I Tried to Survive As a Freelance Writer in The Sims 4

Writer’s Note:

When I pitched this article you’re about to read back in early February, we lived in a very different world. I had just returned from a trip to meet a group of my friends from the Into the Spine network – fellow freelance writers from Dublin, Buenos Aires and more who flew to the UK to meet up for the first time and blow off some steam after a difficult year. Little did I know that it would be the last time I travelled before my country issued a nationwide lockdown. The premise of that trip, and for that matter, any future social activity feels genuinely unimaginable due to the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic which has truncated our society, causing physical, mental and financial anguish for millions of people worldwide. 

As far as freelance writing opportunities go, many of us are suffering due to the economic strain of the crisis. Budgets are squeezed at the best of times, but now many are frozen altogether, with no date given for when they will return to normal or if they will at all. Publications have closed with immediate effect, and many writers on retainer have been let go from the positions that afforded them financial stability. 

The volatility of my industry is common knowledge, but in my time in the gig economy, I’ve not seen such a systematic loss of opportunities at one time. The rug has been pulled out from beneath us without warning, and with a lack of worker’s rights and paltry government guidance and support, the freelancers and remote workers who serve as an important backbone to many industries are terrified and struggling to make ends meet right now, myself included. The existential nausea of this pandemic made this article quite a raw subject for me, and a piece that had to change to adapt to the scenery, one that was difficult to turn in on time given the cacophony of anxious worries building around my career and livelihood. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it and find something to smile about in my self-deprecating simulation. I know the experience gave me a few cathartic laughs, even if they were sardonic in nature.

A few weeks ago, I managed to rear my head out of the collective pit of despair long enough to play a new video game. In between reading exposes about the death of the ad market (and by proxy, my career) and stomaching barefaced governmental failure, death statistics and saccharine patriotic claptrap, I sat down for an afternoon to play The Sims 4. 

I’d been wanting to play it ever since I heard about the freelance writing career, which had been grafted in as a free update back in early 2019. The fact that it took me a year to get around to it feels part and parcel of the thesis of this article – just how well does The Sims 4 imitate my cursed career choice? This was the morbid question that sprang into my brain when I first pitched this diary back in late 2019. After a rejection from PC Gamer and a long pause for thought, it found a home at EGM in early 2020 and was then spiked during the edits phase due to a budget freeze, which affected tons of freelancers with established commissions, myself included. So it goes. 

Thankfully, the fine folks at Uppercut organized an initiative to repatriate these lost articles, and now you get to read it in its entirety after a year and change of unforeseen circumstances – such is the nature of freelance writing.

Ever since I fell into this career it’s struck me that not many people understand what my job entails – even my friends and family find it difficult to parse the profession, and optimistically believe I’m some moustache-twirling goblin genius who plays video games all day in his underpants. Granted, the underpants part is true, but it’s hard to explain the difficulties to people without sounding like an esoteric space alien. 

I’m from a family of grafters in an impoverished area of England (Thanks, Tories!) where you’re expected to pick up a trade and get your hands dirty, which certainly complicates things when all of my output is intangible, digital guff about summoning vampires in cowboy games and vacant virtual casinos. The only time it seems to land is when I’ve been able to present my words to them in a physical newspaper, which is ironic given the metallic tang to the water in the print media industry.

Embarking on my experiment, I took my time to craft a guinea pig I could live vicariously through, who we’ll call Jamie to avoid potential confusion. Remarkably, one of the outfits I was disgusted to be offered from the offset was a plaid shirt and blue jeans combo, which, when accompanied by a messenger bag, completes the ‘i don’t understand fashion and at this point, I’m too afraid to ask’ ensemble of games journalists everywhere. Dear reader, rest assured that I fight this stereotype with my whole chest.

In choosing my lot, I decided to hedge my bets and make my nest in San Myushino, The Sims 4’s homage to San Fran. Jamie was priced out of the Fashion District, where I’m told ‘Geekcon’ was held (more on that later) and settled into an apartment which came with ‘Gremlins’ in the Spice District.

In reality, San Francisco is where most of the major outlets in games media are headquartered. Outside of reality, Jamie’s rent came to 400 Simoleons a week for an apartment to himself, which is a gross underestimation of the housing crisis in one of the most expensive cities in the world.  

