Remember, if you can, that these are simply sets of instructions being performed by a computer. Sims are social beings they need friends and to interact with other Sims in the neighbourhood. It's like capitalism in miniature.īut it's not so simple, nor shallow. Start them off, and time runs (fortunately) more quickly than real life: each 24-hour period lasts about 20 minutes (or less at night, if you speed it up). One of the favoured pursuits of the Sims (or the thing that makes them happy) is wide-screen TVs. To get your Sims to feel happier, you need to get them into jobs that pay well and so they will read the papers for jobs, choosing work and moving up the career ladder, which gets them more money, which they can then spend on more things.
The result is "a thoroughly engrossing, incredibly detailed product that will absorb you in days of hardcore micromanagement that will set you apart from family, friends and possibly hygiene", noted David Satterthwaite on the website, when The Sims was released by Electronic Arts in February 2000. You can control their loves, progress and success in as much or as little detail as you like. You determine what personality combination – of neatness, playfulness, activeness, niceness and outgoingness – each member of that family will have. You start with a view of a single neighbourhood in a town and then decide the personality of the members of a single family. Previous simulation games were played at the abstracted level of a city planner or the manager of an amusement park, but the Sims gets right down to the individual level. For those who haven't yet fallen under its spell, The Sims is a game in which you, the player, set up a cast of "sims" – simulated people – whose lives will be played out entirely within your PC.