A few months ago I wrote a piece on games journalism for The Escapist. Not a bad little article, though it didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked. In it, I had a throwaway line about how the success of The Sims is still a story but no one seems to be interested in it because the games are more than a few years old. Where’s the story on how this franchise keeps going?

I never expected anyone to call me on it, but Games for Windows editor Shawn Elliott did. “Great idea. Why don’t you write it for us?” Me and my big mouth. Fortunately, EA’s Sims division, the official community, a former student and some random internet strangers made sure that I had lots to write about. It was a hard story to put together in many ways because the community is both really big and really tight. And I wanted to write about people who are outside that community, too, since whatever game community you see online is generally a tiny fraction of what’s going on.

My 2000 word feature on The Sims and the community it has generated (Feeding the Juggernaut) can be found in the November issue of Games for Windows magazine. My copy still hasn’t arrived, but I can see by the online table of contents that it has been printed.

The larger lesson is that if you use a public space to ask for something to be done, someone will ask you to do it. Coincidentally, this is my first feature story for a print publication. Like everything I’ve written, I’m still not totally pleased with it but that’s the nature of the beast.