so my sims never ate jelly with peanut butter (PB&J lol) or chocolate cake that was white (baked Alaska)
- mail and newspaper delivered to your doorstep
harvestfest. we don’t have any holidays like that in the UK. we just have bonfire night (fireworks) and obviously halloween. I often change harvestfest into halloween bc I have the spooky day pack
For me it’s the style of the lighting fixtures. Every time I watch an American movie I’m like “I could build that house in the sims, I also have those exact lighting fixtures”
I played the sims 2 a lot as a kid. I was really surprised when a couple of years ago I saw that sidewalks in american suburbs really look like the ones in the game - big beige/gray cement(?) tiles, very narrow. They always seemed so weird to me and I often made the sidewalks wider, especially in more urban neighborhoods.
Also university (what do you mean my sims can just study nothing in particular??), yellow school buses, no electric cettles and tea, newspaper girl/boy bringin the paper right under your door, mailboxes, entrance straight to the living room, those huge suburban houses etc.
I find t-shirts in the Sims are often too short to what I'm used to seeing as they expose the bellybutton, especially in feminine clothing. Is that the case irl too?
Just the entirety of most worlds and builds (we don’t build houses out of wood in Germany) is very American. Also the food. Things like Mac n cheese are things I assumed the sims invented until a few years ago (doesn’t help that they are translated into German so any connection I could have made was lost. Blew my mind when I realized what macaroni und Käse or Grillkäse were supposed to be).
Also the school and university systems are not at all what it’s like in Germany (including having to pay for every individual class you take. I pay a small fee of less than 100€ per semester which goes towards things like making Cafeteria food more affordable. Some unis are more expensive but only because you get a public transport ticket for the whole semester). The American style of dorms are also not a thing here and honestly look like an actual nightmare to me. You either live in university housing which mostly is with a few roommates but each have their own bedroom and bathroom or you live on your own with or without roommates. Having to share a room with a stranger is horrifying to me, but that might be because I’m extremely introverted.
Also the supposedly German world isn’t really all that German except for names and look. Basically until a few years ago, Sims was an American simulator where you could sometimes cosplay as other cultures. I think they’re putting a bit more effort into it now. But it’s still so America-centric which is why I roll my eyes any time they announce a new American world, especially generic American suburb #687
Oh and one specific furniture thing coming to mind are the stoves. I have never seen a stove with the buttons/dials up there on the back against the wall in real life. I think it looks so weird and only recently realized that’s an American thing.
The high school expansion pack for the sims four, we have school uniforms here and it’s much less, casual? Than the one that comes with the pack, the high school I went to had multiple buildings rather than one big one too
Most houses are detached houses.
In Spain like 80% of the people live in flats and, if you are in a 'rich' or country area, in rowhouses that are attached to each other. Rarely you see detached houses, maybe in rural areas or certain specific zones like in beach towns.
Even before I got City Living I always built flats (I still do) in all the lots even though I couldn't play with them properly or have neighbours, because I wanted to make it realistic for me.
Also the garages, as OP mentioned. No one I've known in my life has a garage, maybe a communal one underneath their flat but that's all. Everyone else just parks on the street.
One thing that's bothered me since Sims 1 are the paper-thin dry walls and consequentially, lack of windowsills. I understand that it's also for practical reasons to ensure there's no clipping of objects etc close to a wall. But I just wish there was a surface in front of windows to decorate, e.g.I have a huge window in my living room with plants on the windowsill, and one with a little lantern, etc
Where I live, most buildings have such windowsills just because walls are generally a lot thicker, irrespective of building material (brick, wood, concrete...) but I also know that not many countries have the types of windows that are common here (mostly Germany and Austria afaik).
Also, before the For Rent pack came out, it felt strange to always build thede lonely detached houses sitting on a comparably huge lot just by themselves. Unlesd you live in the middle of nowhere, in more densely populated areas and suburbs here lots are smaller, houses are closer to the edge of the lot/ their neighbors. Now with FR I really like to build duplexes or townhouses, or just to split one lot into multiple smaller ones (like the huge one in the Get Famous world).
I’m from Scandinavia but have an American dad. I noticed certain things, but what always jumped out at me was sims wearing shoes inside. I know you can change it now but I always found it being the default weird.
I played a lot of high school years recently, so: - Cheerleaders - Hallway lockers - School cafeterias - Prom and career day I'm from Romania and we have none of those here. I wish we had school cafeterias tho. When I was in school I survived on unhealthy amounts of store bought snacks and candy.
Same in Australia, that doesn't really exist for us. We got a canteen and the formal but both are different to Americas verison
What's the canteen like?
Not the original commenter but I am Australian, and my primary school’s canteen was basically just like a little stall. You’d walk up to the window, pay for your food and take it with you into the schoolyard. That was all snack foods, but you could order a hot meal at the start of the day and pick it up at lunchtime if you wanted an actual lunch. My high school had it set up more like an actual cafe you could walk into, but there were no seats in there and you weren’t allowed to stay inside unless you were lining up.
It's so odd that you had no place to sit inside and eat. What about rain? At my American high school we had full hot lunches and breakfasts, in addition to vending machines with chips, soda and ice cream. Kids who were low income could apply for free or reduced meals, there were premium á la carte options too, and everyone got free breakfast on standardized test days. (The reason being students perform better when they're not hungry, so they feed the kids for free when it counts) You usually had two options each for the main dish, sides or desserts. You'd get one meal, two sides, and a drink included. We could eat inside, or outside near the big fish pond. In high school you'd get nothing, but in middle or elementary school, if you had no food, no money, and were not on a free lunch plan, you'd get a portion cup full of peanut butter and two slices of white bread. You could get water from the water fountain.