The last time I checked, I’d have to pay upwards of £1,200 a month to live in a skinner box with five strangers in London if I wanted to be “part of the action” in my industry. These simulated monthly arrears made me think that The Sims 4 exists in an alternate timeline where they turned the frozen wheel in 2016 and the world became an astonishing utopia. 

After settling in, Jamie spent the remainder of his starting cash on a computer and headed to a nearby karaoke bar to celebrate the move – what can I say, games journalists love karaoke. 

Jamie made a friend at the bar but made the mistake of discussing careers, conversational concrete boots for a freelance games journalist. She immediately offered him a double minus response, and whilst I’m not fluent in Simlish, I’m pretty sure she said “so you just play video games all day?” and we left it there. 

The first major inconsistency in the experience occurred when Jamie woke up the next morning (after sleeping on the carpet, hungover) and changed into a suit and tie. It’s bold of The Sims to assume that I don’t write all of my articles by and in the seat of my pants, as I am right now. I quickly tried to shave off the husk of bureaucracy that was enveloping Jamie and restore normality, but not before he had left the building and went to work.

This is where things really started to diverge. Went to work? Reading his job description, Jamie was a freelance article writer, a profession where your bedroom is your kingdom. Here he was commuting to an office, to socialise with other human beings? The Sims 4’s simulation is clearly more advanced than I thought, as it appears to have assumed I was permalance, an unfortunately common situation in our industry where a writer works from the office of an outlet but is actually on a full-time freelance contract – as such, they file their own taxes and lack any of the benefits you’d receive as an employee. 

Professional purgatory, if you will – a cavernous crèche for talent that’s hard to claw your way out of. On the upside, Jamie gets one foot in the door so he can peer in at the payroll party and dream of having their health insurance and pension schemes.

So,being at the bottom of the ladder but not on his own terms, I made Jamie quit his job when he got home – before the adults in the room could inevitably gut him – and hopped onto the information superhighway to enter the brave new world of freelance journalism. 

This was an odd mirror to my similarly absurd entry into the gig economy, a career I barged into for survival with my Archaeology degree, appaling proximity to “the action,” and lack of opportunities after graduation. I left Jamie’s suit on for good luck – it would be the last time he’d wear it, and it would help him fake it until he made it, a critical aspect of any freelancer’s career trajectory. The scarcity of opportunities in this industry demands an adaptive spirit, where you can assert your intellectual expertise in topics you were previously uninformed in, often overnight. The career epiphany that gave rise to my modest assortment of bylines was the concept that editors don’t really care about who you are or your previous bylines – they care most about the strength of your pitch and your ability to adapt to new styles and topics on the fly. Unless said editors are career nepotists and only tend to their flock – in which case, good luck breaking into those outlets.

Searching for gigs, I tried to keep it relative to my own experience, so instead of looking for more stable flat-rate reporting assignments, I kickstarted Jamie’s career at Fab Magazine writing clickbait articles (their words, not mine) for 130 simoleons a pop. This means I’d sacrifice my principles to make rent in four articles, a laughably simple money-maker for my first assignment. Yet more often than not, the places lower on the freelance rung will pay you ‘per-click’, a predatory model where you’ll only see a result if your article does well for the site exploiting your talent. In an industry already hounded into submission by the slime-gurgling necrophage that is the Search Engine Optimization system, you may as well get paid fairly for your time and aim higher.

Yet it’s certainly not as bad as getting paid in the unknowable, ethereal scrip that is ‘exposure’ though, a strange resource offered (ironically) by sites with the least exposure, which amounts to nothing in your bank account but surfaces as a pre-release code for a video game or a “place to have your work displayed” despite the fact that WordPress exists. Both of these tempting reasons aren’t worth selling your free time to people who are taking advantage of your misguided ambition (to be a content slave?) to make bank on ad money – well, not anymore, but you catch my drift.

Maybe one day you’ll work so hard for exposure that John Gamespot will knock on your door and personally pull you into the upper echelons of the games industry, where you’ll slowly mutate into the next Greg Miller! Speaking from experience, I can tell you that this isn’t how it works. 

