The Sims touched on matters like death, and sex, but the tone was always light and euphemistic. For parents, it was a game they knew they could buy for their children without having to worry about video game violence (a topic that had surfaced with particular intensity in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, which was perpetrated by students who played violent games). Even though kids weren’t the sole market for the game, they still constituted a large portion of its playerbase. Some of the forward-thinking features – most significantly the ability for sims to engage in same-sex relationships – added to the game’s inclusive, made-for-everyone feel. Three sequels would follow, as well as high-concept spinoffs (like The Sims Medieval) and mobile versions.īack then, gaming was also seen as a male-dominated market, a notion The Sims completely shook up. The Sims rapidly became a best-seller, and over the next few years spawned a host of expansion packs, which added themed characters, items and features to the base game, and in 2003 it was ported to the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube consoles. Shortly after it launched, on 4 February 2000, it was obvious that the sceptics were wrong. This newly emerging demographic represented a great opportunity – and The Sims was primed to seize it. Wright had laid the groundwork with SimCity, which played a huge role in reshaping the perception of video games within the industry: from being a kid-focused hobby to a viable product for adults. Unlike a real dollhouse, however, The Sims appealed to just about everyone, adults and children alike. Determined to publish it himself, he co-founded the gaming company Maxis with Jeff Braun in 1987. Wright initially struggled to find a publisher for SimCity, a non-linear city-building game that bucked the goal-oriented conventions of the medium. Wright’s background was hardly the typical route towards game design: his most notable early achievement was winning the US Express in 1980, an illegal cross-country street race in the vein of the Cannonball Run. The mastermind behind The Sims was Will Wright, a Georgia-born game designer who had made his name in 1989 with the release of SimCity. But back in 2000, before its release, its creators were bracing themselves for failure.
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The video game franchise that gave players total dominion over the lives of their digital characters – the ability to manage everything from sleeping habits to wallpaper patterns – has earned EA, its publisher, over $5bn (over £3.8bn) in sales, and is currently the highest-selling PC franchise in history. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that The Sims would be a hit.
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