Saturday, August 29, 2009
I discovered a cool and very deserving bonus to being a rock star - autograph sessions! If the limo Max is now chauffeured around in isn't enough of a give away to his fame, the ability to get mobbed outside a venue with Sims clamouring for his signature and a touch of his hand certainly is. And the best part? I actually get to be INVOLVED!!
One of the biggest issues a lot of simmers have is that most of the work place community buildings are nothing more than rabbit holes. Your sim disappears into them leaving us standing outside just waiting for the end of the day with not much else to do. I think nearly everyone had high hopes that we'd actually be able to go inside with our Sims and see what they did in there. Even Max's recent investigation of the graveyard catacombs left me standing outside twiddling my thumbs...
Thankfully, autograph sessions are interactive. And bloody hectic LOL!
Ok, so unlike real life rock stars, Max has yet to be randomly approached for his autograph. Instead, in the Sims, you organise sessions at various venues around town. So far, the venues I can see that you can hold sessions at are:
- Little Corsican Bistro
- Hogan's Deep-Fried Diner
- Ever Fresh Delights Supermarket
- Divisadero Budget Books
- and Sharma Day Spa
All you have to do is select the option to hold a session at any venue you prefer while in the map view. Since you're such a super star, it's organised straight away and you get a message such as the following:
I don't actually remember hiring a publicist lol, but if they're going to take care of all the organisation I've got no problem with that. My limo arrived straight away and took me to my location, dropping me out the front. I chose the community theatre since that's where Max worked his way through the ranks and I kinda figured I owed it to them to have my first session there...
While you're standing out the front, you have sims practically mob you - I don't remember seeing so many Sims in one place at one time before. To make it trickier, some fans bring friends along, so not everyone there is after your autograph. What you need to look for is the book symbol that appears above some of their heads. For those sims, you can left click and chose to either sign autograph or interestingly enough, refuse autograph. I guess even rock stars can get picky...
Once you get a few lined up the franticness of it all dies down. There was no time counter or any visual indication of how long I had left to sign, so I just aimed for as many as possible. (I didn't pay attention to what time I started, so didn't know when the 4 hours was up...) Adding to the difficulty of trying to click the right sims in amongst the crowd, is the option to end the session early. For everyone you click, you have the option to end the session, so if you're not paying attention, you can accidentally click that instead of sign.
I assume I must have clicked it without realising as the session ended very quickly and a few sims didn't appear to be too happy with it. But, overall, I still did quite well out of it. I certainly didn't expect to earn money from it... ok, well I was hoping I would, but wasn't banking on it lol.
Once you have held a session you have to wait (not sure how long yet) before you can do another. I guess with that much money involved, they don't want you to holding them too often. I'll be looking to hold these fairly regularly if that's the sort of money you can make - it's time Max upgraded his house from a little shack to something more 'rock starish'...
That's awesome! I've never had a rock star. I'm going to have to get on that! :-)