The third expansion released for The Sims 2, that added the ability to create and run business from their own home, or from a community lot. This expansion also included the concept of badges, business perks. OFB gives sims more options on how to make money, instead of having to have a career.

Business can vary from selling goods purchased from buy mode to their own produce like cakes/robots/flowers/etc that the sim has produced. Items from other expansion packs can be sold or monetized into a service. By default, the shipped Shopping district (Bluewater Village) comes with a few premade business like a florist, a cake shop and a Toy shop, A few ideas are:

Fish: With the Seasons expansion, You can have your sim catch fish from a nearby lake and then sell it other sims, since the types of fish is dependent on their talent badge and access to a lake, this could be a useful way for sims to buy and cook fish if they have no access to a lake on their own lot. Also remember that sims cannot increase their skills and badges on a community lot, so it’s impossible to catch more expensive fish without cheats unless they have a lake on their own lot

Cakes/Food: Sims with a high cooking skill can produce food that can be sold for other sims. Things like pizza and Chinese food still cannot be produced which I think was a missed opportunity with this expansion, you could have had sims create their own fast food place.

Beauty Salon: Freetime introduced a hair salon chair which allows sims to give makeovers to other sims, also serves as a nice opportunity to change the appearance of NPC’s and townies

Boxing Gym: The punching bag normally cannot be purchased as its an career reward for the military, however a sim that has unlocked this can use it to set up their own gym. It’s a bit tricky to set up as sims wont autonomously use it, instead you have to have your sim offer lessons to them.

Art Studio: Sims can produce their own paintings and sell them to other sims. Having them to do portraits for other sims can be tricky as they will reject this if the relationship is low. Also the painting’s the sims produce are done at random.

Farm: Sims that can grow crops can also sell their produce, useful for sims that do not have enough land to grow their own. This best way to do this is to grow their own produce at home, then sell it off at a community lot they own.

Robot/Electronics: With the Robot station, sims can product electronic items like drones and full on Servo’s than can be brought and activated. Dones can be for security or food (The munchies bot brings either Pizza or Chinese Food). These tend to malfunction often and are more trouble than they are worth.

Textiles: With the Freetime expansion, sims can craft and sell their own fabrics. With a high enough talent badge, you can create your own clothing.

Pottery Shop: Also included with the Freetime expansion, Sims can sell a range of pottery.

Car Showroom: You can purchase the craftable car, have your sim fix and complete it and sell it. This one is best suited for a home lot, as I ran into a few issues trying to attempt this on a community lot. First is vehicles cannot be purchased in Buy mode whilst on a community lot, and storing them in the inventory caused issues when placing them on the driveway.

There is a bit of micromanagement needed when running a business, as you are expected to manually assign your employees roles to ensure the business remains functional. Over time, they will need to be assigned on break, otherwise they will quit.

Craftables are a new concept introduced in the game, and are made by purchasing the correct workbench. This is where the skill badges comes in, as the type of items the sim can make Is dependent on how good their badge is for that talent.

Robots are one of the new objects that can be crafted. You start of by making simple toy’s, then onto sentry drones (which are quite useful, like the Munchie bot that will deliver food every so often) to eventually a Servo. Some of the robots have a tendency to break down often, like the hoover bot. When this happens it will just spew trash all over the lot, and it will happen quite frequently regardless of the sims talent or mechanical skill. Personally I would avoid these and just stick with the gardener or maid, or install a mod to reduce the chance of breakage.

The Servos, when powered up become their own sims. They can be controlled, get a job and do most tasks a sim would normally do. They have and have a different set of motives comparted to a human sim, relying on sunlight for power. Servos will always have a desire to clean up, and will often do chores automatically. This is in contrast to the Servo that was introduced in Livin Large, where they had to be manually activated by the sim,

Shopping districts are introduced in the game, these are subhood’s that had can be added to an existing neighborhood. They can also be used if you run out of space on your current neighborhood. There is no hard limit on the amount of sub hoods that can be added, and sims can travel between different subhoods.

Bluewater village ships with the game and adds a few families to the game, these serve as examples of the different buisness that can be used with Open For buisness.

• Tinker: Stephen, Wanda and their daughter Melody, they are currently in the toy making business and are operating it from home.
• Delarosa: Florence operates a flower shop from her lot
• Jacquet: Denise, with her son Gilbert who are owners of a local bakery.
• Landgrabb: Malcom Landgrabb lives here, who is no stranger to The Sims having previously appeard in the console games (Bustin Out). Dudley and Mimi do not appear and there is no mention of them in the family tree.
• Ramirez: Checo, Lisa and their daughter Tessa, live on a fairly typical household lot. There is a lemonade stand outside which Tessa can use to sell lemonade. Both parents are unemployed, so Tessa must be shitfing some Lemonade to pay the bills
• Gieke: Family bin sim, can be moved onto any lot he can afford.
• Larson: Twins Jason and Jodie, who currently do not have a business (or a lot) of their own.

Conclusion

Open For Business adds a lot of new features to the game, but the implementation is not without flaws. NPC/Townie sims will constantly try to interact with your employees which can cause then to be unassigned from their tasks, leaning into the micromanagement element of the game. NPC sims also tend to hang around on lots even after they have finished shopping, often getting into fights with other sims which can affect the business ranking (which is unfair). Often you will have to manually dismiss these sims off the lot to prevent your rating from tanking, or so the game will actually spawn sims that will buy items. A quirk of The Sims 2 is that the game will only spawn so many sims on a lot according to your systems capabilities and after a while, will stop spawning sims because the existing sims are wandering around the lot or are playing outside.

The employee system could have been implemented better as its not always easy to tell when they need to go on a break, and they often quit for no reason even whilst on break. Thankfully there are mods that can fix this.