James’ Sims 2 Thoughts: The Sims 2 Open for Business (2006)

I am so excited for this week, because its time to talk about my favorite The Sims 2 expansion, and possibly my favorite Sims expansion of all time

Lets travel back to February 28th, 2006…

The Sims 2: Open for Business was released and changed the simming experience. It allowed us to create our own business and run them! This was such a revolutionary idea for the series and when I got it for Easter in 2006, I was floored by it. It added so many interactions, NPC’s and so many new objects.

The best part about the expansion is the idea of running your own business! I love doing this. I love being able to grab stuff from Buy Mode and be able to pick pretty much anything and everything to sell in your store

This expansion also added yet ANOTHER sub-neighborhood ( In 3 expansions,  we now have 3 sub-neighborhoods…. I’m looking at you, Sims 3 and 4...)

Bluewater Village was added as a neighborhood full of community lots as well as some new families (we welcome Malcolm Landgraab IV to the neighborhood with this pack.) This neighborhood gave us a semi-blank canvas to work with, mostly to build our own restaurants and businesses.

There are 3 types of businesses  you can run:

• Services (such as stores, restaurants, salons, etc)
• Restaurants
• Venues

I am a big fan of the basic store idea. I love making flower shops or art galleries where other sims can buy my own creations. Bakeries are really fun, because you gain cooking skill as well as all the talent badges for running and selling your own products.

Which leads me into a new feature of this expansion: Talent badges.

You earn special badges for doing special interactions, such as hair dressing, toy making, robotics, flower making, etc,. The higher your talent badge is, the quality of the product you craft is higher as well. When the quality of your craft is higher, you can sell the item at a way higher price than what it was made, and be able to get a good profit from it.

When it comes to restaurants, you can hire a cook or be the chef of your own restaurant and pretty much make a really good living from it. I just love the fact that my sim can have a level 10 cooking skill and be the chef in her own restaurant….  (I’m looking at you again, Sims 4: Dine Out…)

You can actually make a decent living  from owning a business. You can make a home business or a business from a community lot. The choice is yours. I love making a home business first, then transferring it over to a small community lot and go from there.

Open for Business, in my personal opinion is THE best sims expansion ever made. If Maxis really wanted to, they could have easily made this a whole spin off of the sims series. It is a jam packed expansion that is full of things that I am still discovering over 10 years since it was released.

Next week I will be exploring what all the barking is all about, with The Sims 2:Pets!