The Sims 4 is an animated and interactive life-simulation game where one can build an array of venues and sims -the characters- and play as them and control their lives. Sims 4 was released in 2014 and has remained steadily popular ever since. In fact, the entire franchise has remained in the spotlight of social-simulation games since the release of Sims 1, in 2000. As many Blair students’ lives are centric to this campus, we decided to create Blair Academy in the blank city, Newcrest.
Our first goal, as well as the center of this article, was to create Annie Hall in addition to making some of its residents. As Sims only allows for 8 people per house, we were unable to accurately create a large number of people in Annie. The residents that we did make, however, were roommates Fiona Han and Jennifer Lin, Chloe Lau and Renee Tracey, Tate Leonardo and Kayden Thomas, as well as Sage Christensen in her single, and Ms. D, one of the Annie dorm parents.
The exterior of Annie was built to look as similar to the real one as possible, given the building and land requirements of the game.
Each floor of Annie is similar in terms of bathrooms and bedrooms. Each bathroom, for the most part, has two sinks, two showers, and two toilet stalls as many of the actual ones do. Additionally, all dorms have a desk, dresser, bed, and closet, as well as an attached room where their roommate lives-unless they have a single.
The first floor of Annie holds multiple bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the common room, which includes the couches, fireplace, and ping-pong table for sims to kick back and relax in.
Similarly, the second floor also contains student bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an additional balcony overlooking the common room.
The third and final floor contains bedrooms and bathrooms like the first and second floor as well as one of the faculty apartments. We were unaware of what exactly Ms. D’s apartment looked like, however, we must have done a good job, as the sims placed in Annie continuously and automatically went to hang out in there with her.
The only sim who chose not to make an appearance in the group photo in Ms. D’s apartment was Chloe, who for some reason, automatically stood in the same place in the first floor bathroom for the entire time that we were taking screenshots of the game.
Although there are some inaccuracies in the rooms and layout, we created Annie Hall to the best of our ability given what we had to work with. We hope you enjoyed seeing your own Blair world in another format and we plan to make more dorms and buildings in the future.
(Copyright Kass Strunk and Fiona Han 2021)
