#oneaday Day 238: The Sims is still good

The rumours were true! Just ahead of the series' 25th anniversary, EA dropped rereleases of The Sims and The Sims 2 on their own storefront and Steam earlier today, for the eminently reasonable price of £34.99 for the both of them. Considering they both come with all the expansions (well, I think The Sims 2 might be missing the IKEA "stuff" pack, but that's about it), I'm perfectly happy to pay up for them both, particularly considering The Sims has never had a digital release, and The Sims 2 has been unavailable for a long time.

"But you can get them both for free!" the entitled corners of the Internet shout. "They're abandonware, and that means you can legally download them for free!" Well, firstly, one, no it doesn't, because abandonware isn't actually a thing, legally speaking, and two, it is important to support official rereleases of stuff like this, because it gives a thumbs up to companies making a commitment to actually preserving their history and making it available to everyone, even those who weren't there for it first time around. It's no good carrying on about "preservation" if you don't support actual attempts to do that. Piracy is all well and good if there is no other way, but official preservation efforts should be supported. Yes, even if they're by EA.

Both rereleases have been updated so that they work just peachy on Windows 10 and 11, and The Sims is able to run in much higher resolutions than it ever has before, and in widescreen. Okay, the game could arguably do with a UI scale option when playing at 1080p or higher, but it's not unplayable by any means, particularly if you're playing on a big TV as I have been.

I've spent a few hours revisiting The Sims this evening by making a rough recreation of my original "Hartley Family" save file, which featured me and the other members of my hall of residence flat at university struggling to survive. I am reminded that the original The Sims is actually surprisingly challenging compared to some of its follow-ups; thus far, keeping on top of six people's needs has been quite difficult, particularly with a lack of substantial income. Things will get easier once some of them start getting promoted and bring in a bit more money each day, but for the moment it's very much in "scraping by" territory.

Also one of them has died already after burning down the kitchen, but I managed to "Plead" with the Grim Reaper quickly enough for him to be able to return as a zombie. I have made a promise to myself that I'm not going to save scum at all, I'm just going to deal with the consequences of everything that goes on as it happens. Emergent narrative and all that.

I'm interested to spend a bit more time with the original The Sims, as back when it was current, I had a lot of the expansion packs, but not all of them. I don't think I had Superstar, Unleashed or Makin' Magic, and those are three that have some substantial additions to the gameplay — the pursuit of fame, pets and the ability to cast spells using appropriate components respectively.

At present, I've got one of the six Hartley family members equipped with a magic wand and (thus far) the ability to turn someone into a toad, and another who keeps slipping off to the "Studio Town" area to go and sing karaoke badly (earning a whopping 5 Simoleons per performance at present) but so far, it's a struggle to keep their mood high enough to be able to truly take advantage of those features. Much as with real life, getting a solid and stable income stream is important if you want to start doing anything out of the ordinary.

So that's that. The Sims and The Sims 2 are both available on Steam and EA's own storefront right now, either separately or in a bundle together. You also get a "free" copy of The Sims 4 with them, but since that went free-to-play a while back anyway it's probably best ignored unless you want to get into DLC hell. The rereleases of both The Sims and The Sims 2 are complete, meanwhile (aside from the aforementioned Ikea pack for The Sims 2) and should keep you busy for a very long time indeed.

I'll probably write more about one or the other or both at some point, but for now, I'm happy. It's been a nice bit of nostalgia to revisit The Sims — and a reminder that as cynical as people got about the series over the years (not without good reason), it's still just a damned fine game at heart, too.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 234: The return of The Sims?

Supposedly The Sims and The Sims 2 are getting the rerelease/remaster treatment at some time around the end of the month. It is the 25th anniversary of the series this year, and it appears that EA is actually listening to people for once and (supposedly) bringing back two of the most fondly regarded entries in the series, neither of which have been available for a very long time — and I don't believe the original The Sims has ever been available digitally, since it came from that dark and mysterious time where you had to go to a shop to buy PC games. (Yes, I miss it. I would be much more of a PC gamer if it was possible to have a physical PC game collection.)

