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."

Comments

Am I the only one...

[SoCalChris]

That found the Sims to be totally boring? After about 10 minutes of playing it, I realized that you could build walls around the people, and kill them. That was the highlight of the game. If I want to worry about being late for work, making dinner, cleaning up, excercising, etc..., I'll just quit playing and go on with my life. Isn't the point of playing a game like that to get away from worrying about things like that?

Re:Am I the only one...

[Seumas]

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.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Stormwatch]

Barbie house. Not an actual game. Good! I feel better with the realization that my adored Myst is still the #1 best-selling computer game ever... huh? What do you mean, "slide show"?

Re:Am I the only one...

[McCarrum]

I'm with you there.

It was the moment when I realised I'm telling my Sim to clean the toilet that I realised that a) I'm impressed that they went to that level, and b) WTF am I doing playing this game?

It astounds me that people actually continue to play this game.

Buy an ant farm, please!

Re:Am I the only one...

[afabbro]

I got a copy just before traveling for a couple weeks...really tried to get into it while chilling in the hotel...just could not.

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:

• All the tedious, day-to-day bother of going to work, paying bills, etc.
• The stilted social model

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.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Seumas]

Worrying about meals and diapers and house cleaning and employment are something we all do on a daily basis. Most people can't jump into an Apache and go blow the fuck out of dozens of other people in a war ala Battlefield2.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Indras]

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.

Choices

[daeley]

...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.

...the kitchens set on fire and all the exits suddenly missing, the swimming pools with all the ladders suddenly missing, the bathrooms with the door suddenly missing... ;)

Re:Choices

[rubberbando]

Yeah, that game really brings out the sadist in a lot of people....

They should make an expansion called "Die! Sims Die!" where the Sims try to survive their cruel player. They run away from walls/obsticles that spring up around them. You would have to try and lure them to their deaths or into traps to capture and torture them. Also, I'd like to be able to drop in some monsters in the maze to hunt them down as well. Earn money to buy naster traps and monsters and such for each kill!

Gawd I feel evil...but then the Sims kinda have that effect on many of us... ^_^;

Re:Choices

[Lil-Bondy]

i believe you, and many others, would find this entertaining...

Maxis Quality Control

[bleaknik]

Has anyone else noticed the decline in quality merchandise from Maxis as EA's interventions have increased...

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?

/shrug.

Re:Maxis Quality Control

[petrus4]

Sim City 4. A shameless lust for more money.

I have SC4 and have found it to be enormously enjoyable, as well as allowing for a lot of creativity in terms of geographic/regional design. The other thing about the Sims franchise that needs to be remembered is that they're not violent. Violent conflict is what basically drives most other games available, and because that isn't present in the Sims/SimCity at all, people who are accustomed to violence can find the games boring.

The original Sims took a while to get going, admittedly...the first game sans expansion packs was basically a proof of concept, and as such you not only couldn't do anything outside the house, you couldn't do all that much inside it either.

The strength of the Sims 1 and 2 is not so much playing the game as it is creating stuff for it; wallpapers, flooring, houseplans, commercial lots, neighbourhoods, clothing designs, (if you're into the last) custom Sims, etc. Very few people actually play the game in Live mode extensively, AFAIK...it's a lot more about creating components for it and being able to see the Sims use them.

I agree that EA are vampires...but so far IMHO they genuinely haven't managed to wreck the Sims...they came closer by not releasing the editing tools for TS2 until the first expansion pack, and making TS2 a LOT harder to mod than the last game, but people are still finding ways around those obstacles.

The Sims Online failed at least partly because a lot of aberrant/deviant personalities gravitated to it, and EA tolerated them probably longer than they should have. That was in line with Will's original intent for the game though...he wanted it to be open-ended and experimental and to basically see where people would go with it. Unfortunately he had to discover what the rest of us already know; that the Internet is to some degree a replacement for the conventional mental health system. There are a lot of extremely sick people online, and a disproportionate number of them apparently ended up in TSO.

Re:Maxis Quality Control

[DerekLyons]

Has anyone else noticed the decline in quality merchandise from Maxis as EA's interventions have increased...

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.

Myself, I see them as getting better over time. Better graphics, more options, better simulations, etc... etc...

The Sims doesn't feel nearly as grand as everyone praises it to be.

Not everyone does - nor does everyone praise Halo or Halo 2 either. Those who think critically about games do however think hard about The Sims for one simple reason - by counting total boxes sold, it has sold more units over a longer time than any other game in the history of computer games by nearly an order of magnitude. That alone suggest something is there, something big, even if the game does not attract the average Slashdotter. (And Slashdot must really have something against The Sims - as I post this, all four upmodded replies are putdowns of the game.)

And the Sims 2 seems to have even less appeal.

With continued steady sales and three expansion packs - every message board, group, etc.. as busy as ever, I don't see how you can say that.

Does anyone remember the short-lived Sims Online? Was that silently killed by the suck that is EA?

Short lived? Silently killed? Try 'still active today'.

Coincidence

[6ame633k]

...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.

A Myopic View of Games?

[MiceHead]

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?

Re:A Myopic View of Games?

[Spiffae]

Maybe I'm totally crazy, but I loved The Sims. To clear up, I am male, 22, (maybe 18, 19 when I played the sims) Hardcore gamer, other favorites at the time were Half-Life, Medal of Honor, Warcraft/Starcraft, Counter Strike, Grim Fandango, Thief, Fallout, et cetera. I got The Sims and fell in love with it. It's a beautiful game, the art direction is fantastic, though the tech they were working with was not so great it didn't matter. The socializing simulation which has been called "stilted" in these comments was nuanced and about as complex as I've ever seen in a game. The gameplay was immediately apparent - build a house, build any house you like. Buy things for that house. Live in that house. Who doesn't like making something? Who doesn't like shopping (don't answer that, I love shopping), and then who doesn't enjoy escapist fantasies. I mean for christ's sake, Second Life is thriving, and that's exactly what it is, an alternate life. The Sims is the same.

I've got the strat guide somewhere, and there's a long chapter about how the simulation runs, and I have to say it's amazing. It's simple and elegant, it's functional, and it only makes me appreciate how the game worked more. I was hooked on The Sims for a while, you start to see everything in your life in terms of how it would fit in the Sims world, and watching someone having a conversation out a window, you realize that we really do look just like the sims when we gesticulate and talk. It's a completely unique game experience, because it's so close to home. I don't know about you, but I don't invade underground science labs on a daily basis, but I do wake up and have breakfast.

The real thing that amazed me about the Sims didn't come until after I had stopped playing it. I read an interview with Will Wright, and he said something along these lines "People playing The Sims, they think the goal of the game is to have the big house, to have all the fanciest stuff, to be rich and have everything. Thing is, when they get all that stuff, and they have the huge house, things always need fixing, people need attention, and you everything is so much more complicated than it was before. The real point of The Sims is that you can buy anything, but time is the only unrenewable resource."

The Sims has a thesis. How many games can you think of that can match that?

If you didn't enjoy The Sims, that's just how it is. I'm just saying that it's an amazing piece of gaming, way ahead of its contemporaries, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Dam EA

[ThePengwin]

Excuse my french but EA Completly Whored out the Sims game.
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 :P untill everyone moved out of my tower from too much noise :(