I’m proud

We’re slowly approaching the end of 2025, and I wanted to share a few words before Christmas. When the year began, I thought these would be my last days with The Sims 3, especially with the launch of inZOI. To be honest, I’ll never forget my 29th birthday, because out of all the years of my life, it was the best one.

As a creator, I was at my peak during that period, around March. So many people were supporting my work with The Sims 3, so many people were supporting my work with inZOI. We broke our audience record in a single livestream during the inZOI Showcase. More than 800 people were watching our coverage. We reached an absurd number, and I think we stood side by side with some huge creators. Can you believe that?

For a channel with fewer than 15,000 subscribers, it felt insane. Our audience made so much noise in the official livestream that they asked us to tone it down a bit XD. The inZOI chat was full of BRs(brazilians), and people from other countries joined our movement to share all the love and passion we were feeling. The story behind that moment was meaningful. One day I’ll tell you about it. On top of that, I translated an entire event from English to Portuguese and, believe it or not, I don’t consider myself fluent. But luckily, I seem to understand enough not only to translate words, but also emotions. I’m very proud of that.

If there’s one thing I learned this year, it’s that anything I set out to do can work. Will it be difficult? Will it be labor-intensive? Will it be challenging? Probably. But still, achievable.

This year helped me mature a lot. I’d say everything I lived through with the inZOI team and with my partners here made me evolve the equivalent of seven years in eleven months. I felt everything very viscerally, and I think that was a reflection of the changes I was experiencing in beliefs and thoughts that, in one way or another, had been limiting me. A lot changed. A lot really changed. And the luck I have didn’t come by chance, but from the decision to accept, continue, and live all of this, even during the darkest phases. And trust me, there were many. In fact, whenever I feel overwhelmed or lost, I play a bit of Lake to return to a kind of “simple time.” And I played Lake almost every month this year.

But still, here I am. And I’m happier than I ever imagined I could be. And even within that happiness, I can feel the dark moments and thank them for putting me in a place of reflection that helped me better understand my soul as an artist and creator.

When I look at my blog’s traffic numbers, I can barely believe it’s my blog. I mean, where are all these people coming from? I recently found out that I’m “popular” in China. Can you believe it? I can’t put into words what it feels like to see my work spreading around the world and reaching so many people. I can only be grateful. This is completely new to me. I’m just a guy inside a room almost 24 hours a day, and during the few hours I’m not in that room or apartment, I’m going to the grocery store, the bank, or visiting my mom.

My life, in that sense, is really simple and routine. When I was younger, I thought the best life to live was one without routine and with total freedom. Nowadays, I truly appreciate and deeply love my routine, because it’s what anchors me to my ability to create and produce. Many people believe that when you treat this as a hobby, you don’t pressure yourself and can create with more freedom and authenticity.

But in reality, when I approach this from a professional perspective and have people supporting me, there’s a kind of responsibility and pressure that I consider not only healthy, but fundamental. After all, if people are waiting for something, I need to commit to delivering it. And this year was full of deliveries, which I’m very proud of. In fact, I made a small list of everything we did this year for a retrospective. Check it out:

1/1 Project Mayor announced as a concept
9/1 SmartSim released
25/1 Modular Gutter Set
27/1 Norge (TinyWorld) released

4/2 Sunset Valley Beta announced
8/2 Sunset Valley Beta released
15/2 SmartSim to Work
22/2 Expensive Butler

4/3 Urban Concept
12/3 No Smartphone on UI
22/3 Modular Build Uni

2/4 inZOI Legacy Reshade Preset
8/4 BB Engine for inZOI
18/4 Announcement of Boringverse Games
28/4 Announcement of Project Etherea

15/6 Project Etherea Modular for The Sims 3

1/9 Book released
30/9 Modular Walls/Windows

23/10 Sims 3 Pillar add-on
26/10 Release of the Social Classes Mod (formerly Project Mayor)

5/11 Willowridge, new TinyWorld released
20/11 Reactive Sleep Overhaul Mod released

11/12 Modular Windows announced
25/12 Christimas Gifts and more coming!

We had some periods with fewer major milestones to share, but progress was always happening behind the scenes. Some mods required a truly insane ability to reinvent the wheel or re-signify The Sims 3 systems, but I loved working on each of them. My focus at the end of this year was to return to the level of production I had from January to March, because those were periods I’m very proud of.

And of course, I’m preparing a Christmas gift for all of you, and this has definitely been a massive amount of work. A small spoiler: let’s just say my modeling skills have redefined a few things you already know.

From October until now, in December, I studied a lot for the development of our game. As everyone here followed, we read a lot, studied a lot of modeling, and prototyped many ideas.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I thought my days with The Sims 3 were numbered, but you showed me that you wanted more, and that there was still so much to be done. That made all the difference.

Because as creators, sometimes all we need is a small push, a small suggestion, an idea that seems silly or meaningless. It’s almost as if the whole engine that inspires us is powered by the pollen released by a small flower into the air. It’s not big ideas or big changes that motivate us, but small ones.

As a creator, I consider myself very lucky and privileged to have the incredible community we’ve been building, and the wonderful people who support us, encourage us, and are always with us. Including challenging us.

I’m deeply thankful for that. I want you to know that I’m very grateful for every interaction we have here, no matter how small it may be. And I’m eternally grateful for allowing me to choose this life. This wouldn’t be possible without your support.

If someone had told me four years ago that I’d be the person I am today and that I would have created the best mods and content I’d dreamed of my entire life, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. But look where we are now.

It still hasn’t fully sunk in for me. I, Erick, look at BoringBones with an almost innocent, childlike sense of appreciation and wonder, because my inner child vibrates with pride for the person I’m becoming over time. And what impresses me the most, and makes me cry with happiness, is knowing that I’m only just beginning. And to be honest, even though the future “scares” me in a good way, I have no doubt that it’s not only a possible future, but an inevitable one. And that gives me chills all over. Because it demands a level of responsibility and courage that I may not have experienced before.

So, to become that person, I decided I need to start with the small things, which are actually huge. This year, I’m going to propose to Yasmin. And put our relationship in order, in the sense of officially committing to our union. This is the first step toward the man I want to be in the future, especially the professional and creator I want to become. Even though we’ve lived together for eight years, somehow formalizing this in this way gives me chills. I don’t quite understand why, especially considering that I’m not very attached to religious ideas of marriage. But somehow, I feel it’s the right thing to do to honor the partner who helped me become this person. To honor the life I have today and to honor my story. This woman helped me stay strong when I wanted to give everything up. To maintain partnerships I wanted to break. To keep things in my life. Before her, I had a lot of difficulty maintaining things.

There’s a kind of “attraction” in the idea of destroying and rebuilding everything as an artist. It’s almost as if the pain of deconstruction fuels the next level. Almost as if there’s no creation without chaos. As if every attack I received pushed me forward. But with my partner, I discovered that it doesn’t have to be that way. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be. There are ways to create without pain, to evolve without breaking, to change without stopping being who we are.

With so many people in the world who could occupy this place, when I look at her, I have no doubt that she’s the perfect person for me. And I think that’s what scares me. Because the odds were never in our favor. I still say today that if I had crossed a different street, maybe what I’m living now would never have existed. Thinking about that scares me. But it also helps me recognize the magnitude of all this.

I wanted to share all of this with you, because everyone who supported me up to this point has been part of this story, has motivated these changes, and without you, I probably wouldn’t be the creator I am today. Thank you so much. Thank you, truly.