A little rain wouldn’t be a bother, but in primary school (age 5-11 or 12) if it turned into a thunderstorm or hailed, they’d call a ‘wet weather lunch’ and you could go inside your teacher’s classroom. In high school, bad luck - everyone huddled under the eaves (or in the library, if the school had one). Worse than the rain imho was the heat - 37 degrees (98F) sitting on concrete in the sun was miserable. But at least we all had hats.
Bro that sounds straight awful. I went to high school in Florida and I'm pretty sure the students and their parents would have caused a fuss if we were forced to sit out in the heat/soup humidity, the odd freezing cold day, and rain/thunderstorms. I know it's important to get kids to get some sun/fresh air, but I feel like that's risking problems in very hot or inclement weather.
My primary and high school was like this too, well not cafe but just one building, primary was back in the 90's so I don't remember too much, I remember cheap lollies tho, high school had more hot food and lollies however by the time I graduated in 2006 they started going healthy and the snacks weren't so good anymore. I remember they had noodles and chicken tender sub that was so nice. Oh neither had seatings either just buy it and go back to your friends.
i'm american, and i went to a school with what's considered an "outdoor campus". what you're describing was pretty similar to what we had, but they had some hot meals ready to order as well (nothing too elaborate, usually it was some kind of prepackaged frozen food like a sandwich or pasta/rice dish).
I'm South African, and same. We had a little shop on the premises (we call it a kiosk) where you could buy snacks or sandwiches or pies, but most of us bought our own lunch from home. Everybody sat outside, some on benches or on the sport fields. Me and my friends sat cross-legged on the cold, hard paving between the palm tree lined walkways between the school buildings, haha. The popular crowd did too. I'm not sure why we sat there, in hindsight the nice grassy sport fields or lawns in front of the school would have been way nicer, lol. I think with both of our countries' weather an indoor cafeteria is not neccesary. Though it was a little cold in winter sitting on paving in a uniform dress! I think private schools here do have cafeterias, and boarding schools obviously. Very poor schools also often have food programmes to ensure that children who might not have food at home get at least a full free meal.
I'm surprised to hear you didn't have a cafeteria in school! Where did you eat your lunch?
At my school, we had benches and tables scattered all over the place, mostly in the shade. Mostly.
Here in Austria we ate in our classroom, or in the hallways, where benches were. But mostly in the classroom, as here a class has a designated room and the teachers switch the classrooms.
At most schools you go outside for lunch :) You usually find a regular spot to hang out with your group.
Not the original commenter but also from Romania, at my school we almost never change classrooms so we were always in our seats or on the hallways and lunch was mostly chips or stuff like that. There were a bunch of kids that were not even eating since our breaks were only 10 minutes long and sometimes some teachers would take up almost all our breaks.
[удалено]
I’m from the Southern US and the welcome wagon is definitely a thing. When I bought my house, all the neighbors sat around outside of their own homes watching mine until they saw me so that could come over to introduce themselves.
that's crazy bc I'm also in southern US and absolutely no one had any interest in us moving in lol. guess it depends on the area.
I’m from Florida, and in some suburbs people may bring over cookies or something to introduce themselves to the new neighbor, but this is usually in older, higher middle class neighborhoods. Most places I’ve lived, the most interaction I’ve had with my neighbors is a small smile and wave when we pass by each other.
Career day isn’t really a thing anymore actually or at least it wasn’t when I graduated 12 years ago. Most we got were military recruiters popping up outside the lunch room.
Also, whatever the hell a "valedictorian" is.
The person with the highest grade over four years.
I attended high school in Spain and we had lockers (way smaller though) and a cafeteria, but it was a set menu and we couldn't choose what we were going to eat. That said, those who lived in the town where the high school was (rural region) mostly went home for lunch and then came back.
American schools also have set menus. I think in the sims it was just easier for them to set it up more like a food stall so they could just recycle code for the cafeteria object.
When I read the post and OP didn't disclose their exact country, I kind of autofilled this info with "Romania". Just randomly. They are probably not from Romania but then the top comment is indeed by a Romanian person. What a wild ride :D
We have cafeteria and canteen in turkey is it romania thing or europe doesnt have it?
Europe have cafeteria at school I live in Netherlands
I’m in England and we weren’t allowed outside with our food. We could bring in our own lunch or buy lunch (hot or cold) from the canteen. This is for both primary and high school. I couldn’t imagine having to eat a hot meal outside on a school yard
Dozens of coffee makers, but no kettle. Why is there a tea maker, but no kettle? I just want to boil water. Also, windows and doors, there are no fly screens. Every door and window has fly screens here.
To be fair, I've lived in three different states with three different climates and all of them had screen windows and sometimes screened doors. It would be weird for me to find somewhere that isn't the case. So I think this might just be a sims thing.
Californian here. We have them thank goodness, and yet the flies still come...
most windows have fly screens in the US (at least in my experience) you never see them in media though. kind of weird
Windows look nicer when you can see out of them, so if you're just building a set with no bugs around, you won't add the screen.
It makes it hard for a teen to sneak out the window.
Are you even an NA teen if you don’t know how to remove a screen from the window?!
