I was reading player stories on sims.wikia.com and they were talking about years and it made me think. How do you break up years in your game? If you don't thats okay.

I just look at it as 80 human days like something changed in our world.

I just look at it as 1day = 1 year, even thou it makes no sense that you are pregnant for 3 years, or that one season in TS2 is 5 years. But they are sims, it doesn't have to make sense.

It varies. In normal gameplay, I ignore the concept of years altogether; when I'm creating a story, I say "a few years passed" when my Sims age or "a few months passed" when they successfully complete a pregnancy. I find the idea of trying to mimic years interesting, because I've never thought it necessary except from a storytelling standpoint.

If you count 1 day = 1 year, certain lifestages don't make sense, but over the course of a Sim lifespan it does come out pretty close to accurate. That's how I do it when I play my legacy challenge. There are also a lot of mods that adjust the ages at each lifestage so they are more realistic.

I use one day = one year, and have adjusted some ages accordingly (babies for two days, toddlers for three, teens for seven and adults for 35). I've also adjusted the pregnancy timeline so that a sim is pregnant for 18 hours, although it does make it interesting when a sim of mine gets pregnant in college -- for me, one year of college = one day in the main 'hood, so sims revert back to the usual three-day pregnancy in college.

I don't often bother about years, but if I do then it's 1 sim-day = 1 year. I don't think of sims as being human so it makes sense to me that their time and lifespans aren't the same as humans.

Love your post. I am considering on writing a story about a girl who only has 15 days to be a teen and wham! Adult hood or should could delay it to attend college. lol. I see day one being very long. I should break it down by hour.

I just use the same. 1 day=1 year.

1 day= 1 year for me as well. except for pregnancies, I count each trimester as 3 months.

I go with the season when my sims complets one game season for me is one year same for preg...general 3 seasons makes the birthmore realistic on my game...the hacks to suspend it and freeze the ages helps a looooooooooooooooot!

i don't do one year at a time, but when i play for a while and when the kids are aging up, people are dying and things are changing.. i consider them to be years apart.

it's kind of interesting, because you can think about it however you want.

Well I have the seasons EP so every time my game runs the course of all 4 seasons I consider that a year. It makes little sense when it comes to birthdays for only one or two seasons pass before they get older, not even a whole 'year'. But it works for me. I dont think there is an actually 'ACCURATE' way to put years in the sims and make it work out for evey thing!

Call me crazy, but I actually reset my hoods seasons, play 365 days, keep track of the months, years, etc and keep aging off until I want to age the sim. A bit OCD, I know, but it really makes it fun and more realistic. That way, when I have a Christmas tree up, they aren't shopping for Christmas presents on lots that are green and sunny!

^ Seriously? That's pretty cool!

Yep! I cannot stand to let go of my Sims! So this makes it far more realistic for me (and them, I'm sure! )

And, it drives me crazy that it is so cut and dried about their ages. No middle age sends me up the wall!

i don't do exactly that. but i do go by the months according to the seasons.

for example, winter would obviously be december or sometime around winter. usually when the season is ending i put up the christmas tree. at the beginning of winter i would do thanksgiving or halloween.

I don't really keep track of years, but I do sometimes have my sims celebrate some holidays according to the seasons. I don't always bother, though, so this list is pretty much all optional in my game! Some families celebrate everything, others nothing, and the majority somewhere inbetween.... All my neighbourhoods are Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter (apart from the Bon Voyage destinations.

The 1st or 2nd day of spring - Valentine's Day. Hearts, roses, teddies and chocolate abound for all married couple or couples in relationships. Sims who are in love may also give each other gifts. And people with one sided crushes may send cards to the person they fancy! :-)

The last day of spring - Easter. Chocolates, bunnies and flowers. I only really bother with easter in families with young children - I used to love easter!! :-)

The 3rd day of autumn - Halloween. Costumes and pumpkins all over the place. And fancy dress parties. Again, this one is normally just for families with young children, and students! (never celebrated Halloween as a child, but I do now I'm a student!)

The 4th day of autumn - Bonfire Night. This is a UK thing, for those of you who've never heard of it! Once evening comes it's time for bonfires, fireworks, and nice hot comfort food (generally soup, chilli or hotdogs). Most of my families don't bother with this one.

The 2rd day of winter - Christmas day. Pretty obvious, I expect. Christmas tree and decorations, everyone gets dressed up and gives each other presents, turkey (or CC cabbage wraps for vegetarians) for dinner.

The 4th day of winter - New Year's Eve. A party! Sometimes with fireworks, but not always. Having it on the 4th day of winter doesn't really make sense, as I consider winter to be mid November - December - January - mid February, but I didn't want it to be the day after christmas.....

I also tend to send families with kids/teens on holiday at some point during summer. Normally to Far East or Beach destinations - Mountain holidays tend to be reserved for Christmas holidays.

Other than that I don't keep track of the years for birthdays or aging or anything, I just go by sim lifespan. Means that they don't see many christmases in their lifetime, though!

Wow. Some of you guys (Laura and Dadebabe) are SUPER organized.

Me? Meh... Years are years. You know. Sims don't live in the real world, they're like a parallel universe, sort of? So there's no real "Fourth of July" or "Christmas" for them. For me, there's just the life stages, and those by themselves are I guess you could say "Years."
Wow, I just read over that and I was really vague.
The point I'm trying to make is that Sims don't really have years, they have life stages, but if there were years, there would be several in each life stage, I guess a day = a year.

So if you have a one night stand does that mean you've been woohoo-ing the same person for an entire year?

And what if their partner finds out and slaps your sim. Would that be an entire year's worth of slaps?

You have no idea how much that made me laugh.

For me, making one day = one year would go too fast! In RL, I like to have my Christmas decorations up for more than a day, mainly because it takes so freakin' long to put them up. If if decorate a Sims house and it takes me a while, I want it to last. But again, I am not interested in getting rid of the Sims I have now anytime soon. So, if their lives last the same amount of time as mine, then, that's ok. I make new ones, but I cannot bear to lose my existing ones...not yet.