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The Sims Celebrates Fifth Anniversary
Voodoo Extreme has a small piece on EA Games celebrating The Sims' fifth anniversary. They have apparently sold over 54 million units in the lifetime of the series. From the article "The very first The Sims videogame for the PC began shipping to stores this week in February 2000 and took the nation by storm by becoming the #1 selling PC game in four out of the last five years."
Fake reality for real people who's real relity isn't really interesting!
:/
On that note, I must say that my girlfriend a serious Sims adict.
Pretty Pictures!
...I've never even played either Sims yet. I feel so behind the times here; I want to live a virtual life too...*sob* no, I don't really care much for it, though I know many around me that do, and some that were anticipating part 2 before its release. I think.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
"Why feel inadequate in one plane of existence when you can feel inadequate in two."
I'm happy that the guy has made so much money with his creation...I have played the Sims in the past, probably more than it deserved. I'm not really a fan of the game. Ultimately, it leaves the player unsatisfied, because once you either a) realize taht you will accomplish nothing in the game by getting perfect, b)become perfect and have to maintain perfection (tough). The game feels more like a chore than a game.
I feel that the only reason it has lasted for five years is because Maxis would introduce "new" items, career paths, and such BEFORE their players got to points a or b described above.
To be fair, I did like the "missions" mode in the PS2 version of Sims. It gave the game direction and purpose.
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
The Sims is a fantastic series for a number of reasons, most notably its unique gameplay and the resulting cross-gender appeal that has led to sales of over 50 million units. Given this success, I'm surprised to see that few studios have attempted to go up against it and create an even better "society simulator." When Doom came out, it brought forth literally hundreds of followers. Some were clones, but many advanced the genre; there's no question that today's most popular first-person shooters came about by standing on the shoulders of its predecessors.
Maxis created a new genre in The Sims, but at this time, only two "followers" come to mind -- Singles and Playboy Mansion. Given the vast amounts of money The Sims series has made, why aren't more companies trying to one-up them? Is there an inclination towards pushing (say) the first-person shooter genre because most game developers are first-person shooter fans?
I'm a fan of The Sims. And I want to know who will beat Will Wright at his own game by making an even better game in the genre he created.
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Inago Rage for people who like to create things
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
celebrating The Sims' fifth anniversary.
DNF is celebrating its seventh anniversary this year too. That's Seven years since it was announced.
What has this got to do with the Sims? Simply that I recall being very excited by screenshots of both upcoming products back in 2000...
Here's to 5 more years of The Sims expansion packs from EA! Huzzah!
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
The sims isn't a game you "win". You don't progress twords ONE set final objective, and then it's completed.
Think of the Sims as a cross between a dollhouse, and a demented sitcom. You just sit back and watch the fireworks.
Network TV would never have a show about a bank robber named Tortilla Del'sim, his assortment of illigitmate children, their neighbors, whos entire "home" consists of an outhouse, with a phone on the outside, to order pizza from..etc...
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
Then again, there's always that smashing success known as The Sims Online, boasting a decline in subscriber totals down to roughly 36k, from a peak of 105k in mid-2003.
Sure its true to the sequel, or more accurately pretty much an updated version of The Sims 1, but after the initial sales it just didn't seem to fly. Considering the bad news reports (remember the CD copy protection problems?) and quiet community voice community voice (I think its safe to say that The Sims 1 community is/was fairly vocal) The Sims 2 is a failure. Throw in The Sims Online, EA's falling reputation, the obvious attempts at milking the first game with tons of expansions and the failure to expand on the game (birth to death? Thats not fun, thats LAME!) were all signs of The Sims going down.
Present day status of the 'sim' genre : risky at best, a waste of money endevour at worse. You might try and say, 'well thats not true, Doom didn't fail!' but Doom was released at a different time and it had a very easy to copy(cat) gameplay system. (Lots of monsters + big guns + FPS view = Success!) Obviously we've expanded beyond this formula but compared to The Sims' formula (house, personalities, skills, neighborhood, mimic life, etc), the Doom is on par with Pong by modern standards when it comes to games of today's 'depth'.
I know it seems like the Sims would be a simple enough game to copy, but you have to look at what you'd need to surpass in order to become a player in this field. 1. A huge dedicated fan base with a lot of stupid money to spend. 2. 13,000 animations. 3. A polished game that's had several updates, before others have even attempted releasing their own first unpolished version.
Personally, number 2 is the big one, I think. Even the open source community might give it a go despite 1 and 3, but who has a motion capture system sitting in their basement and a staff to capture 13,000 animations? And I do think it would require a motion capture system for both (a) verisimilitude and (b) sanity of the people organizing the animations. Which means that you're pretty much limited to businesses, who might look at 1 and 3 above and think it's not worth it.