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The latest expansion for The Sims 4, Businesses and Hobbies, has introduced a major wrinkle to the 11-year-old game in the form of a system that allows players to design and customize their own businesses from scratch. This expansion takes building blocks laid down by a pair of older expansions--the retail businesses and other active careers of Get to Work, and the restaurant businesses of Dining Out--and makes something totally new and much improved out of them, enabling you to mess around and make money in many new waysIf you want to make an ice skating rink with a bar in it, you can do it. If you want to set up a laundromat where you relax in hot tubs while the laundry runs, you can do it. Basically, if your basement or yard is big enough to fit the thing you want to do, you probably can do it.But that immense level of customization means there are a huge number of options to deal with, as well as a lot more granular details to sort through than we usually have. When you're designing your business, you can choose up to five activities that customers will participate in--but you've got more than a hundred activities to choose from, most of which won't make any money directly. And then you have to hire, manage and pay employees, market to a target audience that makes sense for your business, build the business itself, and then actually engage with it; just like any active career in The Sims 4, like being a scientist, you'll need to do your job if you want to earn.While it's not exactly difficult to make money in Businesses and Hobbies, the large breadth of options means it can take longer than usual to understand how everything interacts. But that's what this article is for--we're going to go step by step through the process of developing your small business. By the time you finish reading it, the big picture of The Sims 4: Businesses and Hobbies will be a lot clearer. 1. Monetize smartlyConsidering how many options you have when coming up with your business idea, it can be easy to forget to include options that actually directly generate money. My first attempt at a business was a saloon where people could dress up as bears, play cards and get in random fist fights (as seen above). Since The Sims is not a gambling simulator (its age rating doesn't allow that), the house makes nothing off those card games, and since my bartender didn't know how to make many drinks, the business was earning very little. But there's a very easy fix for this.There are two main options for earning money from your small business. The first, obviously, is to include activities that cost money, like selling goods, performing tarot readings, serving food, etc. If you decided to skip that sort of thing and make a place that's more like a hangout--such as a skating rink, or my bear saloon fight club--you can instead charge admission, either in one lump fee or by charging per hour. 2. Make sure you have all the items you needWhen you first come up with your small business idea, you can choose up to five activities that sims will be partaking in when they visit. Some of these activities require specific items, and the game lists them when you hover your cursor over each option. So if one of the options you select is "play pub games," for example, you'll need to have at least one dartboard, ping pong table, or foosball table. It's useless to assign an activity that your customers aren't actually able to do. 3. Manage your employees smartlyA similar principle applies to your employees. You'll need to hire people who make sense for the business--a bartender, for example, needs a high mixology skill, or else they won't be able to serve drinks. When you're choosing who to hire, it shows the most relevant skills each person has, and you should pay attention to that. And then, once you actually have a staff, you'll have to assign specific tasks to each of them--otherwise, your employees won't do anything at all. 4. Be patient, and play actively Small businesses won't be successful automatically or immediately--you'll have to build up renown through word of mouth, and you do that by providing a great experience. And part of providing a great experience means interacting with the customers and getting them to like you. It's best to be a hands-on boss, even when it doesn't seem obviously necessary. 5. Level up renown and use your perksYour renown doesn't just mark your popularity--increasing your renown opens up a skill tree and unlocks perks that will make your business more effective, and there are even alignment-based perks for those who have particularly sketchy (or wholesome) businesses. There is significant cash to be gained from some of these perks, like the tip jar and the ability to mine crypto on a computer, and they can be essential to turning your business into a success story. 6. Pick your target demographicsA lot of the business ideas you could come up with won't require you to sweat the target audience too much. Something like a cafe, for example, appeals to pretty much everybody. But there are some very niche audiences you can cater to, and if you do so, you will need to make those people your target audience. If you don't pick an audience to target, then you'll just get random people showing up--which would be a bit silly if, for example, you created a space for mentoring spellcasters. 7. Don't forget your social/behavior optionsA key part of creating a good environment for your customer involves making them comfortable. So, in addition to the standard activities you can choose for your business, there are tone setters. The default configuration for setting up a bar, for example, includes the activity "be friendly." Though it's not limited to positive choices, as there are "be mean" and "be mischievous" options as well, and plenty of other oddities like the ability to encourage customers to steal things. 8. Get weirdThe Sims 4 is a pretty low-friction game, and you're just about guaranteed to eventually make money off your small business as long as you've actually given your fellow sims enough opportunities to spend. This means there isn't much risk in trying new things, especially once you've gotten your renown up and have redeemed the good perks.You can design any kind of bizarre novelty business you can think of, and doing exactly that has been easily the most enjoyable part of Businesses and Hobbies for me. Every time I close my business for the day, I change a couple of its features--right now, my basement is home to a Star Wars-themed bar with an ice rink in it. I have no idea what the next change will be, but messing around with the business and seeing what happens is so much fun, and sometimes is more lucrative than you'd expect.
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