Jamie wrapped up his blistering debut and passed it on to the client. Almost instantaneously, the money appeared in his bank account. I was flabbergasted… were they using OutVoice? Normally, freelancers wait at best two weeks to receive payment, others a month or two and in some special cases, I’ve spent the better part of a year begging at the altar of accounts payable whilst outlets fumble my bank details like a greasy football. Every one of us has a tale about invoicing that would make Kafka squirm – it makes for great conversation when we congregate in hotel bars and convention centre-adjacent brauhauses.

As much as I wanted to take my hands off the wheel here and let my Sim do their job, it turns out that, unlike any other career path in The Sims 4, Jamie won’t just naturally perform in the gig economy unless the player intervenes – which speaks volumes to the self-discipline necessary to freelance. In fact, I found it increasingly hard to drag him away from Incredible Sports, the FIFA facsimile which he was losing precious working hours to on a daily basis. They weren’t writing guides or playing it pre-release, so the idea of him playing it for fun in his leisure time was more disturbing than the lack of fresh air. 

As he fired off article after article, the experience became somewhat Sisyphean. If this was the real state of California, I would have hit the AB5 35 (the state’s abhorrent per-outlet yearly article limit for freelancers) in days. Every piece I sent out was also deemed perfect and exactly what the client was looking for, with no dramatic pay discrepancy or edits needed.

It’s odd… I started to miss the spirited back and forths with editors over an article’s content – and the sense of improvement you feel after a round of drafts. Despite how rare that has become in reality as understandably time-strapped editors tidy and hit publish, that push and pull between writer and editor is a valuable part of the story making process. It often results in the best features when embraced. Here though, the lack of it had ground Jamie down more than ever. He’d become a cog in the content machine, but he couldn’t even guzzle the validation oil from the exhaust. 

Where was Jamie’s breakout reported feature about cut content and crunch? When was he going to get the opportunity to tell important stories at respectable outlets? The effects of this flat career progression were stark on my Sim. Jamie started taking showers at 3 PM and eating dinner at 11, and his articles nosedived into the absurd. He rebelled against the fiscal ease of his situation… in mastering doing the bare minimum, Jamie had become complacent, and a hatred for the craft started to brew. 

As the clients responded in kind to articles like “12 Metal Gaming Covers You’ll Wish You Never Heard,” Jamie’s behaviour became erratic. I bought him a floor mural and a few therapeutic material goods for the house, including a radio, some plants and a children’s tv shaped like a penguin, to try and calm him down.

The middle of the week soon arrived, and without any desire to leave his grotty den of self-isolation, I soon realised I’d created an outcast, a hermit monster starved of air and incapable of social etiquette. The only thing invigorating Jamie was the comforting hum of Incredible Sports. He’d sit at the computer playing until he was visibly angry, often ignoring my commands to do some work. At one low point, hands off the wheel, Jamie walked out of his apartment and tipped an elderly lady 10 Simoleons, no services rendered, then walked back into his room – a frightening engagement which marked his first social interaction in days.

The main thing The Sims 4 fails to reflect about the freelance experience is the sheer amount of hours I spend pitching and responding to emails – somehow in-game you can have your pick of the gigs and you’ll get all of them instantaneously, no effort required. It’s weird how much I started to miss this part of the job that usually runs me most ragged. Wracking your brain for ideas is hard, but the sting of rejection is often what gives me the boost I need to pitch smarter and tell more stories.

Yet the next morning, my Sim’s prior rebellion seemed to summon a personal apocalypse. Jamie opened up the freelance gig portal and found the ever-abundant opportunity boxes greyed out. All that was left were high-paying gigs, for which my Sim didn’t have enough experience. Time passed, and many hours of Incredible Sports were played.

In the wee hours of the next morning, he finished a difficult commission hours before submission and started dancing to music in his living room in a state of undress. That part checks out.

Now, the well was dry, and Jamie had foolishly misinterpreted the aforementioned final brief prior to the drought. The client eventually came back to Jamie, telling him that his children’s book “Yoshi Gets Audited” needed another pass before submission as it was “too mature and exciting for children.” I shook my head in disagreement, but I couldn’t change the facts – Jamie’s deadline was Sunday morning and it was already late on Saturday. Whacked out from his awful diet, my Sim resolved to go to bed early, wake up at 5 or 6 and finish it in the morning before the deadline, a classic freelance tactic. 