I used to really enjoy The Sims. The original game came out at an absolutely perfect time for me: while I was at university. As someone who had previously enjoyed the SNES version of SimCity (aka the best version… apart from the bugs) and Sim City 2000, I was intrigued to see creator Will Wright doing something a little bit different. The idea of a "life simulator" was something that had captured my imagination from around the 16-bit age; Activision's Little Computer People existed, but I wondered what something with a bit more "game" to it might look like.

Something really enjoyable, as it happened. The Sims, just in its base form, was an absolute revelation. Not only did I have fun with it, but everyone in my flat at university enjoyed getting involved, too. I'd made virtual versions of all of us, and everyone liked to check in every so often to see how we were all getting along. Because I rather overdid the size of our house when I started playing, we all had to sleep in recliners in the large communal living area for a while, but as everyone got jobs and started bringing in the Simoleons, we were able to live a rather luxurious life.

The Sims is interesting to think back on, because it's from a time where you could release a "sandbox" game and it wasn't anything unusual. Moreover, these games didn't need anything like achievements, daily quests or other engagement-bait to get people to enjoy playing them. They were enjoyable just because… well, because they were good. I'm actually rather interested to revisit the original The Sims just to see how well it holds up today. Obviously the graphics will look a tad dated, but I bet the gameplay still has it where it counts.

The Sims 2 I remember owning, playing and enjoying, but I don't recall playing it quite as much as the original for one reason or another. It certainly wasn't because I didn't like it or anything — I recall picking up several of the expansions for it — but for some reason it doesn't stick in my mind quite as much as the original. I know it's an especially fondly regarded entry in the series, though, so it might be fun to have another look at.

I really enjoyed The Sims 3, even though that was really the point that EA started truly taking the piss with the number of expansions and "Stuff" packs — something which has been taken to a frankly obscene degree with The Sims 4, which I've never played. I had a lot of fun with the World Adventures expansion in particular; I really liked the "dungeon crawling" subgame that added to the mix, as it made you make use of the game's mechanics in a rather different way.

I'm normally loathe to give EA money, particularly as they seem all-in on the AI fad right now, but I might make an exception if they don't fuck up the ports of these games — which is, of course, a distinct possibility. But we'll see; sources seem to reckon we'll see them by the end of the month, and there ain't much left of the month. Further reports as events warrant!

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#oneaday Day 697: The Sims FreePlay

I was harsh on EA the other day, and I stand by most of my comments. Theme Park is a disgrace to the memory of Bullfrog's classic, the handling of Tetris was ridiculous, Origin is still a load of old wank and the company's insistence on using it rather than established networks like Game Center and OpenFeint is just plain arrogant.

However, they have got one thing right recently, and that's their latest iOS release: newest entry in the The Sims family The Sims FreePlay.

The Sims has been undergoing quite a few changes over recent years. First The Sims 3 brought open-world gameplay to the series. Then the World Adventures expansion gave the game a (very light) sense of narrative and some dungeon-crawling, puzzle-solving gameplay. Then Ambitions allowed us to follow our Sims to work for the first time in quite a while. Late Night brought new social interactions, Generations fleshed out the gameplay of various underused life stages and Pets brought, err, pets.

Meanwhile The Sims Social launched on Facebook and proved enormously popular despite not actually being that good. The Farmville-esque mechanics of "get your friends to help" seemed somehow more appropriate in the setting of The Sims, however, and there was a very, very mild hint of asynchronous multiplayer as you occasionally saw what your friends had done while they visited you the last time they were playing. I saw many people who didn't typically try Facebook games giving The Sims Social more of a chance than they would normally. Ultimately, though, it was an exercise in extracting as much money from you as possible, with a wide variety of in-game items only purchasable through the premium hard currency of SimCash. It also uses the immensely irritating (but profitable) "pay to play" system of slowly-recharging "Energy", only allowing you to perform a certain number of actions in a set time period.

Yesterday, The Sims FreePlay launched for iOS devices. There have been several previous The Sims 3-branded iOS games, but none of them have been that good, somehow missing out on the magic of the PC originals, much like The Sims Social. The Sims FreePlay takes a radically different approach to the whole series, however, and one which fits ideally with an iOS player's lifestyle.

There's one simple, fundamental change which has occurred to make this possible: make it real-time.

