The idea behind the project is that of a virtual doll’s house. After a series of wildfires in the suburbs and urban areas of Oakland in 1991, Wright had to rebuild his house from scratch, and he had the brainwave that the whole thing might make the perfect basis for a video game. A book on urban design helped Wright to do this. According to Christopher Alexander’s book A Pattern Language, architectural design works better if based on concepts of usability rather than aesthetics. And usability and reliability are all The Sims is about.

Developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, the first game was released in 2000 for Microsoft Windows. After that, developers released a new title for the main game or spin-off almost yearly. The series is part of Sim, a more extensive series of simulation video games made in the late ‘80s.

The Sims is a simulator with little to no story involved in the gameplay. Building houses and creating new and diverse characters, with attendant relationships and careers, is what players enjoy the most. But every The Sims game definitely has a main goal: staying alive. In fact, after the last adult sim dies, it is game over for the entire household.

As previously mentioned, the gameplay involves a building mode and a character customization mode. But the artificial life simulation is what makes The Sims series so different from any other game. The Sims is basically never-ending. Every family, scenery, or household can be restarted, remade, and re-played as many times as the players want.
The game uses artificial intelligence to give every sim the free will to do whatever they want. It is up to the player to keep sims on track, adjusting their wants and meeting their needs accordingly.

Players act as the ultimate arbiters of existence in this small, invented world. They make the rules, they decide whether a sim should live or die. As a result of this, memes about letting sims drown or burning sims alive can be found all over the internet. This demonstrates once again how players are aware of their power. But while The Sims may not exactly be a temple of moral consciousness, it is a place to have fun and mess around.

The Sims is a unique game. What makes it so varied is mostly the attention to detail. Since the series involves full freedom of choice in every aspect of the game, every element needed to be original and never seen before. For this reason, developers even used a made-up language for sims. Simlish is the official idiom for the Sim series, made of specific sounds and recurring babbling.

The same gameplay is the mechanics behind every base game in the franchise, including The Sims, The Sims 2 (2004), The Sims 3 (2009), The Sims 4 (2014). With The Sims 2 developers have left the diametric projection of the original game and brought everything to life in a fully 3D setting.

The release of expansion packs, stuff packs, and game packs gives a little twist to the simulation. Every pack adds new items, characters, features and traits to help the game become more and more realistic. But when it comes to base games, The Sims does not have an actual plot or story to play. Players are familiar with certain NPCs, families, or recurring patterns, such as the appearance of the Grim Reaper when someone dies.

So when developers decided to first release the game for console, a story became necessary.
The Sims and The Sims Bustin’ Out were the first two titles brought to console. They were both released in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube. From there on, the series adds new modes to console and PC games: mission-based gameplay, tasks and simulation to earn points, a multiplayer and a free play mode.

The stories and plots are straightforward. Players can be the new sim in town, just like in the base game, but they can also go back in time to live an action story. This happens in The Sims Medieval, a roleplay title released in 2011. In The Sims 2 for Nintendo DS the main character is the new mayor of a town tormented by aliens, who eventually has to deal with every strange situation to save the day.
The PlayStation 2 The Sims 2: Castaway (2007) simulates a shipwreck. The goal is to find every other member of the family created at the beginning of the game, surviving through new-learned skills and travelling from island to island.

And so on, with city-building simulations, world adventures, and survival modes, eventually brought to PC games too.

The Sims is a game with little to no rules at all. Developers even encourage players to use cheat codes and other tricks to help them make the gameplay more immersive and fun. This policy directly affects other developers’ procedures. For example, Sony advises PlayStation gamers not to use cheat codes when playing The Sims. Cheats can prevent them from earning trophies, prizes you can win by playing any PlayStation video game. With cheat codes, players can get any house for free, add new traits to sims’ personalities, earn money and even unlock hidden debug items.

Another aspect in terms of freedom concerns CCs, custom content, and mods. Maxis Studios and Electronic Arts developers are very open about The Sims gameplay being as customizable as possible. According to their policy, any custom content made by players and shared for free within the community is acceptable.
Developers even used simplified code to build the world of The Sims so that anyone could mod freely; short for “modification”, mod is new in-game content that players create, as opposed to the developers.

What mods and CCs give to the gameplay is more realism. Trending outfits and hairstyles, more clutter to decorate rooms, and even improved game modes. Some mods add a spicy twist to the game, with NSFW content and animations for sex and drug usage.

The Sims also tries to be culturally aware, and in one of the latest updates, the game now allows anyone to choose gender preferences in terms of clothes, habits, and representation. This goes beyond sexual and romantic orientation, allowing people to create unique and very close-to-self sims. What this game created is a community of people who care, and who enjoy sharing and creating.