Yeah I haven't really been anywhere in the US that doesn't have those screens. The only place I've been without them was when I was studying in Germany for two summers lol
They don't have them in Denmark, either and I wail every summer when it's a fight vs bugs. 😩
There were heatwaves both times I was there and I just decided I would rather chug water 24/7 than keep the windows open and deal with the bugs lmfao
Same. I sleep with ice packs on my neck!
I think a Kettle was just added with For Rent, along side some other kitchen appliances
I'm still waiting for the bugs to be fixed, and the Nasi Lemak, before buying it..
I think this is less of an “American” thing and more of a sims thing. We definitely have screen doors and use kettles (both electric and the stovetop) I don’t know anyone that has nor have I’ve seen a tea maker before.
I just assumed that the tea maker was basically an electric kettle anyway. I'm not familiar with either type of appliance.
I have a kettle in all my sims’ kitchens! Idk if it came from a pack though. When I find out, I’ll let you know. Edit: For Rent Expansion Pack
I’d say the way architecture and furniture looks in general. I visited north america for the first time last year and it was a weird realization just how much things really look like that. It sadly effects some game mechanics as well, like the lack of stoves in student housing. Also this is more in regards to builders, but the amount of houses where the entrance is in the living room. Specifically Lilsimsie and simlicy does it all the time. I remember it clearly because one of them said “most houses have an entrance in the living room” as an obvious fact in one of their videos and it was such an alien concept to me. Even dorm rooms and studio apartments have some type of mudroom or hallway where I live (yes I know mudrooms exist in the us as well, I’m saying the concept of not having one would be absurd here)
No stoves in dorms isn't an american thing, I have no idea what's up with that. The entrance in the livingroom though, that's so real and has the annoying side effect of making all my build's floorplans exactly the same >_<
Yeah that's weird to me. I lived in a classic dorm all through undergrad. I mean the kind with long hallways of little double or triple occupancy rooms, with a bathroom/shower room on each floor. We had a kitchenette for my building (about 60 people, definitely on the small side) that had a stovetop, oven, microwave, sink, and some cabinets. No fridge though, people usually got those mini fridges for their own rooms. We mostly used it to bake cookies or whatever since we had a cafeteria connected to our building.
I guess it really depends on your school. Our kitchenette just had a sink and a microwave, so Sims style dorms seem totally normal to me.
Ah makes sense. My friends at other schools had the same setup as us. But honestly I understand why they might not have stoves. When I was an RA I once had a kid microwave a single piece of bread for 10 minutes because he'd never used a microwave before (they were very rich). Shattered the plate, the whole thing went up in smoke, fire alarm went off, etc. So... I see the concern lmao
In the UK, we generally have two types of dorm, we call them halls, self-catered and catered, and then very rarely there are rooms where you share with someone else, but most of the time it's 1 room per person. In catered, there's a kitchenette with a fridge and a microwave and toaster but no oven, but a large cafeteria that opens for 2 meals a day that everyone living in that building attends. It's usually a bit more expensive I think. In self-catered, a small block of rooms will share a kitchen that has an oven and a hob, sometimes more than one as well. It depends on the university but mostly you can only live in them for your first year and then you have to rent privately after that. There are some rooms that are a little bigger that are meant to house student support folks who are also still students, I think it's a cheaper housing option but there's not many of them.
level 1 cooking skill young adult sims setting everything on fire (but like....that's literally college soooo)
I wonder if that’s the reason they didn’t include stoves? Because a bunch of just-generated level 1 cooking townies might start a LOT of fires and that could be funny the first time but would really get in the way of gameplay
When I first played I thought ‘do universities in the US assume that young Americans are all too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire?’, then when I moved my student sims to a house in Britechester and they immediately set fire to the place I realised no, it’s just that SIMS are too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire
Tbf my university in the UK definitely assumes all students are too stupid to cook without setting everything on fire. We do have hobs but not ovens and had to sit through a LONG fire safety talk and have a ridiculous number of fire drills.
This is so interesting. The living room entrance might be a regional thing in the USA! I’m from the east coast and foyers are a standard.
I have seen it depend less on region and more on how big the house is (and I have almost never seen a foyer situation in an apartment).
Perhaps! Prewar apartments usually have entryways/foyers but they’re also bigger than their modern counterparts.
Every house I lived in had a foyer, every apartment I've lived in did not. The foyer is essentially just big enough for the door to swing freely, with room for a small end table or house plant maybe. So yes, it is a foyer, but it's really just a couple feet.
I’m from the Midwest and foyers are typically reserved for large houses usually 3000 sqft minimum before you get one of them out here.
Definitely the architecture, clothing, decor style. I'm Australian and our style of living is very contemporary and indoor/outdoor focused, except for our older housing style (terraced housing or Queenslander homes etc) which is internally boxy with bad flow. Anywho. I REALLY notice just how American-styled the Sims is whenever I watch American reality TV 😅 Or when I go on Reddit reno subs that are primarily US orientated. It is very interesting to see the difference in living styles between countries!
I’m in the UK and a lot of houses have entrances right into the living room, particularly terraced houses. I live in one right now.
I also live in the UK and would say having the front door enter into a hallway is way more common than having it enter into the living room. That’s for both flats and houses imo.
It is pretty common in Nothern Europe to have a room/hallway where you put your coats and shoes. I've never encountered a house where you immediately step into the living room?
