We often joke that we spend way too much time in character customization, but it turns out we actually do. Player stats revealed by EA reveal that we spent a total of 146,000,000 hours in create a Sim mode, which translates to over 16,000 years.
This news comes from EA's 2021 year in gaming, and reveals that we're all very picky about how our Sims look. The data only pertains to the most recent release The Sims 4, so that's not even the full scale of how micromanage-y we are in this series.
Unsurprisingly, all of that time in create a Sim means we pumped out a whole lot of them. 376 million were created this year, and we spent an additional 226 million hours crafting homes for them to live in. The total playtime doing anything in The Sims 4 is a staggering 1.2 billion, meaning we spend roughly 12 percent of our time in-game messing about on character creation.
The 2021 round-up reveals all kinds of tidbits about what we've been up to. For example, the most common way our Sims bite the dust is old age, so we're looking after them pretty well. It also turns out we got them to Woohoo 274 million times, because of course.
The Sims wasn't the only game to be included in the roundup. EA also included stats on how we've been playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and that might actually be even more surprising. It turns out we're all a bunch of Kaidan and Ashley lovers, as they spent the most time with us on missions in 2021. Adding to that, we're not very good at keeping Mordin and Tali alive during Mass Effect 2's suicide mission - but Jacob is surviving no problem. The least surprising thing about it is seeing Garrus in first place - nothing can take him down, it seems.
The Sims 4 is available to play on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.