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Greatest Games - The Sims
Gamespot has another article in its continuing series on 'The Greatest Games of All Time'. This time they profile The Sims, the Will Wright PC classic. From the article: "While The Sims was certainly revolutionary, it wasn't simply the revolution that makes it one of the greatest games of all time. Like all truly great games, it is the timeless and continually entertaining gameplay that makes The Sims so worthwhile. And while in the years since its release there have been many more versions to choose from, there's something quite heartwarming and familiar about the original game and its very specific choices, the sublime stainless steel refrigerator, the Henry Moore-esque statue, and that handy dandy little burglar alarm."
No, I definitely agree. One night of sitting around in a virtual house making pizzas for hours on end with a bunch of giddy chicks over the internet is enough, thanks. How people can play for hours, days, months and years on end is beyond me.
The Sims is like a giant barbi house. Therein lies its demographic.
Has anyone else noticed the decline in quality merchandise from Maxis as EA's interventions have increased...
/shrug.
Prime Example... Sim City. Great Game.
Sim City 2000. Wonderful Game.
Sim City 3000. Somewhat enjoyable Game.
Sim City 4. A shameless lust for more money.
The Sims doesn't feel nearly as grand as everyone praises it to be. And the Sims 2 seems to have even less appeal. Does anyone remember the short-lived Sims Online? Was that silently killed by the suck that is EA?
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
...I just broke out the Sims2 Disk (a gift) last weekend since my T.V. was on the blink - a PC game was my only choice. I played for about 3 hours and realized that my Sims hadn't even been able to leave the house - such was their urgent bathroom, hunger and sleeping needs. WTF - I can forgo all of this stuff for a night out on the town - I found it annoying that my sims bitterly complained and couldn't "suck it up!" The Sims should have been called "Mundania" There is a certain sense of irony of being surrounded by squalor while playing this game - I kept thinking maybe I should stop and take out the garbage. The more Sim kids I had the more sucky the game became. So I hired a maid and a nanny for my Sims - both useless - I still had to take out the f***king garbage. Perhaps it's a cautionary tale - this could be YOUR life - ugh - thank god it was only a game.
You had me at merlot
The classic answer is "well, that's because you're a male. Females like the virtual dollhouse. It all goes back to the dawn of time when men were out hunting woolly mammoths and..."
That may be. But for me it wasn't the lack of things to kill or the non-goal-oriented nature of it or even the "there is no winner" gameplay. It was two things:
The worry, bother, and stress of the Sim's day-to-day life was a big putoff...all that time spent trying to keep your dudes and dudettes happy & balanced, on time for work, socially fulfilled, etc. I just didn't find that fun. It's just chasing dollars (er, Simoleons) or trying to get meters aligned right. When kids play with dolls, they skip over the boring stuff! Why wouldn't a game?
I'd expected that tedium of that to be handled by the game while I focused on more interesting things (relationships, etc.) A game where you're constantly mapping out relationships among many people, interacting, building social networks, and of course all the politics that goes along with that could be very interesting. But no - it was a constant struggle to get the bills paid, keep everyone from being depressed, etc. Just a lot of chores that were not fun. I also found the social scale rather lacking - I expected hundreds of Sims, not handfuls.
I also found the focus on "stuff" rather tedious. This is not to say I've abandoned materialism, live in a yurt, and eat only grasshopper droppings. But the game focused too much on stuff to buy, how to decorate your house, etc. The interactions with other Sims was rather crude and didn't go anywhere besides marriage and reducing your loneliness. The only reason to interact with other Sims is to push a lonely meter down. If I took either life or the game more seriously, I'd make some weighty comparisons between real life and the game, since tedious materialism and empty relationships often abound in each...
I am willing to stipulate that perhaps if I'd really gotten into the game (beyond two weeks of nightly play), perhaps I would have found strategies for raking in loot, etc. that would have reduced that part of the tedium. But to me it's just a flawed focus...all of that day-to-day boring stuff should have been out of scope and done by the game, while I focused on Fun Stuff. And nothing would save the social model - perhaps because computers simply aren't there yet to make really interesting social simulations.
Advice: on VPS providers
Most of the comments in this thread seem to support a view that The Sims simply Wasn't That Fun for a number of reasons. It certainly doesn't appeal to all, but I believe its many fans consider it to be among the greats. The Sims was one of the world's best-selling series because it has engrossed so many people.
But those people may not be the same ones that like to spend hours wandering down dark corridors with a make-believe gun.
They may not even be the same people that can appreciate the appeal of a game where you dress up as George Washington ordering people to discover...(fanfare!)...animal husbandry. Or a game where you can run people over for money. Or one where you follow an @ sign around the screen while it bumps up against a pile of lowercase a's.
Those posts that describe The Sims as, "a game where you mop up puddles," are missing what its fans enjoy about it, just as the above descriptions miss out on what we love about Doom, Civilization, Grand Theft Auto, and Nethack. (Though perhaps that is actually a good description of Nethack. Lemme grab a cold ! and think about it.) There's more to these games than a wry description of a banal activity.
Many critics tout The Sims as a Great Game because it brought many non-gamers into gaming without being so simple as to cater to the lowest common denominator. If Slashdotters don't connect with the game, I'd say that it's because our interests lie with other genres -- not because it's universally boring. The responses I see here are much the same as that of a non-gamer watching a Soulcalibur match and asking, "How can you even enjoy that? Hitting Y repeatedly is not fun!" The Sims may not hold the attention of a hardcore gamer for long, but is it beyond us to imagine why other people enjoyed it?
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
But to see them and explore them takes a very different mindset than that which sees the world through the cross hairs of a [rifle|flamethrower|BFG]. Not better, not worse. Different.
Excuse my french but EA Completly Whored out the Sims game. :P untill everyone moved out of my tower from too much noise :(
How many expansion packs do u say? seven???
EA dont want to make the best game they want to make the most money. Who cares if it gets booring? as long as they can sell it.
On the other hand i do like Maxis games. Sim tower was neat
When kids play with dolls, they skip over the boring stuff!
Um, are you sure you've ever seen a couple of little girls playing with dolls? I have a 9 year old sister, and I'm 23, young enough to vaguely remember that time in my life, but too old to feel into it. When she was about 6, her friend would come over and bring all her dolls on a weekly basis.
I caught snippets of what they were doing... do you think they were doing something grandiose? Like a wedding ceremony? Childbirth? Heck no, they were into changing diapers, talking on little fake plastic phones, washing little plastic dishes in the kitchen set my mom purchased for her. All mundane stuff.
I believe there's a simple reason too. If they pretend a little wedding ceremony between two dolls, what happens when it's over? Children don't understand what really happens on a honeymoon. What about childbirth? How many six year old girls even understand the basic concept beyond a stork delivery? The fact is, acting out a large, exciting event puts a defined end to their playtime. They know once the wedding is over, they have to pick something new and exciting to do, whereas small, simple tasks never really have an end, they are continuously engrossing.
And therein lies the addiction of the Sims. The mundane tasks are never done, you get constant sources of satisfaction and a small (but fake) feeling of accomplishment.
The speed of time is one second per second.