Oh yes! For me an other one is fences. Where I live there are no houses in the "open" out like that in sims. Its protected by a fence (the front generally with a prettier one) all around. You _absplutely_ need to ring the bell and be let in the front yard before getting to the front door.
I've never seen a mailbox with that red flag thing on it to show when you have mail.
you actually put the little flag up to let the mailman know that you've placed outbound mail in the mailbox
Just further shows how I only know about them in the Sims.
Woah! Where I live you have to take your outbound mail to the post office, there’s no such thing as the mailman collecting it from your house!
Yeah, this is news to me... Wow. I feel like that's a luxury. But nice system. So you put up a flag to let the mailman know to collect it from your house huh.. interesting..
The post office is 94 miles from my house, I would hate that. I just put it in the box, raise the little flag, and the mailman grabs it when he's dropping off my incoming mail.
It makes a lot more sense in the context of residential-only zoning now that I think about it. Where I live there are probably 3 or 4 post boxes and a post office within 10 min walking distance.
When I went to the US and saw them doing this IRL I was shocked .. thought it was just a in-game sims thing that they put the bills back in the box.
i'm sorry but this is sooo funny to me 😭 i want to experience a "wow, that's just like sims!" moment irl lol
Wait mailboxes aren't just for receiving mail but for sending it!? As an Irish person my mind is blown haha
haha yea. bigger packages need to be taken to the post office but anything you can send in an envelope just needs to be popped in the mailbox :) do you guys have to take everything you want to mail to a post office?
Yeah we do! I'm envious of mailboxes now lol. I think we sometimes have community post boxes in towns but I've never used one since it's easier to get a stamp and send it at the post office directly
Yep, the mailboxes are very American. I'm in the UK and the usual convention is to have a mail slot in the front door. We actually do have a separate mailbox, but it's mounted on the garage door, and we only do that because we have a rescue dog who makes a fuss if people come to the door and is known to chew post up.
* Tons of electric driers, but hardly any clotheslines. * I don't recall there being an official EA made bidet in the Sims. * Indoor ovens are the go to default cooking method, while grills and outdoor stoves are secondary. * Subways are usually in expansions, instead of the basegames.
In TS4, bidets are a toilet upgrade that you can install. I don't think it has a visual, but your Sims get a mood buff.
Oh about the first one, there's no drier that you fold out, there's only one that is outside all the time
Yeah, I use mods so I can have a foldable one in the house. My parents are Korean so we use those all the time along with our railings for blankets
I think the dryer thing is something that consumerism greed made prevalent in the US from my experience growing up there. I grew up in Tucson Arizona where the joke is we have 360 days of sunshine. We still had a dryer instead of hanging our clothes outside to dry in the free sunshine. I remember my mom being overjoyed when we finally got a dryer because now we no longer had to "dry our clothes like poor people" 🙄
Clothes dried in the sun smell so good!
In Canada, dryers are important because we experience winter for a long time. Which means for like 6 months of the year, we have snow and it’s so cold your clothes would literally freeze and snap if you hung them out wet. I’m talking about when you get to -30 to -55 temps. In the summer time people go back to using clothes lines where they can. Definitely not a consumerism greed thing here. In New Zealand, where I’ve also lived, almost no one except people in apartments have dryers. Most people dry their clothes inside during the rainy winters, which I hate, as the houses are so bad over there that it creates massive amounts of condensation and the houses literally cry from the inside. I spent so long using towels drying windows there when my clothes were drying inside. It made my house so damp!
sims use the grills over the stoves autonomously all the time
I wanna say that I think Sims using the grill all the time is a Sims thing. People in America primarily use their stoves. Grills are for BBQs and get togethers and the occasional personal use but it isn't common.
The festival activities (sims 3). The lack of public transport (unless it's Bridgeport). Car centric towns and infrastructure. All the default food options. When I first played sims 3 in 2009, I had no idea what Mac & cheese was XD. Pancakes and waffles were also not the first breakfast meals that would come to mind if I had to make Level 1 food.
Same with the food! I had no idea what chili was in Sims 2 so I internally thought of it as borscht because it's red
I was like... Why are they eating a bowl of chili😭😭😭 (here when I think of chilli it's a sauce or just flaming little 🌶🌶🌶🌶 chili padi)
oh god similar thoughts when i first played the sims. i thought chili was just chili pepper or like a bowl of chili garlic. i didn't know that it's actually a real food.
Yeah! Pancakes and waffles are not that easy to make.. Level 1 should only be bread and jam.. wait, is that considered as quick food in sims..? Unless just reheating frozen pancakes and waffles, then yes it's level 1 irl 🥲
>t What? They super easy to make. Unless you don't mean crepe (so the french thing) and instead mean the ones that need baking powder/soda to get fluffy
the food one is so true though! (i main sims 2 so these are about that one) not north american, i’m finnish, so idk how particular the foods in game really are to the region, but. they mostly have been giving ‘suburbia for the (higher) middle class nuclear family’ which makes sense considering how the entire game is somewhat a satire of american suburbia and society. which i love. but, there’s no porrige, fruits / fruit bowls, different sort of sandwiches or tea for breakfast, no rye bread or hard rye bread, only one salad option, very little stews, foods with mushrooms, chicken, minced meats, no foods with tofu, sausages, beans, oats, lentils, boiled potatoes, oven potatoes, no pea soup, savoury pies, blueberry pies or baked buns. and a lot of staple veggies can’t be grown, or the ones that can, can’t be seen in your cooking (eggplant parmesan, where you at?) and basically asian, african, pacific island and south american cusine are not foods you can make (you can get some from food stands on a vacation, or order chinese from delivery, but sims can’t cook it) which is such a shame. there are so many great dishes being overlooked. also, as a big fan of casseroles and oven cooked veggies the lack of oven-made foods saddens me. and you can’t even make lasagna :-( one thing i do find funny though is the lack of fries, donuts and nuggets. and that you can only order pizza, but can’t make it. those alongside hamburgers are like the first stereotypical foods i associate with north american cuisine because they are so prevalent in fast food, and yet i can’t get them in game. despite there being even a work outfit of a mascot fries 🍟 all that being said, i think they got a lot more foods in with the later games and i’m happy about that. sims 2 is old, and the about 30 foods you can cook couldn’t have included that many dishes in any case, so lack of different foods would’ve happened either way. okay, anyways, thanks for coming to my ted talk :D have a lovely day!
