ResearchCan't Stop those Sims!
It all started with a little PC game called "Sim City" which came out for IBM PCs before even Microsoft Windows did. Ever since the idea of this little tiled overhead representation of a city which you build and maintain took hold, the idea of simulating a group of virtual people whose lives you get to manage (or mismanage!) in the context of a game has stayed strong through it's many incarnations. Maxis eventually materialized as the Godfather of Sims everywhere, and now has ports of the Sims environment to both the Xbox and PlayStation, with Sims designer Will Wright making some plans to put his animated virtual people on the Nintendo Wii as well.
The Sims stands alone as the single top-selling game genre of all time. It is one of the few game categories which attracts male and female players equally, a rarity in the usually female-starved computer game world. It has even been observed that playing the Sims is good therapy; simulating a virtual problem for your characters to solve can help you get a grip on dealing with real-life problems - if you actually have real-life outside of the game, that is! The market in accessories and items for the Sims games has notoriously been bustling. Any time we've gotten into the Sims at our house, I always find myself acquiring or designing new items more than I actually play the game. Simulator games work on a level of appeal to the creative imagination that is denied other game genres.
The spawned sequel, Sims 2, has introduced an expanded concept to the game. Rather than your Sims being static puppets, the Sims 2 has your characters being born, aging, and passing their virtual genes onto the next generation. Some adjustments have been made to improving Sims behavior and AI, but there's room for much more improvement. I mean, when your Sim gets so wrapped up in cooking that they forget it's time to go to work and sets the dishes in a stack on the floor after they've finished eating, there's a lot more to be done before they can be said to act like characters in real life. An eventual release of the Sims 3 isn't just a question of "if", but "when".
Since the Sims started out on the PC, various adjustments have been made to port the games to the PC smoothly. Even going back to Sim City, when it got ported from the computer to the Super Nintendo the results were dismal. The Sims have had a better track record in their visits to various platforms.
The Xbox version of Sims classic introduced true 3D game-play with a camera that can rotate 360 degrees. This was a huge improvement over the isometric 4-way tiles of the Sims on the PC. Otherwise, the Xbox port was a faithful re-creation of the PC version, with almost identical game play.
The PS2 and GameCube versions of the Sims 2 have had some mixed success. Because the Sims 2 doubles the complexity and depth of the game, it clearly shows that there was a struggle keeping the interface from being a hindrance during the game play. Some players also say that the daily routine of having your Sims eat, sleep, clean, shower, etc. before seeing them off to work seems sometimes to feel less like a game and more like work. Or, if you substitute "school" for "work", like being a parent!