You place little versions of people you know in a house, watch them interact, and go, ‘How does it knowBarbara always rattles on about her favourite writers?’. In a very real and tangible way, The Sims 4 deserves credit.Ĭentral to the series’ success, I think, is that trick it pulls in imitating life to a degree that ought not to be possible. I haven’t played all the additional content because I’m not Elon Musk, but I’ve played enough of it to know that this is the most incredibly – and bizarrely – detailed simulator of life that has ever appeared on PC. I report back having spent over 40 hours trying to make sense of it all. Would I find a game in there that anyone could enjoy? Would I find a game at all? Or has The Sims become something else since its captivating 2000 debut? The only way to find out was to spend quite a lot of time and money on Maxis products. With these thoughts tumbling through my mind like items of gender-neutral laundry in the washer, I decided to investigate The Sims 4 through direct contact with it and the many tendrils of its Expansion Packs, Game Packs, Stuff Packs, and user-created mods. Does the male-dominated games media thus overlook its ongoing releases? Maybe it’s a gender issue: do we see The Sims as being ‘for girls’? I certainly remember the first Sims as being one of the first games that I heard female friends effusing about as well as male. Or perhaps it’s that the whole idea of a doll’s house simulator simply isn’t for ‘gamers’, but exists for a different audience – either younger or way less hardcore than the sort of person who whiles away their evenings laying very still near a rock in PUBG. We are talking about a series that literally got a piece of paid content called ‘Laundry Day Stuff’ recently, so I can understand that perception. Perhaps what excludes latter day incarnation The Sims 4 and its entourage of post-release content from grabbing the column inches in 2018 is the perception that it’s a flimsy vessel with which to sell DLC to kids. The series has sold over 175 million copies to date, after all, so it is not like The Sims doesn’t have an audience already.

There’s… somethingabout the Sims that means we don’t talk about it in the game industry as much as a game this size would normally warrant. Obviously, I don’t lead with that when I meet new people, but it doesn’t hold the same embarrassment as admitting I was once superinto the Sims. A shame I would not feel if I were to broadcast the fact that I once printed out a picture of Gordon Freeman and stuck it on my bedroom door for a while – the polygonal guardian of my boy-cave. The weird part is that I feel a pang of shame admitting that.

Nsfw sims 3 mods