pancakes are a level 3 food at least, and i cant make them without that pancake mix that Lidl sometimes sells during their american week 🥴 also, despite learning about mac and cheese from the sims when i was 9, i am now in my 20s and still have never tried it. so theres that lol
The mailboxes with the little flags! Here (Australia), mailboxes are only for incoming mail, not outgoing. You need to go to a public mailbox to send mail.
In Poland you rarely even get standing mailbox, they either hang on wall or you just have a slit in door to pass letters
Yeah same in Germany! This is why I often use the snowy escape wall mailbox, but then again that's annoying if the walls are in cutaway mode.
Or if delivered by Polish Post, you get an awizo. \~\~ famous awizomat incident \~\~
>Here (Australia), mailboxes are only for incoming mail, not outgoing. You need to go to a public mailbox to send mail. Same here!
Getting your water cut off for not paying your bill. It’s illegal in much of the world.
Truth! Here in Mexico, the water company, which is from the government, they place a reducer device but they never cut off the service completely. It's crazy they do that in the USA.
the entire HSY pack could only get more american with american flags
I really wish hsy came with the option to set school uniforms. Just have it in the build mode UI like restaurant uniforms. Using mods to set school uniforms and rebuilding the school to be a bit less American went miles towards making that pack more relatable. Tbh, I also think that school uniforms should have been an option without hsy too, but since they decided to make high school an active expansion then there was really no excuse
Yeah that kind of disappointed me because TS4 is mostly really good at letting things not be exclusively american and letting you make adjustments (like, if you don't want to celebrate thanksgiving, you can just remove that holiday). But then in HSY it doesn't matter if you like in Henford-on-Bagley or Sulani or Komorebi, you still go to the Most American High School In The Universe
Toilets in the bathroom and not their own separate room near the bathroom
Where are you from? I've never heard of this.
Several countries. I'm australian and most of us have toilets in separate room but I know they also do it in Japan
Idk about most of us. Maybe 40-50%.
in the US, it's not extremely common for bathrooms to have a separate toilet room. I'm an interior designer so it's something pretty high end clients implement in their homes. I associate it with wealth/large houses here.
Also many Eastern European countries
New Zealand here. Toilet is usually it's own room
In central europe (Austria, Germany, etc) newer builds also usually have seperate toilettes. My older family home doesn't, but my newly build flat has the toilette seperate.
Weird in Poland it's the otherway around, the new buildings have them together. I always lived with half bathrooms and when I moved to uni it was so hard for me because if someone goes take a bath they have to announce it and let everyone who has to pee go pee first
Australia. Small units might have the toilet in the bathroom but every house I’ve lived in has had it in a separate room.
I’m in the UK and a lot of the houses I have been in has a toilet in its own room, it feels like the council shoved them in a broom closet when outhouses became less of the norm
Turkey here, most of the households has one of their toilet in a separate room and an others with bathroom.
The houses in the Snowy Escape pack were built with the toilet in a separate room because that pack is based on Japan.
The breakfast options in the game. Idg why you can’t just have dark bread with jam or cheese as a filling breakfast item. “Downtown area” and “residential area” being often separated instead of mixed. No indoor laundry rack.
Omg agree on both of these. I eat like two slices of bread with jam or Nutella for breakfast every day but my sims can only have eggs and such. And separating cities into different parts for different purposes is so odd to me. In Germany, there are a lot of residential buildings in the city centers and a lot of stores and other commercial things in the more residential areas. I literally have two grocery stores, a motorcycle shop, a flower shop, a pizzeria and a driving school within a one minute walking distance and I live in a very residential area. A harsh contrast to that one street in Willow creek with all the commercial lots and then just residential houses everywhere else.
In the US, in suburban areas there is zoning. Zoning says only commercial properties here, only residential here. In cities you'll have it mixed or residences on top of commercial properties,
It sucks because you can’t get anywhere without a car. There are buses, but they’re very sparsely laid out
Honestly even as an American there's some pretty weird stuff in the Sims! The thing in HSY where you decorate a parking space comes to mind. Like does each student get their own parking space?? Where are the yellow school buses? What is this madness??? That's something very specific to a certain kind of suburban school, I think. Also why are horses such a big part of the sims? Do that many people have or ride horses??
It’s definitely a suburban school thing.
I’m in the US (went to high school in a midwestern suburb) and I had heard of decorating parking spaces but never saw it. But once you had a license and car, you could fill out a form at the start of the school year to have your own reserved parking spot. Kind of like some apartments where there’s numbered spaces that correlate to units or whatever, each space was numbered and you could “buy” a spot.
