Comments on: Three Moves Ahead Episode 16 — The Sims

By: Sims 3 and Religion: The Answer that Isn’t

Sims 3 and Religion: The Answer that Isn’t — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:05:12 +0000

[...] Chun praises (rightfully) the endlessly linked Alice and Kevin story (Born on Quartertothree.com, mentioned in our podcast and sent to me enough times to realize that many of my friends don’t pay attention.) Part of [...]

By: vendolis

vendolis — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:27:26 +0000

I think one big factor that make the game appealing to so many different people is that is does not give you a ‘right’ way to play. There are nearly as many ways to play it as you can think of.
You can play it as a min-max game. You can play it as a ‘Mother-Father-Child’ game. Or you can just build houses and similar.
There are only a few games out there who have such freedom in action and goal choosing (and still offer various goals to reach at the same time).

The huge drawback of the game is, while you are playing you are confronted with the same problem you have in real life: Too few time to do all things you want to.
One time after getting annoyed from Sims 2 my Gf said that she also could take her calendar and try to optimise her day, it has the same feeling. The escapism is too close to the real life. Though this might also be the reason for the success.

By: rsm

rsm — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:24:34 +0000

No interest in the Sims, unless I get to the point where I can play with my kids. Just no appeal, same boat as Bruce. That being said, I’d probably enjoy it if I sat down and played it. However, with a limited gaming budget it is not worth the money, and EA doesn’t get any if I can avoid it.

On next week’s topic, if the original ‘Pirate’s’ manual is not discussed I think the topic of revoking gamer cred needs to be raised.

By: Troy

Troy — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:37:55 +0000

Yeah, but saying “It appeals to women” only moves the question back one more step. Why does it appeal to women? Is there something essential about the modern female character that is naturally or socially conditioned to enjoy dollhouse games?

I wrote an article a couple of years ago about the Sims community and it’s amazing just how diverse it is. People love the game for very different reasons. Are they story tellers? Builders? Systems managers? Designers? The general wide and open play of the Sims proves to be very attractive to a lot of people differentiated by play style as much as race and gender.

Of course, any game that sells 100 million units is going to have a diverse audience simply as a matter of scale. The question becomes what is it about this game that makes it so appealing to such a large group. That it does not discourage women and children from playing is certainly a big factor. But the rest is some sort of magic.

By: vendolis

vendolis — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:27:41 +0000

I think one thing you left out of your discussion when you talked about why Sims is so enormously successfull. It has a huge appeal to women. I think even the lager amount of the players are female and it is a doll house fpr adults. It is a sandbox game where you can play through social interaction. An if you are realy p***ed at some one you take a sim, put on right cothes and the right name and then torture him or similar.
Since it has appeal to alot of age groups, male and female players. It has a ‘realistic’ setting. And it is very easy to play. You can even have some parts on auto-pilot as you said. And you can not realy lose in this game.

But the main point stays, beeing hugely appealing to women is one central stone for their success.

By: Jimmy Brown

Jimmy Brown — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:57:27 +0000

I wasn’t really planning to buy the Sims 3 until I saw the story of Alice and Kev on Qt3. I picked it up last night, and played until I suddenly realized it was one o’clock. I love games of epic scope, but something about the Sims engages me.