In a market filled with action, adventure and shooter games, the Sims managed to create a completely new genre in the video game industry. Becoming one of the most popular game franchises of all time, The Sims was revolutionary for the industry, not only bringing an entirely new demographic of gamers to consoles and PCs, but also showing that games didn't have to be all blood and gore for titles to sell.

The creation of the Sims

The story of Will Wright and the creation of Maxis

The idea behind The Sims came from the game developer, Will Wright. After being tasked with creating a game called Raid on Bungeling Bay, Will Wright realized that he loved building the levels more than destroying them, as the game intended. After the game released, Wright would spend hours using the level editor to create different cities and wondered how the game would be if there was a more complex form of life in it. He would spend even more time adding new elements to the game, like citizens, traffic, ecosystems, and a way for the cities to develop and grow on their own.

After learning more about urban planning, he used the concepts from the game and the way cities are built in real life as inspiration for his new game, SimCity. Throwing the traditional mechanics of games on its head, SimsCity had no winning or losing, no cutscenes, or combat. It relied purely on a person's desire to create and build things rather than destroy them. Many publishers did not share his thoughts and believed the game would not perform well in the current market. After struggling to find a publisher that would take a chance on the game, Will Wright and Jeff Braun co-created their own studio, Maxis.

After finally finding a company (Broderbund) to distribute the game in 1989, SimCity was met with an incredibly poor reception at launch, but after garnering praise from the press and the gaming industry as a whole, the game went on to be a bestseller and was released on multiple other platforms. After the success of SimCity, Maxis began publishing numerous other sim games, like SimEarth, SimAnts, SimLife, as well as a few sequels to the SimCity games. But none of them hit the mark quite as well as SimsCity did.

After Wright lost his home and belongings to a fire in the 90s, he started the process of replacing his belongings and buying new furniture for his house. While doing this, he thought about what people actually needed in their homes to make them happy and wondered which items were things that people wanted and which were things that people needed to live comfortably. His idea would become the foundation of The Sims, a game where you design houses to meet the wants and needs of the people who lived in them.

But Will thought the game was too simple, and he didn't just want to make a game about house critics. He wanted to build something more, but he didn't have the man-power to do it. In 1997, EA entered the picture and acquired Maxis, with a bigger team behind him. Will Wright began making a game about sophisticated humans that the player could control where you would have to meet their daily wants and needs and live through their everyday lives as they made friends, went to work and started families. And on February 4th 2000, The Sims was born and became a worldwide phenomenon.

The Legacy that The Sims Left behind

Changing what games could be as well as swaying public opinion

The Sims wasn't the first simulation game ever created. Before that, we had titles that let us build cities, design crazy theme parks, control ant hives, or create entire civilizations. But we never had the ability to control the lives of everyday people. The Sims, not only changed the way we played games but also made games more accessible to people and showed critics that games didn't have to be violent in order to be good.

Before the 2000s, the game industry was primarily focused on platformers, beat-em ups and shooters. All of which were loved by gamers but despised by the general public and parents alike. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, there was a public outcry that video games warped children's minds, made them violent, and caused them to become anti-social or despondent towards reality. And while we know this to be nonsense now, the lack of non-violent games in the industry only helps support these claims.

The creation of The Sims and other titles like it helped sway public opinion with the idea that games could be about more than just beating up bad guys or shooting up demons. It also showed developers, publishers, and distributors in the industry that their games could have more to them than just chaos and violence and still be profitable. This opened the floodgates for developers with interesting ideas for games without the traditional settings or gameplay mechanics, to pitch them and have a chance of one day releasing them.

The Sims also confronted many demographic and inclusivity issues in the gaming industry. With an overwhelming large percentage of gamers being male, there were very few titles or franchises designed with a female audience in mind. After The Sims released, it brought millions of women to the industry and even if they didn't like any other games on the market, to many around the world, playing The Sims became a rite of passage, and without it, we might not have had as many female developers and gamers as we do today.

The Sims was also a massive step in the right direction in terms of inclusivity for gamers. You could create a sim that was the spitting image of you or make them look and sound any way you wanted. The Sims didn't restrict you when it came to skin color, gender or individual preferences and let you live in and explore a diverse world, much like the one we live in.

The Sims was a cultural phenomenon

After the original game was released, The Sims became a cult classic, getting multiple expansion packs and winning a lot of awards. The game is now on its fourth title in the franchise and has numerous spin-off games that share its popularity.

It's hard to say what the gaming industry would look like today without the creation of The Sims. But on the game's 25th anniversary, we should remember just how big an impact this franchise has had on our lives and on the industry as a whole.