The Sims franchise celebrated 17 years of gameplay on Saturday, February 4th with new updates, new content and numerous fan posts.
The Sims is a life simulation video game series, developed by EA Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The games are considered to be a sandbox games because they lack direct goals to advance gameplay. Instead, players play out the lives of their Sims by earning rewards, advancing in careers, making a family and many other life-related tasks.
YouTube Gamer LifeSimmer enjoys the fact that The Sims does not require certain goals. “I’m glad it’s a sandbox game, you can create anything your mind desires. It’s all about imagination,” LifeSimmer said.
The first installment of The Sims was released in February 2000 for PCs, but quickly became the best-selling PC game in history. By March 22, 2002, The Sims had sold more than 11.3 million copies worldwide.
After the success of the first installment EA Maxis went on to create The Sims 2 on September 14, 2004. The Sims 2 was then followed by The Sims 3 on June 2, 2009. The current installment of the franchise is The Sims 4 which was released September 2, 2014.
The Sims franchise now includes 4 games, 29 expansions packs, 28 stuff packs, and 4 game packs. Even though The Sims began as a PC game, players can play almost all of the various installments up to The Sims 4 on other consoles including Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The franchise also offers a paired down, mobile version of the game called The Sims FreePlay for Apple devices and Kindle.
When asked about their favorite part about The Sims franchise for the 17th anniversary, many YouTube gamers had nice things to say.
“Killing Sims…I’m kidding (well kind of),” Deligracy, an Australian YouTube gamer said, “I love building and telling stories. I also adore the humor and random things your sims will get up to.”
“I absolutely love how creative it allows me to be. I love creating stories for my sims,” YouTube Gamer Fantayzia said.
While The Sims at its core may still be another PC sandbox game, its fan base and content creators keep the game popular. With its allowance for creativity and imagination, The Sims franchise will continue to celebrate more years of great gameplay.