One hundred million copies sold, 36 magazine covers
and 100 game critic awards: The Sims franchise continues to thrive 10
years after its launch, basking in the uncommon flattery of having no
real competition.
The Sims importance and impact on the video game
industry as a whole could perhaps be measured by the games created by
other developers that tried to recapture its success. But there really
aren’t any.
In an industry that thrives not just on innovation,
but also on creative derivation, it perhaps speaks even more to the
success of The Sims that there has never been anything like it since.
creation of games like SimCity, Spore and The Sims, points to the lack
of competition as another unique facet of the franchise that is an odd
amalgam of digital doll house and time-management simulator.
“I think that is one of the unique things about The
Sims, that no one has effectively copied it yet,” Wright said. “When
you look at all the other game genres usually there is a big hit and
everyone comes out with their version of the big hit and then it
becomes a whole genre. The Sims is a whole genre with no clear
competition”
“The Sims was one of the first games to open up
gaming to a much wider audience and it rewards and attracts a certain
type of player that is more self motivated and more creative,” Wright
said. “It was based in a world that most everyone could recognize even
if they were a non-gamer. Almost everyone when they first got The Sims
crafted a representation of themselves and then their family, their
house and their neighbors. They then had this test tube, voodoo
representation of their life. I think for a lot of people it captured
the core of juggling your real life but in a whimsical, cartoon format
so it was more fun but still about them and they were the core of the
game.”
Unlike most video games, The Sims, and the 35
sequels and expansion packs it gave birth to, isn’t about doing the
things we can’t do — it’s more about doing the things that society or
our conscience won’t let us do. Like spending all of our money on big
screen TVs and coffee makers. Removing all of the toilets from a house
and walling someone up inside. Or building a home of nice furnishings,
expensive electronics, but no walls or roof.
The core of that first Sims title was based loosely
around the psychological theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The
idea in the game, and the theory, is that people can only start to
worry about morality, creativity and happiness after they satisfy their
basic needs, like eating, health, safety and friendships.
To play the game you have to worry over the minutia
of a digital person’s every day existence, hitting those needs to help
them succeed.
Despite its surprising success and longevity, none
of the games in the franchise’s sequels have done much to change that
basic formula.
Instead each iteration of the game digs further down into the concept.
The Sims 2 added aging and made the game 3D, said
“For the last 10 years The Sims has grown as both a
game and a creative experience,” LeTourneau said. “Throughout the
history of the franchise, we have tried to introduce concepts and
content that allow more and more of people’s everyday life as well as
their fantasies to be reflected in the game. We tried to stay connected
to the changing times, and just like we are people continuing to
evolve, so will The Sims.”
But that evolution will likely never mean tinkering with the basic Sims concept of time management, he added.
“Time management is what we do as humans,”
LeTourneau said. “We are all on a clock, it’s part of what makes us
human, that recognition of time passing and its impact on us. The ebbs
and flows of daily behavior, or behavior across a lifetime, are all a
function of time’s passage. We may choose to emphasize or deemphasize
it in different situations, but time will likely always be part of how
we ultimately control The Sims.”
The idea of changing anything in The Sims, even making iterative changes, must be taken quite seriously at
Despite EA being one of the world’s largest producer of video games,
The Sims remains “one of the most important things to happen to EA
since its founding in 1982,” LeTourneau says.
“Before The Sims, for the most part, EA was a sports
company but The Sims changed everything,” he said. “With the
introduction of The Sims ten years ago, it changed the way we looked at
ourselves as a company and the way consumers perceived us as well. The
Sims turned the equation upside down and gave the authorship to the
player. They get to decide what they want to do and then they go do it.
There is no real score as a consequence and that is different than
anything that had been created in our industry before.”
The latest expansion for Sims 3 is a pack of new
play things for the game. High-End Loft Stuff hits this month, offering
players and their digital prosopopoeia the wonders of a high-end loft
and all of the slick manifestations of living in an expensive apartment.
It’s perhaps ironic that a game built around the
concept of helping our digital creations achieve self-actualization is
itself so focused on materialism, churning out new gadgets, furniture
and homes for gamers to tinker with, but rarely offering an upgrade of
morality.
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