When did you first start playing the sims «12345...Next Go

Evalen

I just realized that I have been playing the sims for 22 yrs. wow. and I still love it. My Granddaughter gave it to me as a gift.

The Sims was the first game in the series. Developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, it was released for Microsoft Windows on February 4, 2000. The game used dimetric projection and featured open-ended simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons ("Sims") in a suburban area near SimCity.
Developer(s): Maxis
First release: The Sims, February 4, 2000
Genre(s): Life simulation, Social simulation

ZeeGee

The Sims Freeplay was my first sims game in 2010 or 2011, can't remember. We had a thriving community who talked about Sims 3 a lot. It sounded like something that would be addictive so I put off trying it until late 2014. Been addicted ever since!

I'm actually glad I didn't know about The Sims in the beginning or my life would have been pretty different.

StephSteb

My daughter got me into The Sims 2 in 2005 or so I think...not sure the date but I remember putting off trying Sims 3 because I heard so much bad about it. My husband got me The Sims Medieval for my birthday, though and I fell in love with the color wheel so I decided to give Sims 3 a try in 2013 and never looked back

Evalen

ZeeGee wrote: »

The Sims Freeplay was my first sims game in 2010 or 2011, can't remember. We had a thriving community who talked about Sims 3 a lot. It sounded like something that would be addictive so I put off trying it until late 2014. Been addicted ever since!

I'm actually glad I didn't know about The Sims in the beginning or my life would have been pretty different.

Yes the sims are addictive. but I love playing with them. It keeps you thinking.

Evalen

@StephSteb I am so glad you tried. It is an amazing game. I tell people that there is almost nothing man can do that the sims can't, I even see people who look like some of the sims.

Magdaleena

Since 2009! Sims 3 was new back then, and also my first Sims game. I loved it.

Emily4331

I also started with The Sims 1! Though, if I remember correctly, I got it for Christmas the year after it came out. So been playing since December 2001. So about 20 years. That's most of my life spent playing some iteration of The Sims.

Evalen

@Magdaleena and @Emily433 its funny that one game can be so addicted all these years. Emily4331 you made me laugh when you said spending most of your life playing the sims. I guess I will play until my end time. I love the sims and no matter how many times I play it seems like a different game. Magdaleena I love the sims 3 too. It is always fun and new each time I play. great, have fun with the Sims.

Sprottenham

I don't remember the year, but it could have been 2008 or 2009 and it started with a copy of The Sims 2 that I borrowed from my sister. She also had the Nightlife expansion pack. Then I bought my own copy of Sims 3 later in 2009 or 2010 and played it for a while. I only had a simple laptop then, and I remember shortly before I stopped playing I actually went to cook dinner while the game was loading. Yes, you read that correctly. Cook dinner.

Then I didn't play it again until 2017 when I started my current Sunset Valley save, but left it alone again for whatever reason until I picked it back up again in 2020, when I also bought my first expansion pack for Sims 3, "University Life".

I remember watching the ad for The Sims (the first game), because it would load before everytime I played "Sim City 3000", which I played a lot during the first half of the 2000s, but I always thought then that playing this weird "The Sims" game wasn't anything for me. :P

carlystur03

My first Sims-related game was either SimTower or SimTown back in the mid to late '90s. SimTower was basically running/managing a hotel and SimTown was like a dumbed-down version of SimCity. I then got into the Sims 1 the year or so that it came out and got a few expansions, but not all of them. Like, I never got Makin' Magic expansion. then I got Sims 2 and some of the expansions for that, but again not all of them because my computer at the time couldn't handle them and I wasn't interested. Now I have all the expansions for Sims 3 and I am enjoying them so much! Been enjoying them for the last 5 years or so with all of them installed.

Nikkei_Simmer

I was middle aged when I came upon the Sims. I’d never picked up the Sims until January 2017 during a convalescence period from a serious illness - too busy with real life and trying to raise a family and build a business from the ground up. I was given my wife’s Sims 3 and told to go play and quit bugging her so she could play Mass Effect in peace and quiet. Of course that promptly git me addicted.

