MTS Official 2025 Calendar Contest

Use your creativity to showcase your game in a shot fitting for each month of the year. The picture should be a scene representing the 'feel' of a particular month. Have the family gathered for Christmas dinner? Beach party in June? Romantic dinner for two in February? We'd love to see what everyone can come up with for this year's calendar. Please use northern hemisphere seasons. Seasons expansion pack and use of holidays (Love Day, Spooky Day, etc.) not required.

Rules

1. 1 picture per entry. You may only enter a month one time, but may enter 2 separate months per game (2x Sims 2, 2x Sims 3, 2x Sims 4).
2. Only 15 entrants per month. Please, no place holders. Each spot is only filled once a picture that meets all the rules has been submitted.
3. CC is allowed. However, please make sure to follow MTS rules for CC. No pay content.
4. Pictures must be 1000 (width) x 750 (height).
5. No photo editing.
6. When posting your picture, please make sure to include the month it belongs to.
7. Sims 2 only.
8. REMEMBER: This is a PG-13 Forum! Your entries may not include adult content, pornography, or other inappropriate content.

How to Enter

1. Pick a month and take a picture to represent that month.
2. Attach the picture to your post on this thread.
3. Make sure to include which month your picture is for.
4. Submit your post - doing so will submit your entry.
5. If you want to do more than one entry, then you need separate posts for each entry.

Duration/Time Period

The contest begins on September 24th, as soon as this is posted. Contestants will have until November 30th to post pictures. However, if a month fills up before that date, that month will be closed for new entries and judging.

Judging and Scoring

Judging will be done by community voting and a tie will be broken by mods.

Prizes

A sticker for both winners AND participants.
A calendar will be made for download with each winning month.
And, of course, the blue ribbons for each month’s winner.

The picture you post will be your final shot - make it good. Posting a random picture of a christmas tree, easter bunny, yourself, etc., to reserve a spot is not allowed and it will be deleted.

Once your post has been added to the table, it may not be changed. Do not change the picture, you may not delete it and enter a new month instead, etc. If you choose to delete your entry, you are removing yourself from the contest and no further entries will be permitted from you.

If anyone is discovered to have used pay content, their entries will be disqualified. The spots they had will NOT be held.

List of Entries

I wish all who enter good luck! Also it's nice to see another contest. The last one went well-enough, so I hope this one goes well too!

Very exciting to see a calendar contest! The last one was so long ago. Looking forward to seeing everyone's entries!

May!
When Summer starts to show

The Last Dance is with You

Are there any additional rules or themes? In years past, there was a rotating 'image scene w/o sims' vs 'with sims'. Is this any combo of the two? Should it specifically have Sims in it for this calendar?

Also for pay content, it's been many many years that most of it has been bootied or archived - or in cases of poseboxes, ones were free are now put under paywalls - how is one to know if their CC is counted as pay content nowadays? Is this just a copy/pasted rule from years past and if not, can we get more clarification about what counts as paycontent cc?

Another question for content: in the past IIRC, the pictures had to be newly taken for this contest specifically. Is that true here as well or can we submit a nice seasonal picture we've taken previously on our own time we think would look nice on a calendar?

I didn't know about that rule. The picture I entered for the 2019 contest was not only one I had already, but I'd already submitted it to MTS in a challenge. (It's the picture that got 13 Disagrees!) I even mentioned the fact in my entry post, but I still got the sticker for participating. If you submit a picture that you've never posted online, how could anyone tell whether it was old or new?

I think I agree about pay content too. Apart from Maxis content, there's nothing in my game that I actually paid for, but I do have some Peggy hairs that were originally pay content, and I use them indiscriminately along with free hairs. Generally I leave my CAS Sims with the hair they first generate with, without checking whether it was once a pay hair. Since Peggy closed her site years ago, there's no way I could pay her even if I wanted to! It would seem a shame if an entry was disqualified because a townie in the background was wearing an earring from a long-defunct pay site.

I'm still a bit worried about not getting enough entries to make a full 12 month calendar. For that reason I think I'll put off entering to see if there are any months that aren't getting any entries. If I get anything like the reaction I got for my 2019 entry, I may then prompt other people to enter, just to stop mine going in the final calendar! When I think about that old entry, despite the 13 Disagrees, I suspect there are still some gay Sims out there, who would have rather liked a picture of Andrew and Julian in tiny swimbriefs on their wall for three months!

I also thought I would try a second entry if there are any months left (I am not good at this, think I have used a posebox once am not really into taking posed pics at all, so chances are it would be from my own game. I have never paid for any content - but I don't think the rule is meant for splitting hairs.
Personally, I will regard content that is only available on a pay site as paid content. (I have noticed that some creator named Klira has apparentlly moved her content to a pay site, but it seems this same creator has also uploaded all of it on SFS - not sorting out that sticky problem, but thought it should be noted. No interest in downloading it myself, just googled a bit after Charmful's post).

If anyone objects to this then let me know.

I actually removed the rule that said the picture must include sims. I thought that a mix of landscapes and sims could be nice.
I don't really care if it's an old or new picture. I'd say that it shouldn't have been used in a contest/challenge before.

