What brings you the most joy when playing?

[CarolJude]

For me, hands down, it's gotta be after installing some new content and waiting for that one caption at the bottom of the game loading screen to change to the next one. I don't have all the EPs yet so for me it's waiting for 'Proscribing Plebian Palates' (sic) to change into 'Faux Finishing. When it does that, I can breathe again and know I can get down to actually PLAYING.

And if the sound cuts out and my little Mac beachball (our version of the hourglass) starts spinning, I let fly with a few bad words and start removing and rebooting, removing and rebooting...

Did a bit of that this evening and now everything appears to be copasetic, so I am celebrating by posting this.

[MaryH]

I know what you mean-I have only 2 eps, and when I install stuff, I wait with bated breath until the game loads half-way past the first screen; then I can breathe again: "It works!"

Even if it says "base game" only, I don't trust many downloads-been burned too many times to assume it will work with my computer, a very fussy little beast-that will inform me promptly as to offending material: "The application has crashed. The application will now close."

Those are terrible words to read.

[Paden]

I'd have to say when I see how good stuff looks in-game after I install it. I'm closing in on six gigs of stuff, so I wait until the bar starts to move across the screen, then wait some more, pick up a comic book and wait some more and once it's finally loaded, I have to figure out what I was going to do. Was I going to play? Was I going to take screen shots? Was I going to build another new lot for upload? Then I just say to heck with it and play a bit until I remember. But the times I start it up just to play, those are the most joyful times for me.

[soundandfury]

Weirdly enough, since I'm huge on planning out my sims' lives, the thing that makes me happiest is when something totally unexpected happens - beyond my control. Someone dies, someone gets pregnant by accident (with risky woohoo and ACR and all that), two people hit it off better than expected, etc.

Sometimes I tempt fate and don't pause the game when I get up to get a snack, run errands, or whatever. Some of my favorite games have been created that way. I had a house full of CSI sims (Grissom, Sara, Catherine, Warrick, Nick & Greg). . . all paired up and pregnant. Babies were had, I walked away, and everyone died in a fire except for Catherine & the babies. That was a REALLY fun game. Hectic, but so much fun.

Families without parents have happened too. . . they're a lot of fun. I like when my Sims actually have to work to make ends meet.

An affair with the mailman, teenage parents living on their own. . . I even had someone kidnap a toddler once.

Good times

[AxelVal]

I'm with Soundandfury  :]
I love planning things for my sims but when something I don't expect comes along I usually get pretty giddy trying to figure out how to make it work.  I absolutely love the "Find-A-Mate" crystal ball, especially when I get people with triple-bolt chemistry!