The Sims has typically operated with vastly accelerated time, so we can witness their birth, growth, life and death over the course of a few days rather than a lifetime. And in gameplay terms, this has fit the series well — part of the appeal of The Sims 3 in particular is building a dynasty of Sims who have grown to dominate the town in which they live. If you had to live out their lives in real-time, this would lead to a lot of downtime.

However, think about when you pick up your phone. You do it during a lull in conversation, when you're on the toilet, when you're bored, while you're watching a TV programme that you're not really interested in but your significant other wants to watch. The Sims FreePlay is designed for these situations. Pick it up and there'll be something to do for a few minutes, whether that's collecting money from your Sims, sending them to work, forcing them into a party situation or gathering them all together for a collaborative gardening effort. Once they're busy doing whatever you've told them to, you can leave them to it — for hours at a time, in many cases.

The game experience is tied to a social game-style levelling system, but this isn't a social game. There's no visiting neighbours, no helping friends with quests (which begs the question why it requires an Internet connection to play, but we'll leave that aside for the moment), no Energy system — just you and your Sims. Or, specifically, when you start, your Sim. Singular.

When you start the game, your town will be empty aside from the Sim you created. As you complete tasks and get your little person to engage in activities, however, you gain XP. The longer an action takes, the more XP you get. As you level up, you unlock the right to have more Sims in your town — though bringing them in either costs Simoleons (money) to build the house, or Lifestyle Points (earned through completing goals, reaching "relationship milestones" and numerous other criteria) to build a prefabricated "theme" home. Both of these currencies can be purchased with real money if you desire, but, crucially, you're not nagged to do so (unlike in Theme Park, which gives you a quest teaching you how to purchase premium currency — shameless much?) and you can earn both through normal play if you're patient enough. If you're determined to play for free, you're going to have to think carefully about your time management and what you want your slowly-expanding army of Sims to accomplish, because once they start a task, it can't be stopped except by expending your finite supply of Lifestyle Points to "rush" finishing it.

This actually adds an interesting degree of light strategy to the gameplay. If one of your Sims has a large variety of garden plots that could potentially prove profitable, you're going to need to enlist the other Sims in the neighbourhood to help out, because one Sim can only plant and tend one plot at a time, and needs to be present for the entire period of the seed's growth — up to 24 real hours in some cases. This means if you have a garden with, say, five plots, you'll need five Sims to be able to take full advantage of it — and while they're doing that, they can't be doing anything else. It becomes an exercise in weighing up whether it's worth committing a Sim to a lengthy and potentially profitable project, or whether you'd rather take a more active role in their life and guide them through a number of smaller tasks. Do you send them to work for six hours, thereby guaranteeing a nice paycheck, prospects for promotion (leading to more money in the future) and the ever-important XP? Or do you leave them behind looking after their house?

This shift in focus away from managing the needs of an individual Sim (or family) to overseeing the entire community works well for the series. It's a markedly different experience from, say, The Sims 3 — but we already have The Sims 3 so why reinvent the wheel? What we have in The Sims FreePlay is a game you can pick up for a couple of minutes at a time, set your little people off doing something and then safely forget about until a Push notification pops up reminding you that Pete Davison has finished his bath. In this sense, it's a bit like Nimblebit's Tiny Tower, a simple but effective game which has proven enormously popular, even among those who typically decry this style of simplified sim (no pun intended) as being "rubbish" — myself included.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about The Sims FreePlay in the context of EA's recent actions is that the company appears to be experimenting. It's undergone a considerable period of expansion in recent years, gobbling up a large variety of studios from all sectors of the "games industry" at large — ranging from triple-A developers to social game specialists. The different approaches taken by its most recent titles make it very clear that the company is trying to find the "best" (i.e. most profitable) approach to move forward. We have the subscription model (Tetris — not the first game I would have picked to try that model on), the "gouging whales" model (Theme Park and its $70+ rides) and the "patient people play for free" approach of The Sims FreePlay.

It's fair to say the publisher pissed off a lot of people — including me — with Tetris and Theme Park in particular. But, as they say, we learn from our mistakes — if there's any justice, The Sims FreePlay will prove the most popular of EA's recent titles and show them that this is the way to treat iOS and casual players: with respect, not expecting them to pay to play, but offering them the chance to if they do happen to appreciate the game in question.

EA's still got a long way to go to prove to me that they're not money-grubbing bastards who care more about their bottom line than the goodwill of their player base(s). But The Sims FreePlay is a good start.

