You might not be interested in certain Sims 3 hobbies like gardening (pictured) and fishing. Too bad. You're liable to be railroaded into them whether you like it or not.

Read about mandatory gardening, Animal Crossing-style seed hunting, and the magical butterly interface mod after the jump.

As a career scientist, Harlan Whyte has to advance his gardening and fishing skill. I imagine it's possible to be a scientist who doesn't garden and fish, but you're not going to make much progress.

Fishing is pretty painless. Read a book to learn the basic skill, then go to a body of water and click on it. Gardening is a bit more involved. Read a book to learn the basic skill, which gives you some seed seeds. Then plant them. Then water them. Then weed them. Then water them again. Then weed them some more. Keep watering. Water them some more. Over the course of a few days. Don't forget the weeding. Then harvest them. All the while, you're getting really dirty, so make sure you've got a good shower. Science requires a good shower. Also, buying a lawn sprinkler and leaving it turned on 24/7 means you can skip the watering.

It's not very convincing to me. Do the world's top scientists really have to take so much time out of their day to weed bell pepper bushes and apple trees? Of course, there are fringe benefits, like the Flame Fruit (see yesterday's account of the mysterious Cozy Fire bonus carrying it in your pocket), the Money Tree, and some sort of Life Bush I've seen referenced, but haven't found yet. And to "learn" new plants, you have to hunt around town for seeds. And when I say "you have to hunt around town", I mean "you" the player, not "you" your sim. The seeds are tiny specks. Scroll around the map looking for them. You can't miss them, so long as you know to look for little specks (for 40,000 life points, you can buy a magical butterfly that you set to show seeds, insects, or rocks on the map view). Once you've found some seeds, send your gardener/scientist to gather them.

The whole town gathering schtick - it's also how you get bugs and precious minerals - takes an awkward page from Animal Crossing, where the cartoon world make it entirely appropriate that you might spend days on end catching bugs and digging for fossils. But it just feels weird in The Sims 3, where most of the gameplay is supposed to have some real-world analog. It's as if the developers couldn't quite come up with a convincing way to create some sort of crafting progression based on gardening, so they just scattered it around town like so much chicken feed.

Up next: the immaculate conception of Nicole Fugger
(Click here for the previous Sims 3 game diary.)