Sims 2 Hobby System

Hobbies 

The Sims 2 Free Time introduced the Hobby system back in 2008 (Gosh I feel old!).

This system revolutionised the Sims 2  by providing the Sims even more depth of character than before (The Sims 4 could never...). As a kid I never used this feature, but as an adult it is my favourite feature.

10 Hobbies were introduced:

• Cuisine 

• Film and Literature 
  
  
• Tinkering 
  
  
• Sports 
• Music and Dance 

• Fitness
  
• Arts and Crafts

• Science 

• Games 
  
  
• Nature
  
  

With each hobby is associated personalities and interests which define each sim's "Predestined Hobby". Each hobby category comes with hobby specific objects or hobby associated objects that build that hobby's enthusiasm.

I built my Hobby System with a lot of inspiration from Pleasant Sims system for hobbies and so is linked here with my thanks for her inspiration.
https://pleasantsims.com/hobby-system-sims-2/

Hobby Subcategories

Each hobby in game, when you view the 'Hobby Enthusiasm' panel from 'Simology' has pre-determined symbols that (to me) imply the types of subcategory for that hobby.

Take the sim below. Meet Paris Capp (perhaps she will show up again if I ever tell her story?)
The panel shows her pre-destined hobby is Science but she doesn't have much enthusiasm in it. Instead she clearly tends to cook, play chess, paint and use the exercise bike (hence why the associated hobbies are filled up with more enthusiasm).

Her science hobby has 5 symbols which I now call subcategories. Consider your own hobby or hobbies, just because you enjoy listening to pop music does not mean playing the drums is just as enjoyable for you and thus it isn't to my sims.

In science you can see the sub-categories (or their symbols at least) are: Conical Flask, Telescope, Microscope, Atomic Structure, and Planet in the Night's Sky.

All 10 hobbies have 5 symbols associated to them in the hobby enthusiasm panel and this became the basis to my own subcategories system - Resulting in 50 possible hobbies for my sims. 

Some of the symbols lend themselves to be more obvious such as  clearly implying a piano playing hobby, but other symbols needed more (shall we say) creative ideology from me to make the hobby fit and sometimes separate it from another subcategory which has a clearer symbol in it.

Take these two symbols  &  from the Science hobby we saw earlier. Both imply stargazing; which one makes more sense to represent stargazing and what other subcategory could be represented by the other? Find out below!

I also wanted to try to get as many activities that are listed for each hobby into these 5 subcategories, so some symbols and activities matching are not ideal but we scrape the barrel when we must and all that.

I always seem to get Sport and Fitness sims, in fact my current main game of Veronaville 100 years later, has every household almost with a sport or fitness sim. Sport is so boring to play as well. Click sim, 'Play', Toss football ...Eugh... Maybe my dislike of sport as a human has bred a dislike of it within the sims? Hah!

Here is how I use my own hobby system in game within my own excel docs.

It may be small to see but you can see the symbols for the hobby per sim. So this household has Paris Capp who's hobby is "Theorist" subcategory of Science, and so the focus is reading books such as sci-fi, reading science magazines, newspaper sections, blogging science and watching science TV channels (I have some custom TV channels to expand the TV selection in my game).

Whilst her son Dardanius has the "Shoes Exercise" subcategory of Fitness and so he does a lot of jump rope and will do yoga when he unlocks it.

I personally choose one Subcategory of Hobby per Sim and try to make that a focus whilst sometimes doing other subcategories, however you could do this anyway you wanted!

I'd love to hear from you if you're reading, how do hobbies work for you? Could my system work for your gameplay? Do you also hate the Sports hobby?

Insert this into your Game and Insert the Sims into your life!

If you would like to contact me, please comment down below, or alternatively send me an email at insertthesims@gmail.com.  I would love to hear from you

All symbol images and some information was taken from Sims Wiki found here https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Hobby