Category:The Sims

The Sims games are a series of life simulation games created by Maxis. In the game players control people as they interact with their environment. It is unique in this way, because, unlike other games, gameplay is open-ended. It has been released in a number of forms on a number of platforms.

The Sims
See Also: The Sims

The Sims is the first game in the series. It was released in February of 2000.

The Sims 2
See Also: The Sims 2

Maxis released The Sims 2 on September 14, 2004. The sequel takes place in a full 3D environment, as opposed to the combination 2D/3D ("2.5-D" or Isometric) environment of the original game. Other additions to the original gameplay include Sims that grow from infancy to adulthood, then age slowly, and eventually die. This game features clear "days of the week" with obvious weekends for children to stay home from school, as well as "vacation days" to take time off work, an "Aspiration Meter" that increases and decreases as a Sim fulfills specific desires and experiences its worst fears, and "Aspiration Rewards" which can be "bought" with "Aspiration Points" that are earned each time a want is successfully filled.

The Sims 2 is set some 25 years after the original game, and also integrates a storyline into the game. For instance, the Pleasant family (available in the family bin in Sims 1) has settled in a suburban neighborhood, and their family tree panels reveals relationships with the original Pleasant family from the Sims 1. Additionally, the Goth family has aged significantly, while Bella Goth has mysteriously vanished (suggestively from an alien abduction).

Because faces and neighborhoods are handled in very different ways, objects had to migrate from 2-D sprites to 3-D models, and some objects (particularly those contained in expansion packs) were not copied at all. The Sims 2 was not made backwards-compatible with any Sims 1 content. There have been several expansion packs and add-ons released for The Sims 2.

The Sims 3
The Sims 3 was announced by EA in November 2006. The production of The Sims 3 started after the release of The Sims 2.

The Sims Online
In December 2002, Maxis shipped The Sims Online, which recreates The Sims as an MMOG, where actual human players can interact with each other. This sequel did not achieve the same level of success as the original The Sims game that producers and developers thought it would.

Reviews for The Sims Online have been lackluster. Many reviewers have likened The Sims Online experience to an enormous chat room where few participants, if any, have anything worthwhile to say.

Console
There have been so far six (excluding MySims) versions of The Sims ported to various consoles. Console versions differ from the main PC version in that they have different styles of gameplay.

MySims
See Also: MySims

MySims is a console game created by EA exclusively for the Wii and Nintendo DS. It features Chibi-like characters (similar to the Wii's Mii avatars). It was released in September of 2007.

The Sims Stories
The Sims Stories is a series of computer games from The Sims series, based on the original The Sims 2 engine, optimized for play on laptops, as it has lower system requirement than The Sims 2, but can still be played on desktops. One feature of this game, if played on a laptop, is the auto-pause function, which stops and starts the game according to when the laptop lid is closed. At present, three games have been released.