If asked to name the best-selling video game franchises of all time most people would hazard a guess at Super Mario Bros, Grand Theft Auto or perhaps Call of Duty, all games that involve smashing, crashing and bashing your way to victory.
What about a game where you buy a new side table and invite the neighbours around for a cup of tea? It might sound pretty sedate but with more than 147 million copies sold worldwide to date, The Sims has proved as popular as first-person shooters and classic platformers.
Fifteen years on, this franchise remains successful and has one of the largest and most passionate online fan communities. What is its secret?
Senior producer for The Sims 4, Lyndsay Pearson, says the appeal lies in people wanting to have control over the lives of their Sims, experiencing things that maybe they can’t in real life or perhaps wanting to recreate situations they have already experienced. Fans have their own stories to tell.
“For me, The Sims was a kind of virtual version of playing with Barbie dolls. It felt like a natural progression from roleplaying with dolls to playing with characters in the game,” says Laura Rice, a humanities graduate who began playing the original Sims game aged 15.
“I named my first Sim characters after my existing Barbie doll family,” interjects her younger sister, Emma, who began playing aged 12. “The Sims is like having your own little soap opera: you can choose to create perfect families with perfect careers and then you can mess it all up by getting them to have affairs or lose their jobs.”
Ask a different player and you’ll get a different answer.
Some fans love the storytelling capabilities or the God-like element of controlling every element of their Sim’s life while others enjoy the Lego-like aspect of building houses and entire neighbourhoods, something it has in common with earlier simulation game SimCity.
“On the surface these games can sound a bit mundane. The idea of making something work, making it not only pretty but also functional. In SimCity you had to figure out the transport system, water, electricity and so on. If you built it the wrong way, it collapsed and failed,” explains technical writer and Sim fan Ciaran McGrath.
Perverse impulse
“Playing Sim games is like setting up domino runs: it takes a huge amount of work but once you topple over the first one it’s all gone in two minutes. It’s a perverse impulse to build something wonderful and then knock it down.”
This impulse to not only build but to destroy is something that Sims developers understand and integrate into the gameplay. Early on, they knew that fans loved to kill off their Sims almost as much as they loved to care for them.
Sims can die from random meteorite strikes, vampire attacks, folding sofa beds and even too much “Woo-Hoo” (I’m not explaining this; it’s better if you look it up).
The latest release builds on this. Your Sim can literally die from laughing too much: “We also have other emotional-based death types where Sims can die from embarrassment or anger. The player really has to push them into those extreme emotional states though,” explains Sims 4 producer Azure Bowie-Hankins.
Like bored and merciless Gods, fans of the franchise have fond memories of the ingenious ways they killed their creations.
“One time I invited everyone in the neighbourhood around to my Sim’s house.
“Then I removed all doors and watched as the trapped Sims starved to death,” says Dan Willis, university student and manager of popular fan site Beyond Sims, a long-running website that has been in existence since 2000.
Test the boundaries
“I’ve probably got a higher body count from Sims than any first-person shooters I’ve played,” he adds with a laugh.
Sisters Laura and Emma agree. “One classic move is having your Sim go for a swim. While they’re in the swimming pool you remove the ladder. They swim about for a while before getting tired, falling asleep and drowning,” says Laura.
She looks over at her sister who adds: “It’s not really about killing them. You like to push it so far and see what happens. How perfect can you make their lives and then how much can you mess that up?”
“I think it’s part of a desire to push things to the limit in a safe, virtual setting. You can test the boundaries of what will make or break a Sim,” explains Laura, adding that she has spent much more time developing her Sims’ personalities, careers and education rather than killing them.
Willis says that he has managed to keep a Sim family alive for over two years: “I was big on generational playing. My Sims family went through scores of generations. Each time I loaded the game I would continue playing with them. They only died because I changed computers and left them behind on the hard drive.”
Willis runs one of the many Sims fan sites offering everything from the latest news and game previews to tutorials and downloads.
He is one of the lucky fans who routinely get invited to EA headquarters to preview new Sims builds. EA knows the importance of this community; they are also privy to news releases before the mainstream press.
A quick web search will show all kinds of fan communities. Websites devoted to Sims fashion and heavily subscribed YouTube channels screening hours of gameplay as well as every kind of “mod” (modified object such as furniture) or “skin” (custom physical appearance for your Sim) you can think of.
“It’s so inspiring to see what our players create. I’ve seen the community use The Sims in so many ways from replicating what is taking place today in pop culture, to recreating what has happened throughout history, to creating fashion lines and using it as a blue print model for their home renovations,” says Pearson.
Design aspect
With EA Maxis-supplied tools and fan creations, it has been possible for players to create everything from unique facial features to custom pieces of art and furniture, making their world as realistic or bizarre as possible.
“I loved the design aspect. I would spend hours creating the perfect wallpaper patterns,” says Laura while McGrath likens Sim games to Lego in terms of the freedom to build freeform worlds.
These elements of creativity, building and modification have quite a lot in common with the hugely popular sandbox game Minecraft.
Today’s teens and tweens might not realise it but Minecraft might not exist without this legacy.
“Before SimCity came out games were played through in a linear fashion and then they ended. Before this it was considered very strange that a game didn’t have an actual ending. I think The Sims and other simulation games helped pave the way for Minecraft,” adds Willis.
So here’s hoping that The Sims doesn’t have a happy ending because some games should go on forever.