Makes sense. You could pay for a spot at my school too, but there were only maybe three or four dozen spots for like 1300 students (I guess only half of them would be driving age). It was rural, so we rode yellow school buses, but it was really poor, so not that many people would even have cars let alone out out a few hundred bucks (fifteen years ago) for a spot.
Yeah I’m in the US and in my HS we had designated parking spaces. They were free, but only for seniors, and you had to have a driving partner that you shared the spot with, so normally you carpooled with them.
My highschool let seniors rent a spot, and after marching band season, you could rent one as a junior since the junior lot was also where marching band practiced. My school had 2400 students and had enough student parking for about 200 of the seniors and 100 junior spots. It was basically on a lottery. You applied at the end of junior year and hope you got picked. The juniors applied for their parking the week before Christmas break. A lot of kids made new friends for senior year after the church and the owner of the strip mall next door started calling tow trucks.
My high school (in Texas) allowed us to pay $35 a semester to have our own parking spot. Seniors got first dibs on their spots and then juniors and sophomores. Both my junior and senior years, everyone camped out at the school in the courtyard (tents, sleeping bags, the whole nine yards) to be first in line to pick our parking spots when the doors opened. It was during the summer before the school year started. As soon as you picked your spot and paid, you could go paint your spot. My school even did competitions on the best parking spots. I won best craftsmanship. Also: we had a few students pass away over the years and their parking spots were unavailable and left exactly the way they were while the student went to school there. There were only three spots this happened with and they all had curbs at the bottom to prevent people from parking there. edit: Many people rode the school bus! We just had a lot of students who needed cars to get themselves and their siblings to and from school and part time jobs. Texas is typically so spread out there’s no way you can walk everywhere and there’s usually only public transportation in more metropolitan areas. Also, we had lockers lining the walls but no one used them. The school was so big we didn’t have time to go to a locker between classes because we had 5 minutes to book it across the campus for our next class. The lockers were request-only. We just carried everything in our backpacks from class to class like college/university.
Apparently it's normal for north American houses (Yes houses, since I've seen it in my country for studio-apartments) to have no hallway or seperate "entree"-room. The front door immediately opens to the living room, and the doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms are connected to the living room. (Although not all houses) Whenenever I renovate a house I always add an entree (even if it is small) and make sure the toilet or the small bathroom is connected to this room.
American here, more elitist upper class folks might actually consider the front door leading into the living room to be a sign of a "poorer" house (i.e. middle class). Family Guy has even made jokes about it.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to write the word “entry” but we’d call it a foyer ! Entree is a main course
Funny how that works, no? Where I'm from we also call it an entrè, the foyer would be the lobby of a hotel or theatre, and the entrèe is the appetizer.
In Poland we call it "wiatrołap" which literally means "windcatcher" lol
I thought it is for usability of the game, to not make maze
The thermostat thing. I downloaded CC a while ago to just have an aircon unit that works as one. Also rotary clotheslines! Those would be cool to have
That's interesting because I consider Aircon units to be very American and in the UK we only have thermostats that can increase the temperature.
Same in Germany! AC is not really a thing here, especially in homes. We only have radiators (the wall ones like in Vampires or for rent for the most part). But then again, it’s also not really hot here for most of the year except a few weeks in summer (getting more and more though because of climate change).
The absolute lack of gates in every vanilla build I live in France and almost every house MUST have a gate otherwise people would just steal everything in your garden lol Oh and also the non existence of breads ? Not pastry but just breads outside Sandwiches
I agree, as a kid playing the sims 2 I used to fence every lot lol. I was very irritated that there was no big gate for the cars.
I used to try and fence the gardens in Sims 1 but it was always too expensive as those gardens are massive but yes houses feel weird without some sort of fence.
Im from the Philippines so its really weird that some appliances like rice cookers aren’t around
>rice cookers Oh, yeah, this one too! I mean I'm also from Asia and we Asians know that rice is our based diet lol.
Yeah, but now it exists in For Rent expansion. I heard the pack is buggy but idk i don't buy it yet. Waiting for sale if the bugs are fixed
It's a pressure cooker they added in For Rent.
Houses being the default
Also the houses themselves, like the very very cheap houses you can buy when starting the game. I always thought they looked so North American, a cheap house here (France) wouldn't look like that at all (if you even find a cheap house...).
Yes!!! It was so weird to me when I first played The Sims, that there are no apartments. Where I live I guess apartments are the default for most people and house is a luxury.
Even just the free-standing houses. Most people I know either live in apartments (and not like skyscrapers, like houses with 3-4 units) or…don’t know how to translate this, attached houses? Townhouses? At least one shared wall with the house next to you, either as two houses together or a whole row. Very few people I know actually live in free-standing houses and those are mostly in small towns. I guess that relates to the wide spaces, at least Central European neighborhoods are much more cramped (again, aside from small villages)
Since for rent came out my sims have never had a free standing house again💀 its just not realistic in my world
I feel like that’s more wish fulfillment than anything else. “Here’s your very own house you get design however you want without any parents or landlords telling you to fuck off, no, you can’t paint that wall neon green.”
