This website is designed to use the latest web standards. This means it'll only work with up-do-date browsers. Keeping your browser updated is most important for your online safety, so if you have an old browser then it's time to grab the newest version!
Check out the Website Support section (top menu) if you need help using the website and the files available to download on Parsimonious. Each section of the site has it's own instructions too, you'll find quick links available on the side of most of the content pages.
We highly recommend Sims Wiki, an information site about all versions of The Sims compiled by the folks who created Mod The Sims and supported by lots of knowledgeable community members.
There's now a single central contact form for the entire site! You can ask Kate your site related questions as well as passing on comments and questions for other resident artists (although since they've all retired you may not get an answer):
You'll find the option to jump to the contact page by clicking on 'Kate' at the bottom of every page in this latest version of Parsimonious.
A few weeks ago a very kind and generous visitor responded to my previous post about there not being any Sims 4 content by buying me a copy 'just in case' I felt like making some content for it after all! It won't run on my aging laptop with it's dying graphics card, but having coaxed it's predecessor back into life with a clean install and many, many days of updates, I have finally had an opportunity to have a look at the game. And my conclusion is that The Sims 4 Studio is a great creative tool that I've very much enjoyed using and am happy to spend some more time with... (yeah... you see what I did there...)
I have a to-do list of site related chores and content projects which could literally take me a decade, but I have found some time to make a few walls and floors which you can download here.
It's been a bigger job than expected, but finally Parsimonious is getting up to date with the EU's annoying legislation regarding cookies. There may be some disruption to the site whilst this change is being carried out.
Ironically Parsimonious doesn't use cookies within the actual website part (all the bits we have anything to do with), but because our advertising networks do, we are required to have a cookie which asks you if you agree to using cookies or not... yeah... so... that's happening.
For More Information:
I am officially withdrawing the $200 reward offered in exchange for a Sims 2 modder fixing up my broken Soulberry Aromatherapy set.
I took the set offline in 2007 after 7 failed attempts at fixing it myself and posted a $25 reward which was quickly increased several times. Since no one has expressed any interest in this during the 8 years the reward has been offered I am going to go give up on this ill-fated set and spend my $200 on something else... perhaps I'll treat myself to yet another pair of vintage Swears... Who knows...
A small word of warning that there is likely to be disruption to the site whilst a new version is installed, as yet I don't have an estimated date, but it should be within the next couple of months and will see downloads for other games and additional content being moved to Parsimonious from other sites which I have closed. This will not include any content for Rollercoaster Tycoon World because that game clearly sucks and I don't want anything to do with it!
Just to reiterate, there will NOT be any content added for The Sims 4. I am still getting a lot of messages from visitors expressing an interest in Parsimonious content for The Sims 4, however we do not have any creators who make content for The Sims 4. I am certainly too busy to make Sims 4 content myself, I don't own The Sims 4 and my ancient laptop wouldn't run it anyway even if I did!
A couple of extremely unimportant administrative changes to note.
First of all the completely redundant menu has been removed from this page - there's a menu at the top of this page already, just as there is on every other page. Today I've made some aesthetic changes to the top menu in the expectation of adding new sections for other games, arts, crafts and other sundry shenanigans.
The second piece of mind-numbing administrative nonsense is that this site is now officially no longer supporting IE 7. I have removed the style-sheet that was attempting to magic the site workable to IE7 users, so if you're the sort of feckless wondertard that thinks having a browser that was dangerously out-of-date 5 years ago is somehow 'retro' or 'rebellious' - please go away - we don't want you here any more.
Returning visitors may have noticed I've been AWOL for a long while and recently I've had a lot of emails asking me about Sims 4 content. For the first time since the series started I have not bought EA's newest Sims offering, it simply wasn't good enough.