Jamie slept hard, filled with fear, but at 3 AM, disaster pulled him from his dreams. The penguin TV I’d bought him with his first paycheck was farting out green smoke. The oven was emitting sparks and his toilet started drowning the living space in piss. The so-called “gremlins” had turned my apartment into their own personal playpen. 

As filth accumulated, Jamie had to call emergency repair services three times, draining his finances down to a measly 300 Simoleons. He also missed his deadline and got paid a kill fee, resolving to send the Yoshi fanfic out to any publisher who would dare to read it.

The next morning, Jamie woke up to find the man he had performed a karaoke duet with days earlier banging on his door. Enter stage left: the landlord. He told Jamie that he had 48 hours to pay or they were going to shut off his utilities “one by one.” It was depressing to watch my Sim as they worry-slept their way through the afternoon, but not unexpected. The lack of worker’s rights globally for freelancers means that a sudden loss of business is all-but-impossible to remedy without savings and external support. As expected, Jamie shortly found himself without power, and no means to continue with his craft.

Fate on his side, Jamie received a blessing in the form of a phone notification: Geekcon was in town. Conventions equal access to games in-development and interviews (and by proxy, commissions!) if you can look past the hordes of people with poor personal hygiene. 

Opportunities for stories racing in his mind, Jamie headed to the festival centre and lost himself in a bold augmented reality experience for a few hours, before using the on-site computers to work on stories rather than play the latest games. As for the convention experience, that’s fairly spot on, but he’s still waiting for the email to tell him that he’s been doxxed. Jamie’s Geekcon work has given him nearly enough to pay back his arrears, but it still wasn’t quite there. Anxious and alone, he went home and back to bed, thinking things couldn’t get any worse.

They could. Despite the fact that I had no power or water, the gremlins struck once more and this time his precious lifeblood, Jamie’s personal computer was broken. This forced his hand, and Jamie used his last Simoleons to summon yet another repair worker. 

Sleep interrupted, Jamie went back to bed whilst he toiled… but woke up to the Grim Reaper in his living room.  Allesandro the repairman had perished overnight, electrocuted by Jamie’s own workstation. He begged the bone man to bring him back, but he wasn’t interested. So it goes. 

As dawn’s rosy fingers caressed Allesandro’s urn on the living room floor, I thought it was a natural time to shut the simulation down and return to the… better… reality. 

In a lot of ways, the descent into chaos was a brutal reflection of the realities of this profession, with an understandably absurd end. I found some catharsis through this experience, but also a hollow and idealistic vision of what The Sims 4 thinks freelance writing is. 

In that respect, I wondered if fleshing it out would be the right call… or whether it would just exhume the worst parts of the job that run antithetical to the joy of playing games. I’m not in  the business of forcing anti-fun realism into a game that doesn’t demand it, but regardless, it’s worthwhile to prod at this tremendously idealistic depiction. 

At the very least, with more preparation, better circumstances and a money cheat or two, The Sims 4 could be used as a utopian escape to a world where freelancing is viable and respected, with instant pay, abundant opportunities and a low barrier for entry – as long as you can measure your ambitions and social livelihood in the process. 

It’s easy to sum up The Sims 4’s breezy take on freelancing with the unintentionally hilarious way that the game’s player base has responded to it. In the technical issues section of EA Answers, posters are coming to terms with the harsh realities of the job in real-time. Here’s user Troshalom lamenting the editorial process as a bug. “Sim completed the article twice, but both times the game did not register the article as complete and thus the sim did not receive payment for the article but instead was marked with poor performance. Please fix this.” 

In another post, a user’s live discovery of the difficulties of work/life balance makes for cathartic reading… “Once or twice she had spontaneously stopped working on the book to do other random stuff on the computer.  Any time she stopped working on the book to do something else, I had to have her completely restart the book.  I had planned on her using this as a career to allow her to be a work-from-home single mother but now I’m not sure it will work.”

I’ll be honest, Sharkette126. I’m not sure myself either.