How does The Sims 2 FreeTime compare to The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies?

I try my hardest not to compare The Sims packs from one generation to another. I recognize that each game has its own philosophy and scope and systems. I understand that the designers don’t want to ever create a pack that is 1:1 to a pack from a previous generation. However, I think we really need to talk about the implications they have thrust upon themselves by naming the most recent expansion The Sims 4 Businesses & HOBBIES, especially when compared to the hobbies system in The Sims 2 FreeTime.

It’s a poorly titled pack. We all know this. We can all admit this. Yes, it’s an amazing expansion that has brought a ton of wonderful features to The Sims 4. That said, including the word Hobbies in the title is an incredibly odd choice. Truthfully, the game added one hobby, pottery. Tattooing and candy making are not hobbies. They just aren’t. 

They could have justified having hobbies in the title by introducing a new system to the game surrounding skills, like they did in The Sims 2 FreeTime, but they didn’t do that either. The new skill classes and skill mastery perks are not enough to justify the expansion pack title. 

With all that said, let’s take a look back at The Sims 2 FreeTime hobbies system.

Hobby Enthusiasm

Hobby Enthusiasm was a new feature that separated each activity in the game into one of ten different categories. As your sims took part in these activities, their enthusiasm for that hobby type would increase. As their enthusiasm increased, new perks would unlock for them. These perks will be explained more in-depth later on, but they featured things like fitness sims being able to make protein shakes, nature sims being able to catch and collect different bugs, and cuisine sims being able to take part in cooking competitions on the unlocked secret lot. 

Every hobby also shared similar or identical perks such as reading about the hobby in magazines or being “in the zone” when their enthusiasm reached the maximum for that type. 

Sims were able to build enthusiasm for any number of hobby types at the same time; you weren’t limited in what they could focus on. If your sim didn’t partake in that hobby’s activities for a while, their enthusiasm meter would slowly drop similarly to personal relationships.

A feature that players both loved and hated was that each sim upon creation was randomly assigned a predestined hobby. Sims build enthusiasm for their predestined hobby faster than others and lose it more slowly. I personally enjoyed the randomness of this feature, but plenty of players wanted the ability to choose it for themselves.

Ten Hobbies

The hobby system contained ten different hobby types with all activities in the game being distributed among each. The ten categories were:

• Cuisine
• Film and Literature
• Tinkering
• Sports
• Music and Dance
• Fitness
• Arts and crafts
• Science
• Games
• Nature

Shared Unlocks

Each hobby had a list of different interactions and activities that could be unlocked as a sim increased their enthusiasm level. A lot of these perks are shared between the different hobbies, but flavored for their type.

Unique Unlocks

Aside from the above shared unlocks, certain hobby types had unique ones as well.

My favorite of these unique unlocks is from the nature hobby. Sims are able to hunt and collect bugs of three types: beetles, butterflies, and spiders. As they increase their hobby enthusiasm for nature, they unlock the ability to collect more and more of these in an actual collection. It’s a framed object your sim can place in their house, and when viewed, it shows you the different ones you have collected so far.

Secret Hobby Lots

Once a sim achieves level 5 enthusiasm in a hobby, they unlock access to a hidden community lot specifically geared towards further building that hobby. Most of these lots feature items the player otherwise only has access to once they unlock it themselves by reaching a high level in a certain career type. This makes these fun, unique items more accessible to players without needing to always play through certain careers or by cheating.

Two of the hidden lots also feature special competitions that your sims can take part in to try and win some money. The Cuisine hobby lot features a cooking competition and the Music and Dance hobby lot features a dance competition.

In The Zone

Once a sim reaches level 10 enthusiasm in any hobby type they unlock the ability to “Be In The Zone.” Whenever the sim partakes in an activity of that hobby type, the perk activates. Once they’re in the zone they’ll emit a white aura around them until they stop that activity. While a sim is in the zone, they build skills faster, create objects faster, and their needs drop slower. 

Some hobbies also feature fun little visuals and sounds when a sim is in the zone. For instance, sims who are in the zone when playing basketball will hear cheering sound effects as if they’re playing in a stadium. Sims in the zone when playing an instrument or doing ballet will have a spotlight over them as if they’re performing in a theatre. Sims in the zone while reading will hear different musical tracks based on the genre of book being read.

This is one of the perks recently introduced in The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies as a skill mastery perk, but with some differences. Unlike in The Sims 2 FreeTime, the perk in The Sims 4 freezes a sim’s needs instead of slowing their decrease. Sadly, it doesn’t allow them to build skills faster or create items faster. While it does still emit a white glowing aura around a sim in the zone, it doesn’t feature any other visuals or sounds when doing certain activities like in The Sims 2 FreeTime.

Final Reflections

After looking at the depth of the hobby system in The Sims 2 FreeTime, it makes me even more disappointed with the word hobbies being included in the title of The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies. With the amount of skills and activities there are in The Sims 4 compared to the much fewer skills and talents in Sims 2, they could have created a system even more detailed and rich. Instead, all we got was a handful of skill mastery perks and the skill classes. They really should have workshopped the expansion pack title some more and went a different route with it.

Explore More

Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies Guides
Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies Official Site
Sims 2 Legacy Collection