#oneaday, Day 274: Seven Deadly Sims

[Click the comic to see a bigger version if you can't read the text.]

The Sims shouldn't be good. It really shouldn't. It represents all the things that people say they'd never want to do in a game. People always say that they don't want their characters modeled in such detail that they need to eat, sleep, poo and the like. But it was this level of detail that brought the original The Sims game to life.

Over time, the series has developed in many wild and crazy ways. To the casual observer, each game may appear to be fundamentally the same. But in fact, each new game (and, for that matter, each new expansion pack) has changed the way the game is played to a considerable degree. So much so that The Sims 3 now has the potential to go in any one of a wild number of disparate directions according to what the player feels like doing at any time. What other games do you know where you can do this:

Screenshot-12 — Evil Jeff Grubb takes a sponge bath in the kitchen.

AND this:

Screenshot-49 — Non-Evil Mike Rougeau puts out a fire. Professionally.

AND this…

Screenshot-79 — Amarysse attempts to find her way around a flaming death trap in an ancient Chinese tomb.

AND this…

Screenshot-86 — Amarysse spars with a fellow martial artist.

AND this…

Screenshot-89 — Amarysse prepares to use her magic axe to smash the crap out of a boulder.

AND… you get the idea.

The Sims 3, with its current two expansion packs World Adventures and Ambitions, represents an enormously diverse experience that is by no means just about telling little people when to go to the toilet. No, what we have is probably pretty close to what Will Wright originally intended when he envisioned the series. A life simulator. A game where the player is pretty much free to do as they please.

If they want to stay at home and concentrate on building a family, they can do that. If they want to go out and explore perilous dungeons around the world, they can do that. If they want to try and prove they're the best at a tricky profession, they can do that too. Or if they want to try and juggle all those things? Well, they can do that too. Amarysse, depicted above, is a successful athlete, lesbian, adoptive mother to a young child, treasure hunter and local hero in parts of China. And she's only about halfway through her life. By the time she eventually shuffles off this mortal coil and it's time for her adoptive son to take up the mantle of her family and prove himself, she'll have a whole ton of experiences to look back on.

As you may have gathered, I have very much rediscovered The Sims recently. And if you've never given it a try, I can highly recommend it, even if you've never been a fan of the series before. You will be able to find something in that game for you to enjoy. Even if it's something along the lines of this.

Af Wubbas Do (Or: Evil in the world of The Sims)

So I bought The Sims 3. So I like The Sims, and have done since the first one. So I usually buy most, if not all of the expansion packs. What of it? Huh?

If I sound defensive, it is of course because The Sims is seen by many as one of the banes of the hardcore gamer. I've found it fascinating over the years, though. Ever since first playing Sim City, then being able to fly around a Sim City 2000 save game in Sim Copter, I wondered for the longest time how cool it would be to get right down to the "personal" level… and the original iteration of The Sims delivered bigtime. It became a social event, too – I was living in halls at university at the time, so inevitably I made all of the people in our flat as best I could. Everyone came by regularly to see what was going on and laugh at who had pissed themselves or passed out from exhaustion that day (hey, managing six people is tricky!) and it is a source of many fond memories.

Fast forward to today, and we have The Sims 3. Some things haven't changed much (the basic gameplay still involves bossing your Sims around and making sure they don't shit themselves, though this has been played down a little in favour of "Moodlets" – mood "buffs" and "debuffs" – this time around), and others have changed a great deal. The biggest change is the much-vaunted "open world" design of the game. In practice, this means that Sims can walk out of their front door, walk down the street and go and visit someone else. The difference this makes is enormous – no longer are you confined to your own house or specific "community lots" – now you can actually explore the world, and there's a bunch of gameplay elements to reflect that. You can go fishing, collect things, find "treasure" – in many ways, the design of the game is getting closer and closer to something along the lines of an MMORPG.

Anyway, this time around, as usual, I made myself and my wife and am playing them "straight" – that is, attempting to be as successful as possible and maintain the family bloodline. As such, as Sim Pete and Sim Jane enter their twilight years, their two kids are growing up nicely and developing into fine young men. I just hope they don't die before the kids reach adulthood, which is, of course, a possibility!