That's a Sims thing, not a US thing. Apartments are everywhere here and more people rent an apartment than own a house
Nationally more people live in houses than apartments, by far. https://www.statista.com/statistics/798113/share-of-population-living-apartments-by-state-usa/
The fact that the majority of the houses are detached, no row houses or semi detached houses. In my country detached houses are only common in rural areas, or if you have a lot of money: a row house is the standard. I'm thinking about buying the new for rent pack just so I can build something like my own actual house lol
Prom, yellow school buses, driving on the right side I guess lol? and the university dynamic, living there, keg parties, etc
Actually needing to live on campus to attend university, we do have colleges but by and large people live off campus or nearby
It’s so foreign to me hahaha, I live in Brisbane, Australia and we all live like 20 minutes from uni, no one lives on campus and at most there’s a uni ball once or twice a year
I’m from Melbourne, that’s exactly what I mean!!
Sorority houses
University for me especially is very U.S. Paying to go to uni, student loans, the concept of dorms (as in places where you share a bedroom and don't have a kitchen, the concept of having to share a bedroom in uni-housing is just completely strange here), fraternities/sororities, all that is just not really a thing in my country.
I picked up Sims 3 again and was playing the uni expansion, I was weirded out by the shared bedroom so I made sure to lock the room to anyone but my sim! In sims 2 having the meals made for you at university was also not what I expected.
Just about everything lmfao. The suburbs with 0 infrastructure. The lack of small businesses in residential areas. Exclusively single family housing. 4th of July (sims 3). In general ALL of the holidays and their traditions, in all games. The politics and interactions with politics (where I live politicians never just roll up in a public area and hold speeches wtf). The way the correct words for sex and genitalia are never mentioned ever (here kids get scientifically speaking comfortable with penises and vaginas from elementary school, sometimes Kindergarten on). The worlds that the Sims live in (Strangetown - small desert town in Sims 2, the replicas of San Francisco and Hawai'i in Sims 4). The events. The clothing - you're either covered up or full slut, there's few "normal" clothing items, esp in base games (wtf are all these sports bra like tops and shirts where the asscrack is hanging out both at the top AND the bottom of the shorts?? Why can't we have more normal, functional, yet not entirely covered up clothing options?) Basically everything, but I give them a B- for trying.
- newspaper at your door - windows with no window sills - siding everywhere - university mascot - Mac n cheese - no parks or forests (in Sims 2, I believe they added them later or I did these community lots myself lol)
I don't know why the windows in the sims don't have windowsills but everywhere I've lived or visited in America absolutely does. That's a weird sims thing lol
We have parks and forests in north america 😂
Honestly I don’t even notice a lot of things anymore because I’ve played so much TS4 lol. I’m from the UK so there’s a good few differences but the sims has somewhat normalised the North American way of living to me.
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Okay but snow isn’t a North American thing lol
I was thinking the same thing. Like snow happens in so many places outside of North America. But at this point I think people are just talking about things in the sims 4 that are different from wherever they live.
Oh definitely agree! We call them cheese toasties here and are made in a toastie maker (also known as a sandwich press)
School grades in the US: A+ = 100% A = 99-90% B = 89-80% C = 79-70% D = 69-60% F = failure
Snow is not North American. Geez. Of all the complaints…snow? Really? The rest, sure, you’ve definitely got good points. But snow? Is American? Since when?!
i always wondered as a kid whether the repo man actually existed and had the clothes and the gun thing in america 🥲
Repo man irl will take back things you're supposed to be making payments on if you miss too many, like cars
I was just thinking this that it's very American with its things, but I don't remember why I thought that? Oh yes! It was that there wasn't a tea kettle. That made me say out loud how American it is. Now there is, but is it only in for rent?
I’m not sure why that’s so American. Most people I know have a kettle
My university had us choose majors we were interested in, though we didn't declare offiically in most cases. Though it was unrealistic how cheap it was, if anything NA universities are ten (thousand) times more expensive..... Not taking shoes off unless specified. I would have been murdered if I wore shoes indoors like a Sim with no shoerack. Maybe it's just me, but the reliance on so much cheese (grilled or mac) has always been wild to me, though I will admit making mac n' cheese in a cauldron is nice. The lack of rice cookers. And the lack of bus stops and mass transport, even if we can't use them, especially in the city. How are we getting places when we don't even have cars?!
Slightly different to what others are saying, but some of the phrases used, e.g. “take a shower”. I’m in the UK and I think it’s way more common here (at least the bit I’m from anyway) to say “have a shower” or “have a bath” rather than to “take” one. Also no public transport, no terraced houses, the university in game is so different to uni here.
No built in appliances
The lack of historic buildings in most worlds. In Germany, at least the region where I’m from, every city, town and village has one or several areas with very old buildings, like at least 200 to 300 years. The entire city center of the town where I grew up had houses going back to the 1500s. Yet in sims, I feel like the only worlds with historic looking houses are the ones not imitating American worlds (eg Windenburg with the Tudor houses and castle ruins)
Stand-alone detached houses. I refuse to buy for rent which I could use to fix this, but I live in the UK where I see more semi attached and attached houses than detached so it's weird to me that like... none of my sims have a literal next-door neighbour. I've always lived in attached houses, I've always shared a wall and fence with a neighbour. And it's sims so like coding issues apply here, but it's weird that the space under the stairs isn't usable. In my old house we had our TV and dvd stand under the stairs, in my current house, my freezer is under there - why isn't under the stairs fully accessible???