In 2003, a Swedish philosopher working at Oxford University, named Nick Bostrom, proposed what is known as “the simulation argument”. He argued that predicting the development of a posthuman civilization, with a higher level of technology, is not that impossible to believe if one posits that we, as humans, are currently living in a simulation created by a more advanced ancestor.

The idea that reality is an illusion goes back to Aztec, Indian, and ancient Greek philosophies. It is all a part of what is known as philosophical skepticism. The majority of modern science fiction is entirely based on this ancient myth. The simulation theory is a source of inspiration for pop culture beyond fiction and storytelling. The English rock band Muse named their 2018 album Simulation Theory. The first single from the record is called Something Human, a song about being burnt out from an exhausting, long, roaming journey.

The extension of this argument is that as physics is behind the idea of the quantum computer, and since computing is currently fairly universal, then the universe might be a processor, the creator of multiple realities and simulations.

In 2012, a selection of papers signed by physicists from the University of Bonn proposed various methods of proving the authenticity of the theory of simulation, one of which was by observing the continuum of space-time and cosmic rays. If multiple portions exist, then possibly simulations could be the explanation. Yet every form of theorization for possible tests ended in 2019 when the American philosopher Preston Greene suggested that by the very process of being aware of the simulation, humans could bring an end to it all.

Yet despite the intervening years, in which science and philosophy have stopped mentioning the theory, news about it still persists. It led to a trend on social media, with people posting videos and photos of any strange or inexplicable phenomena they encounter. All of this is, of course, to prove that we live, in fact, in a simulation.

Someone took it even further, with a website offering the possibility to review and leave feedback on earthly things, all meant for the creators in the simulation to see.

Next to the Matrix, The Sims has often been used, by philosophers and physicists who believe in the theory, as an example of what our world should be like. Funnily enough, in the latest games, sims have developed a conscience about being observed, controlled, and kept alive by someone. This consciousness can even be chosen as a personality trait, to create a sim who is more socio-culturally aware.

While speaking of simulation and personal avatars, The Sims may appear as an ancestor for the more advanced “metaverse“. As previously mentioned, in these games players are the personification of a controlling being, arranging everything and everyone in the same way as could supposedly happen in our real-life simulation. Instead, in these new metaverses, you are in control of yourself only, as a duplicate of your own personality.

What The Sims and the metaverse have in common is that they offer the possibility of entering a virtual world, which enjoys the success both universes have.

But the story of success between The Sims and the metaverse is completely different, especially as the metaverse has only been part of accepted knowledge in the last few years. In contrast, The Sims has been one of the best-selling video games in history since 2000. What started as curiosity over a new way of playing soon translated into a form of fidelity to the entire franchise. The series still holds the 10th position among the best-selling video games of all time.

In 2017, The Guinness Book of Records even awarded the game the placing for Best Selling PC Game Series and Most Expansion Packs for a Videogame Series. Such a famous game even inspired the project for a 20th Century Fox movie, which was eventually cancelled, and a reality competition show released in 2020 for TBS.

Maxis started a community with the in-game function of the gallery, a place where players can share creations and even support each other. Creators then took the next step, sharing projects and ideas on blogs, websites, and social media, enabling anyone to participate in the community that has grown more and more each year. And not surprisingly, it is not immune to the power of social media.

With TikTok, The Sims made the transition to becoming a piece of modern culture. With tutorials on how to use the best cheats to build the perfect house or suggestions on what is the best mod, now the community is bigger than ever. So big that some creators actually use simlish, the language of sims, to entertain, and viewers even get the reference.

@duncanyounot

POV: sim goes to Italy

♬ Mystery of Love (From the Original Motion Picture “Call Me by Your Name”) – Sufjan Stevens

As announced just a few months previously, on October 18th, 2022 The Sims 4 finally became free-to-play. The event was well received by welcoming players, ready to welcome and initiate new gamers, and those who had never played any Sims-related title and now had finally got the chance to try.

Nevertheless, the announcement seemed to be addressing rumors about the anticipated new title of the series: The Sims 5.
Presented during the October summit as Project Rene, the new game seems to be in playtest phase. Maxis showed numerous new functions for the new title, with more customization options and even a possible multiplayer mode and a cross-platform experience.
The new project also seems to host a bigger and safer CCs and mods program. On this new hub called CurseForge, creators can get credit for their custom content and share new items and mods in a more accessible way.

Following the summit, on January 31st, 2023 a new series started. With a livestream format, the Behind The Sims community series is meant to keep players updated on news and backstage facts for Project Rene and new introductions to the game. The series of stream is hosted on The Sims YouTube and Twitch official channels for everyone to follow.

This shows once again how Maxis and EA support the community, and also breaking their own rules. Developers live by what they share and teach with the series: freedom is all that matters, whether we are in a virtual simulation or not.