Having read some articles online, the Prima official guide (which is a good, fun read if you're interested in the game and its mechanics) and, most notably, this touching and heartbreaking blog about two homeless Sims, I was intrigued to try out a completely different kind of Sim, using some of the more… shall we say "unpleasant" Traits on offer at character creation. Here were the results:

This is Lars. As you can probably see, he's a miserable git. Maybe people laugh at his Sephiroth hair and overuse of man-makeup. Whatever the reasons, he's become a bitter and twisted individual. He's Grumpy pretty much all the time, which makes it difficult to keep him happy. He's also Evil, which means he delights in the misfortune of others.

Naturally, he has an evil-looking house surrounding by a grungy-looking moat/swamp combo. He deliberately designed it to annoy his neighbours, who have a very pleasant-looking house.

Lars wanders over to pay his new neighbours a visit and is confronted with Roxy, a young woman whom he takes an immediate dislike to due to her looking "a bit hippie".

The conversation turns sour quickly. Roxy recoils in horror as Lars starts yelling at her for no other reason than he felt like it. He insults her appearance and her house. (Most of this was without any intervention from me.)

Lars decides enough is enough and spontaneously decides to attempt to punch out Roxy. He fails once. Humiliated, he tries again and is victorious. Both sims are left feeling faintly ashamed, but Lars is pleased that he's caused some misery.

Dusting himself off, Lars turns to Roxy's roommate, who has been watching in horror at the sideshow unfolding in front of her. Lars is sweetness and politeness, though, and uneasily (and some may say foolishly) she allows him into her house. Roxy is not happy.

"What a nice house," thinks Lars, his Kleptomaniac Trait itching. He restrains himself for the moment, as people are watching and he's already made a… memorable first impression.

In an attempt to ingratiate himself with his hostess (and perhaps build up some misplaced trust which could come in handy later…) Lars decides to tell the one about the broccoli, the tomato, the carrot and the pepper. Roxy's housemate isn't sure what to make of Lars' aimless ramblings. But then there's a clattering thump behind them.

Roxy has passed out on the floor. Evidently the exertions of meeting Lars for the first time were too much for her. Lars, Roxy's housemate and Madame Dungarees all have their own thoughts on Roxy at this point.

At this point, the household gets another visitor. Lars doesn't even bother to find out her name before he starts spreading gossip about how unlucky Roxy is. "She sure was unlucky to meet me today," he cackles.

The visitor is unimpressed. Lars sneers, knowing that the poison has been dripped. Roxy blushes as she listens to him carry on.

Lars starts on Roxy again, who looks close to tears. Roxy's housemate, getting rather fed up of this, starts thinking about going to bed and just leaving them to it.

Roxy decides to stand up to Lars and squares up to him. Her housemate stares into space behind the quarreling pair.

Finally, as Lars goes to give Roxy a good slap around the kisser, Roxy's housemate finally decides enough is enough and politely asks Lars to leave on account of his "misbehaviour".

He graciously leaves, bidding his hostess farewell. Then he tips their trashcan over…

…and steals one of their porch lights, not because he needs one, but because he can.

Tired and hungry, Lars heads home to contemplate the evil he has committed that day. Preparing himself a piece of toast, he suddenly realises that his house doesn't have any chairs in it, so, unprompted by me, he decides to settle down on the toilet to enjoy his toast.

I was laughing hard by this point. This was such a different experience to anything else I'd done in The Sims before. Sure, you could play an evil God and kill them off by rebuilding their houses in ways that, shall we say, weren't to their advantage, but the "negative" social interactions were always seemingly discouraged. By playing an Evil Sim, you're actively encouraged to be mean and nasty to as many people as you can. The Sim's Wishes reflect that, showing their heartfelt desires to go out and steal candy from a baby, or slap a special someone.

The expressiveness on the faces of the Sims has developed a lot over the years. Check out the faces that Roxy pulls as Lars is mean to her. I also found it pretty funny that Lars did a lot of the unpleasant things to Roxy completely of his own volition thanks to the "free will" option. He obviously felt an uncontrollable urge to make his presence known to his new neighbours, so I just kind of went along with it. It was fun, in an ever-so-slightly wrong way.

Give it a try. Playing an unconventional, flawed character presents some interesting challenges that you'd never come across if you were playing relatively "straight-laced".