Originally, The Sims was not intended as a life simulation; instead, the characters were supposed to play a minor role in the game.
What was The Sims supposed to be? The development of The Sims began as early as 1993, seven years before the game’s release. After the success of SimCity, the creator of both games, Will Wright, originally wanted to create a completely different game. After showing the world how to build cities, the focus was to shift toward houses and their furnishings.
As an architecture simulation, Wright wanted players to initially build beautiful houses. After that, players were also supposed to furnish the houses.
The Sims themselves were originally intended to come after the houses were completed, view the house, and finally leave a rating based on how good or pretty the house was.
The Sims series faces competition from Korea; here you can see the trailer for InZOI:
How The Sims Came to Be Today
How did the shift away from architecture simulation happen? The inspiration for The Sims was reportedly a 1,171-page book on the theories of architecture. As dry as the book was, so too was the initial idea of the Sims predecessor. However, after investing years of development work into the project, they did not want to simply give up.
The developers noticed that the Sims themselves were actually not so uninteresting. The idea was changed: players would first build and furnish the house, and then invite the Sims to live instead of to rate.
The developers created a simulated system around the Sims that has remained at its core to this day. The need bars that each Sim has are still present. The construction of houses and furnishing of homes and apartments have also persisted to this day.
How was The Sims received back then? The developers were actually facing a big problem. The computer game market was dominated by over 90% men, much more than it is today. As soon as the game was associated with a “virtual dollhouse,” the men did not want to play it anymore.
To promote the game, the developers at Maxis refrained from using the term. Wright himself stopped using the word “until it had sold about a million copies – at that point, I felt somewhat comfortable talking about dollhouses in public.”
In 2000, The Sims then became the best-selling game of all time, with over 6 million copies of the main game sold and just as many expansions sold.
By now, The Sims is indispensable from the video game market and has already received many new titles and expansions, but a Korean life simulation wants to compete with the series: New competition for ‘The Sims 5’ – life simulation looks realistic and focuses on work