It is, of course, not just about the money. And for all you EA apologists out there, it might well be 'just a computer game' BUT for me the central issue is lack of choice. We have the right to care about what we spent our time and our money on. As consumers, if we dislike a 'new and improved' product, be it washing liquid, or pasta sauce, or toilet roll etc, we can switch brands. But what happens if the publisher of our favorite people simulator game makes a version which is old and inferior and crashes every 20 minutes? We either pay for a product which is inadequate, and which will cost extra to 'put right' via DLC, or we must live without it. I find it extremely odd that anyone who loves The Sims even half as much as I do (or did), would ever thank EA, let alone defend them, for putting us in that position.
Of course you could just stick to The Sims 3. Easy to do when you consider the investment in expansions, maybe Store content, even hardware to run the game. But harder to do when you consider that we are all human beings not Sims. It's hard not to feel like you are missing out. The expectation and promise (and publisher hype) of a new game will move even the most cynical Sims fan to excitement, most of us probably envisaged investing countless future hours playing or creating for this new game. It's hard not to feel like someone canceled Christmas (or whatever your equivalent celebratory high-point of the year might be) when all that promise turns into a giant let-down with strings attached. If I buy this game for £50, I know I will have to pay more later if I want to have a game which has the same basic content that shipped with the previous base games. If that doesn't qualify as 'a string' I don't know what does...
What I don't understand is why this happened (aside from because of EA's ravenous greed)? Why is it so hard for these developers to listen to the community? Yes Sims have an all new system of emotions and interactions, but every review I've read seems to imply the same conclusion, which is at best they've made a game which no longer requires our input - this strategy game has lost it's strategy. At worst the character upgrades quickly become irrelevant against a backdrop of crashes and dissonance caused by immersion breaking feature loss, i.e. the loading when going to a community lot. EA has also made a lot of fuss out of the new CAS tools, but none of them seem to be sufficiently sophisticated to stop Sims looking like bread dough.
I'm not saying all the innovations are bad, I'm sure they have many positive aspects, but surely not at the expense of all the other lost features. And I'm not talking just about the 80 or so 'missing' features available in earlier versions, but also about additional new features which really should have been in this game. The Sims 4, even if it had had all the basics we have come to expect (i.e. open world, toddlers, CAST, pools etc), lacks that essential evolutionary leap that necessitates a brand new game (or perhaps rather which a new game necessitates).
Then again... this is EA, why give us more when they can get away with giving us less and selling the rest to us in expensive installments? Why bother giving us larger communities, more subtle aging, better story progression or better creative tools when you can still make a ridiculous amount of money for a game which has none of these things and brings with it an opportunity for everyone to purchase all new Store content over again....
Regardless it does seem to be an issue that has divided the community. There are plenty of people who own and love The Sims 4, and a lot of those people feel persecuted by all the negative commentary. It's understandable, but I would urge those people to please keep in mind that it's not that we dislike you for liking the game, we dislike EA for putting us in a position where we simply couldn't go on liking it any more. Yes maybe if you hadn't bought it EA might have listened to our complaints, but then again probably not. This is after all a company that spent a year furiously denying that SimCity could work offline, and that wasted 11 years developing Spore... otherwise known as baby's first EVE Offline with monsters (btw, in case anyone wants an invite for a free 21 day trial for EVE Online... clicky-clicky!)
At this time I have not made a decision as to the future of Parsimonious with regard to The Sims 4 (other than at this time I am confident that I will not be creating for it). In some respects it is rather a moot point, if we have no creators making content for The Sims 4, then there will be no requirement for me to update the site to support publication! In the mean time I have recently enjoyed the great fortune of losing a job I sincerely hated, so I am hoping to get back to a modest amount of creating for one of the other 3 games at some point soon, but I haven't decided which one yet. Probably for whoever shouts the loudest!
TLDR: I haven't bought The Sims 4 because I am ticked off with EA - they have let us down and I for one, have had enough!
Supernatural will be hitting the shelves from September 4th to September 21st - depending where in the world you live.
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