Topic 1: Joey
When I came home from school early this semester and saw my sister watching "Joey" (the under-acclaimed spin-off of Friends), I ridiculed her. Not without reason, since I'd watched the pilot online several months earlier. Watching the pilot forced me to heartily agree with the public in saying "Joey" was not a good a idea. I've been known to say, "Monica and Chandler could've easily been a spin off. Given Ross and Rachel's general popularity as a couple, they probably could've been a spin off [albeit an annoying, quite possibly short-lived spin off]. Even Pheobe was interesting enough to possibly carry her own spin-off [with Mike, of course]. But Joey? Really?"
It seems I was mistaken.
The biggest problem I see with "Joey" was simply that die-hard fans of Friends (the obvious target audience) couldn't stand Joey Tribiani without his "friends". Watching the show on its own merit, it's quite entertaining. Though I don't believe Joey was at all the hinge character. While he's meant to be the main character, any Italian womanizer wanna-be Hollywood star would've sufficed.
As far as I can tell, the show was simply before its time. The character of Michael (Joey's nephew/roommate) is basically a Leonard-from-Big-Bang-Theory type of character. In my opinion, he carries the show.
Topic 2: Why the Sims* is NOTHING like real life.
1. Teens cannot get pregnant.
2. "Teens" cannot be attracted to, date, or marry adults. (While that sounds gross at the outset, think of 19-year-olds marrying 21-year-olds and such.)
3. Children MUST go to either private school or public school. The end.
4. Babies ARE fed by bottles. Period.
5. There are no playpens. Babies either have to be held, in a crib, or left stranded on the floor.
6. Toddlers don't sleep through the night. Period. (While I recognize that not all toddlers sleep through the night, the option isn't even there in Sims. Toddlers sleep for approximately six hours and then scream their heads off to be let out of their cribs.
7. Speaking of cribs, there is no co-sleeping option. Cribs it is!
8. There is no work-at-home option and the job tracks are fairly limited. For example, there's no option to be a teacher.
9. Elders only sleep for around seven or so hours. You're forced to give them a nap during the day if you want them to have normal sleep hours, 'cause they get tired so easily, they fall asleep at 6 and only sleep till 1 in the morning and then are up all night.
10. The great age problem! I've heard (and have assumed) that an hour in Sim time is equal to around a minute in people time. Let's figure out how that works in terms of ages.
Female sims are pregnant for 3 days.
Babies are babies for 3 days.
Toddlers are toddlers for 4 days.
Kids are kids for 8 days.
Teens are teens for 15 days.
Adults are adults for 29 days...
...before becoming elders which are basically random as to when they die.
Now, obviously, this is not proportional to years. A baby becomes a toddler WELL before the age of 3, a kid before the age of 7, a teenager before 15, an adult before 30 (hopefully), and then the elder at 59 is probably about right... maybe a LITTLE late. So it's obviously not day-year correspondence.
Since it's supposed to be minute-hour correspondence, let's figure that out mathematically.
First, let's establish approximate age cut-offs for real life:
Babies become toddlers at around 18 months (though there's obviously no black-and-white, end-all age).
Toddlers become kids (assuming the sims definition that as soon as they become "kids" they go to school) at 5.
Kids become teenagers at 13.
Teens become adults at 20. (I know we could argue that the adulthood falls anywhere between 18-21, to actual developmental adulthood, but for the sake of sims, I'd label it twenty. No longer a teen and in Sims adults don't get any real privileges that older teen sims don't have.)
Adults become elders at . . . oh, let's say 65.
Oh, yes, and women are pregnant for approximately 38 weeks. (Somewhere between nine and ten months).
So, in hours:
Babies: 13,149
Toddlers: 30,681
Kids: 70,128
Teens: 61,362
Adults: 394, 470
Pregnancy: 6384
Obviously, there's already a problem with Sim timing. As I'd always wondered (but only now that the math has been done concluded), people are kids longer than they're teens. Approximately 9,000 hours longer. So how come Sim teens are teens SEVEN DAYS longer than they're kids? Oops!
Sims age transitions in hours:
Babies: 72 hours
Toddlers: 96
Kids: 192 hours
Teens: 360 hours
Adults: 696 hours
Pregnancy: 72 hours
Without figuring out the ACTUAL conversion factor (which I'm sure I'll do as soon as this blog is done), we can see how off sim ages are simply by using ratios:
Real ratios of an age to its following age:
Babies/toddlers: .429
Toddlers/kids: .438
Kids/teens: 1.143
Teens/adults: .156
Pregnancy/adults (for a base): .016
Now, were sim ages realistic, the ratios would be approximately the same. Let's take a look:
Babies/toddlers: .750
Toddlers/kids: .500
Kids/teens: .533
Teens/adults: .517
Pregnancy/adults: .103.
Because all the numbers (excluding kids to teens) are too big, it means either the denominator is too small, or the numerator is too big. Therefore, for example, for babies/toddlers to be an accurate representation with babies at 3 days, toddlers should be toddlers for approximately seven days. Correspondingly, if we left toddlers at 4 days, babies should be babies for a little under two days.
The biggest difference would probably be found with the kids/teens ratio. If kids are kids for 8 days, teens should be teens for approximately a week. If teens remained teens for 15 days, kids should be kids for around 17 days.
Really, sims creators? What were you thinking?!
*Sims 2 is the only experience I have with Sims to date.