Was 'no pay content' meant to avoid people complaining about their stuff being used? Was it meant so people who wanted to download something they saw didn't have to pay for it? If it's the latter then I'd just make a rule that it has to be available on the Booty. If the former, does anyone really care anymore?

I do not see how what CC someone has in their game is relevant at all. Are we CC marketing, or are we making nice looking pictures? I could not care less what you have in your game, how does it impact me or my looking at the picture if you got something that someone made to be pay content once upon a time? We're not sharing the content of the picture, we're sharing the visual.

I believe @Charity has used the rules as they were set out for the former calendar contests - those contests were popular, and contestants had no problem with the rules (which probably took into account MTS rules) then.

Yeah, I used the rules from the 2016 contest. I deleted ones that I thought were unnecessary, but the pay content one was so seriously stated (threats of disqualification) that I presumed that there was a specific reason for it.

Ok so I think my questions were answered, thanks!

1: Can be sims or scenes
2: No one knows what payconent is anymore because of the years' worth of booty cc, so put in your pic what you will.
3: Can be a picture taken previously if it wasn't done for another contest/challenge

Sound about right?

I don't want to allow pay content if MTS has a valid reason for banning it, so let me check.

@HugeLunatic

Is the rule banning the use of pay content still valid? Noone seems sure why it was banned, seeing as noone has to download anything pay.

Pay content is still not allowed on MTS. That rule is based off upload guidelines. So in the spirit of the free community here, I think no pay content should be allowed in the contest. But most TS2 content is free now. TSR content is all now free for TS2.

Ok, sweet, thanks!

Rule stays that no pay content is allowed to be used.

Thanks for clarifying I don't feel like risking another brush-up with MTS' arbitrary rules, so I will stick to other calendar contests that are a little more modern in their thinking.

Does that really mean that an entrant will be disqualified, if somebody spots a townie in the background of the picture is wearing an earring downloaded from the Booty? I mean the Booty is free, and in most cases the original paysites that once hosted the content are now long since defunct, so the Booty is now the only place where one can get the content. I suspect most of us who have a little old "pay" content, actually got it from the Booty, and therefore got it free. I'm still more concerned about not getting enough entries to make up a full 12 month calendar. In those circumstances it seems arbitrary to disqualify an entrant because because they have inadvertently included something they got from the Booty.

So to clarify, does content from the Booty count as pay content, even if the original paysite has been closed for years?

The majority of the content on the booty that was pay is now free at the source (unless site is defunct), but content from dead sites is allowed. Unless it's newer content that is currently only available by paying, then it wouldn't be allowed. I have no idea if the booty is adding new pay content tbh.

MTS rules are not arbitrary, we simple do not allow pay content in uploads or official contests. Never have. There have been plenty of member run contests that have allowed pay content.

You really have so much pay content that you couldn't come up with a picture without it?

Thanks! I think I'm OK then. The stuff I was worried about were some of Peggy's "Donation" hairs that I downloaded from the Booty after Peggy's site closed. The main reason I have so much CC hair is to try to avoid having two Sims that look the same. I use these ex-pay hairs indiscriminately along with free ones, and I don't always know if a specific Sim has a free hair or an ex-pay hair, and I was afraid one of my Sims with an ex-pay hair might turn up in a picture I was submitting. The only site that I know of still creating some pay content is Newsea (or at least they were still creating it a couple of years ago when I last visited the site). I don't think the Booty is adding new TS2 pay content, but there really isn't very much of it being made now. (Charmful knows about some other pay content: evidently some poseboxes which used to be free are now behind a paywall. See her post #6 above This won't affect me as Veronaville's courts have ruled that poseboxes are unconstitutional, as they would infringe my Sims' "inalienable right to Liberty".)

It is highly unlikely today that anyone will deliberately include pay content in an attempt to cheat. If somebody does inadvertently include pay content in a picture, may I suggest that, instead of instantly disqualifying them, Charity asks them to replace the offending picture, with one without pay content. That is roughly what happens in building contests.

Another summer gone by...

Unedited, but I am using Dreadpirate's/Gunmod's Radiance Lighting 2.5 for that sunset. Hope that's alright.

Yeah, I don't have any problem with that.



Or that. XD

A posebox would fall outside the no pay content rule. A posebox is never part of a house or sim. But ofc if poseboxes are unconstitutional .... xD

No. I don't want to participate in a contest where I am threatened with banishment for the audacity of possibly not remembering that that one bush I have from 2013 is from a pay site. Would someone recognize it and point it out? Probably not. Am I going to risk it? Nah. I'm a rule follower, you give me a rule I assume it is to be followed but this rule is outdated, and silly. You're not going to enforce it (aka nobody is verifying every CC item in every picture submitted), which by default means it'll be applied unevenly at the discretion of the staff and whatever grudge someone might have. Sound like fun to you? It doesn't to me.

Stupid rules that can't be enforced evenly is bad design, and for me, it sucks the joy out of it.



I didn't realize the visual of this highly offensive contraband magically teleports the file into the calendar itself and into the games of unsuspecting people. I cannot stress enough, it is a picture. No pay content is distributed via MTS, or anywhere else.