‘The Sims’ Turned Mere Mortals Into Gods. Twenty-Five Years Later, the Addictive Computer Game Is Still Going Strong

When “The Sims” first hit shelves on February 4, 2000, the video game market was mostly populated by action titles like “Soulcalibur,” “The Legend of Zelda” and “Tomb Raider.” In these games, players had to fight their way past villains to complete missions and then finish the game itself.

In “The Sims,” though, players merely had to create virtual people, build their homes and manage their needs and dreams. They’d take them through different neighborhoods to meet other characters, help them achieve their ambitions, tackle their careers, guide them through friendships and relationships, and deal with tragedies.

Before its release, even the people at Electronic Arts (EA), the publisher behind “The Sims,” saw it as a risk, says David E. Dunning, a history of science curator at the National Museum of American History: “‘The Sims’ was unusual in that it didn’t give the player set goals with a clear way to ‘win.’” Instead, the open-ended style of play encouraged and rewarded the creativity of its players. There wasn’t a specific conclusion to work to. They could play it for as long as they wanted. The museum has in its collections a retail copy of the groundbreaking game.

“‘The Sims’ is known as a sandbox game,” which allows freedom for its users, explains Dunning. Its creator, Will Wright, had previously had success with “SimCity,” a city planning game that was released in 1989, which saw players building their own cities by developing industrial and residential areas. “The Sims” was much different, though, as players controlled people and their actions, rather than the construction and infrastructure of cities. “The idea of a daily life sandbox game was new,” says Dunning. Just before it was released, Wright “predicted that the game would either be a complete flop or complete success and nothing in-between,” says Jesse McNamara, a “Sims” YouTuber from Middlesbrough, England, whose channel “Plumbella” has over 790,000 subscribers.

“The Sims” was an instant hit among critics and gamers alike—not just in America, but around the world. Over the next few years it became the best-selling PC game series of all time. For Deligracy—a “Sims” YouTuber based in Melbourne, Australia, with over 1.2 million subscribers who asked to be referred to by her channel name—the universality of the game and its cartoonish aesthetic mixed with adult themes meant it appealed to a huge audience. The titular “Sims” speak their own invented language, Simlish, she notes. “So many games are targeted toward very specific audiences,” she says in an email. “But ‘The Sims’ is appealing to children and adults.”

Since the release of the original installment, “The Sims” has been followed by three main-series games, as well as dozens upon dozens of expansion packs and spin-offs. By 2019, “The Sims,” one of the best-selling video game franchises in history, had generated over $5 billion in sales. EA still reportedly makes $420 million a year, in part because of “the continued popularity of “The Sims 4,” even though the game was released back in 2014.

No wonder, then, that EA recently announced that it was rereleasing “The Sims” and “The Sims 2” on PC to mark the series’ 25th anniversary.

For many fans, the core of the game’s appeal is storytelling and the fun of building and creating. Deligracy got hooked on “The Sims” because she saw it as an extension of writing a story. “But instead of writing, I would ‘play out’ my stories. I loved escaping reality and stepping into my own, controlled life simulation.” The game provided McNamara a chance to push “the boundaries of societal norms” by acting out “some of the most bizarre storytellings” she could think of. If players wanted to build a family that consisted of a husband, wife and their two children, they could. At the same time, they could watch a character die of hunger or be set on fire, and then decide that was a success, too.

But while the open-ended structure, unique characters and quirky humor of “The Sims” initially attracted players to the game, Deligracy believes its “warmth and familiarity that is so different to other games” made them return to it again and again. “It’s become a cozy space or new dimension to escape to. … There is no other life simulation game that has the same amount of depth as ‘The Sims.’ As far as sandbox games go, it’s an enormous and joyful sandpit to play in.”

Maxis, the developer behind “The Sims,” has repeatedly piqued the interest of players by steadily releasing expansion packs in the 25 years since the first game was released. This additional content offered for purchase enlarges the base game and offers different clothes, hairstyles, items and worlds for people to explore. While the likes of “Half-Life,” “Xanadu” and “Populous” had used expansion packs before, “‘The Sims’ took it to a new level,” says Dunning, “releasing seven expansion packs for the first game. There are currently 17 expansion packs available for ‘The Sims 4.’”

It’s not been entirely smooth sailing for the franchise, though. When “The Sims 4” was released in 2014, fans and critics alike initially had a lukewarm response. They believed its gameplay was sluggish, its characters felt too similar, and it lacked the ingenuity and personality that had made the previous games so vibrant and alive. But over the next few years, various updates and expansion packs made “The Sims 4” more popular. In 2020, “The Sims 4” even surpassed the sales of the original game.

In 2022, “The Sims” was introduced to a whole new group of gamers when EA decided to make “The Sims 4” free to play. “That move drew in huge numbers of new players,” says Dunning. Last year, it was reported that “The Sims 4” had been played by 85 million people. “People can try it out without paying anything. [Some] end up spending enough on expansion packs and stuff kits that the free model has been extremely profitable,” adds Dunning.

As a result, “The Sims” is arguably more popular than ever. While it might not be mentioned in the zeitgeist or among gamers as much as when it debuted, the ever-increasing community of “Sims” players—who regularly share their stories and creations online—proves that the game is still a focal point of many people’s lives.

The internet has been bringing “Sims” players together since the very beginning. “The ‘Sims 1’ forums were the dominant way to engage with content outside of the game,” says McNamara. “‘The Sims 2’ had an exchange where users could upload stories directly from the game, and ‘The Sims 3’ saw the rise in YouTube and Twitch content about ‘The Sims.’ ‘The Sims 4’ has brought so many new Simmers, and creators along with that, and the amount of time it’s been since the game dropped has meant that creators have had to get extremely creative with challenges.”

When it comes to surmising the impact of “The Sims,” it will forever be remembered for “putting simulation games on the map,” says McNamara. But its influence and importance to the gaming world and its users runs much deeper. “It also had a huge impact on diversity in gaming,” McNamara adds. She points out that it was one of the first games to depict same-sex relationships. Deligracy says that it has always aimed to be “inclusive, progressive and contemporary” in terms of its characters.

“The Sims” also proved to the industry that video games were enjoyed by women, at a time when the medium was primarily targeted at men. “In the years since then—and especially after people began carrying smartphones powerful enough to play all kinds of games—we’ve seen audiences for video games continue to expand far beyond any one narrow image of the kind of person who plays them,” says Dunning. “Games now explore as wide a range of topics as any other form of media. ‘The Sims’ showed that the subject matter and audience for video games could be far broader than many people believed at the time.”