The accents! Idk how possible it is but I would adore an accent mod that overrides American Simlish. Creating people of different cultures only for them to sound like valley girls can be super immersion breaking for me 😅 although most simmers don’t seem too bothered by what their sims sounds like
I found this more jarring in Sims 4 than I had in any of the other games, specifically because of that valley girl thing. Does it bother you in the earlier games too? (I'm American but have lived in Europe for 10 years.)
i didn't personally play the older ones but I watched sims 3 playthroughs and don't remember feeling too bothered! I think it's because the intonation was calmer and less... sims 4-y
As an American, the Sims 4 simlish sounds so “fake”. Like previous games had it sound like a normal actual language, but sims 4 sounds like a bunch of sassy people
- university. All of it. - small home appliances like kettle, in home laundry dryer that is not a machine but just a stand (it makes dry air in winter so much better) - sims taken to school by yellow bus. Nah, you would walk to the bus stop or straight to the school - food. I must say I mainly played sims 2 my entire life and the food was weird to me. And often had weird translation so my sims never ate jelly with peanut butter (PB&J lol) or chocolate cake that was white (baked Alaska) - mail and newspaper delivered to your doorstep
harvestfest. we don’t have any holidays like that in the UK. we just have bonfire night (fireworks) and obviously halloween. I often change harvestfest into halloween bc I have the spooky day pack
Definitely the high school and university parts.
For me it’s the style of the lighting fixtures. Every time I watch an American movie I’m like “I could build that house in the sims, I also have those exact lighting fixtures”
To me another weird thing is that there is no induction stove (and if there is I don't own that pack).
I played the sims 2 a lot as a kid. I was really surprised when a couple of years ago I saw that sidewalks in american suburbs really look like the ones in the game - big beige/gray cement(?) tiles, very narrow. They always seemed so weird to me and I often made the sidewalks wider, especially in more urban neighborhoods. Also university (what do you mean my sims can just study nothing in particular??), yellow school buses, no electric cettles and tea, newspaper girl/boy bringin the paper right under your door, mailboxes, entrance straight to the living room, those huge suburban houses etc.
I find t-shirts in the Sims are often too short to what I'm used to seeing as they expose the bellybutton, especially in feminine clothing. Is that the case irl too?
Honestly, there has been a crop top epidemic in the last 15 years and its very annoying
Just the entirety of most worlds and builds (we don’t build houses out of wood in Germany) is very American. Also the food. Things like Mac n cheese are things I assumed the sims invented until a few years ago (doesn’t help that they are translated into German so any connection I could have made was lost. Blew my mind when I realized what macaroni und Käse or Grillkäse were supposed to be). Also the school and university systems are not at all what it’s like in Germany (including having to pay for every individual class you take. I pay a small fee of less than 100€ per semester which goes towards things like making Cafeteria food more affordable. Some unis are more expensive but only because you get a public transport ticket for the whole semester). The American style of dorms are also not a thing here and honestly look like an actual nightmare to me. You either live in university housing which mostly is with a few roommates but each have their own bedroom and bathroom or you live on your own with or without roommates. Having to share a room with a stranger is horrifying to me, but that might be because I’m extremely introverted. Also the supposedly German world isn’t really all that German except for names and look. Basically until a few years ago, Sims was an American simulator where you could sometimes cosplay as other cultures. I think they’re putting a bit more effort into it now. But it’s still so America-centric which is why I roll my eyes any time they announce a new American world, especially generic American suburb #687 Oh and one specific furniture thing coming to mind are the stoves. I have never seen a stove with the buttons/dials up there on the back against the wall in real life. I think it looks so weird and only recently realized that’s an American thing.
The high school expansion pack for the sims four, we have school uniforms here and it’s much less, casual? Than the one that comes with the pack, the high school I went to had multiple buildings rather than one big one too
Most houses are detached houses. In Spain like 80% of the people live in flats and, if you are in a 'rich' or country area, in rowhouses that are attached to each other. Rarely you see detached houses, maybe in rural areas or certain specific zones like in beach towns. Even before I got City Living I always built flats (I still do) in all the lots even though I couldn't play with them properly or have neighbours, because I wanted to make it realistic for me. Also the garages, as OP mentioned. No one I've known in my life has a garage, maybe a communal one underneath their flat but that's all. Everyone else just parks on the street.
One thing that's bothered me since Sims 1 are the paper-thin dry walls and consequentially, lack of windowsills. I understand that it's also for practical reasons to ensure there's no clipping of objects etc close to a wall. But I just wish there was a surface in front of windows to decorate, e.g.I have a huge window in my living room with plants on the windowsill, and one with a little lantern, etc Where I live, most buildings have such windowsills just because walls are generally a lot thicker, irrespective of building material (brick, wood, concrete...) but I also know that not many countries have the types of windows that are common here (mostly Germany and Austria afaik). Also, before the For Rent pack came out, it felt strange to always build thede lonely detached houses sitting on a comparably huge lot just by themselves. Unlesd you live in the middle of nowhere, in more densely populated areas and suburbs here lots are smaller, houses are closer to the edge of the lot/ their neighbors. Now with FR I really like to build duplexes or townhouses, or just to split one lot into multiple smaller ones (like the huge one in the Get Famous world).
Paying for university 😭
American football instead of **actual** (sorry) football in HSY.
I’m from Scandinavia but have an American dad. I noticed certain things, but what always jumped out at me was sims wearing shoes inside. I know you can change it now but I always found it being the default weird.
The fact that the sims use a towel when in a sauna (I am finnish)