New HQ The Sims Cover

Description

The Sims is a life simulation game series that was developed by Maxis and The Sims Studio and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and it is one of the best-selling video games series of all time.The series was created by Maxis, before the development of the series transitioned to The Sims Studio between 2006 and 2008. The Sims Studio later reintegrated into the refreshed EA Maxis label in 2012, where it continues to be developed by both teams. The games in The Sims series are largely sandbox games, in that they lack any defined goals . The player creates virtual people called "Sims" and places them in houses and helps direct their moods and satisfy their desires. Players can either place their Sims in pre-constructed homes or build them themselves. Each successive expansion pack and game in the series augmented what the player could do with their Sims. == Development == Game designer Will Wright was inspired to create a "virtual doll house" after losing his home during the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and subsequently rebuilding his life. Replacing his home and his other possessions made him think about adapting that life experience into a game. When Wright initially took his ideas to the Maxis board of the directors, they were skeptical and gave little support or financing for the game. The directors at Electronic Arts, which bought Maxis in 1997, were more receptive—SimCity had been a great success for them, and they foresaw the possibility of building a strong Sim franchise.Wright has stated that The Sims was actually meant as a satire of U.S. consumer culture. Wright took ideas from the 1977 architecture and urban design book A Pattern Language, American psychologist Abraham Maslow's 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation and his hierarchy of needs, and Charles Hampden-Turner's Maps of the Mind to develop a model for the game's artificial intelligence. == Games == === Main series === ==== The Sims ==== The Sims is the first game in the series. Developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, it was released for Microsoft Windows in February 2000. The game uses dimetric projection and features open-ended simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons in a suburban area near SimCity. Seven expansion packs and two deluxe editions with exclusive content have been released. It was repackaged in several different formats, and different versions of it were released on seve