Evalen

@Sprottenham thanks for posting, glad you are finally here. Sims are fun

@carlystur03 Oh my goodness, I remember sims towers and sims cities still have SimCity, I still have it. Love making cities. Glad you are enjoying the sims 3 Best game ever.

@Nikkei_Simmer Your post is the funniest post about how you got to play the sims. I had a good laugh on that one. Glad you are here and addicted to the sims. It's your wife's fault LOL love your post.

Sk8rblaze

I started with The Sims 1, but grabbing The Sims 3 in 2009/2010 is when I really got hooked! I still get super nostalgic whenever I play, remembering the feeling of experiencing that open world for the first time in the series.

Evalen

@Sk8rblaze I know what you mean I too remember how it was when each sim came out. I guess we are all hooked. And it is still an amazing game.

Cororon

I mostly played old Snes games, but then I read about Sims 2 when it came out. Didn't think much about it, but then I saw more articles about the game and it seemed fun, so in autumn 2006 I bought the base game and University. I played the base game only for over a year, because I was a bit scared to install the expansion because I read somewhere that installing an EP could cause problems. But I did, and the game was even more fun! So with time I got all EPs and SPs. I started playing Sims 3 when it came out, but took a long break while I continued playing Sims 2. Got a new PC and my Sims 2 saves refused to load for some reason, so I began to play Sims 3 more seriously and have never looked back.

Evalen

@Cororon Nice post, I too loved the sims 2, It was so much fun. Glad you moved on to Sims 3. I guess some people had problems with the expansions, but I did not have any problems either. thanks for your post it was great how you moved on. Have fun with your sims

OmniNerd42

I started way back in the original Sims. Back then I did a lot with Buffy & Sims and a lot of CC. Then Sims 2 came out. I did even more CC. Did mostly builds and maxis match stuff so that I could have more options for swatches in game. In Sims 3 I was a build machine. And used very little CC. But did
lot with Supernatural the TV show & Doctor Who, but in the Sims. Made some of my all time favorite builds in that that one. My favorite being an Airship that actually flew. Got featured for that one. I totally miss houseboats. Seriously they were the best things ever for building creative stuff in the Sims. I also miss Fairies from Sims 3. Been playing Sims 4 for years now. This time my show I made CAS stuff for was Sense8. Yes I know I have a weird thing for creating my shows in the sims.

I've Not really been on the forums this time around until now. Think it is mostly because I am playing on my Xbox this time around instead of my PC like the older versions. Which has helped me kick my addiction to CC which used to cause me to spend more time fixing and managing my CC then playing the game. So this time around I can't so I spend more time in game. Which leaves me forgetting to share my builds and CAS stuff. Because I'm not trying to avoid file management. LOL.

I do still share on the gallery. My EA id is exdemon42 but my Xbox live info is Omninerd42 just like here on the forum. Not sure why my EA id ended up not matching. Oh well.

penndabble

I started getting into The Sims franchise when I was 7. I somehow stumbled upon videos of gameplays of it on YouTube at that age and it looked really fun. I convinced my dad to take me to the store and get the game, but I hadn't realized there were so many different ones. I ended up picking The Sims Life Stories and I absolutely loved it, even if there was a story I had to play through first before I had access to freeplay. Though I believe The Sims 2 was also around at that time, but I hadn't gotten into that whole series until later on; followed by The Sims 3 and now The Sims 4. I'm 21 now and I still love The Sims just as much as I did when I first discovered the games existed.

baykinsar

I've been playing Sims since the OG back when I was a kid, but I didn't super get into it until Sims 2 came out. I was obsessed, lol. I loved creating stories and making dramatic things happen to my Sims. Which I guess I carried into adulthood since I still write Sims stories :P

Evalen

@OmniNerd42 Nice to hear from you, glad you posted. I too love the houseboats also. I have never played with the Xbox, but am glad that you are still having fun with your sims. Nice that you do builds and CAS stuff. I have never had any CC in my game. but many do. Have fun with your sims

Evalen

@baykinsar Nice post. I did like sims 2 also, obsessed, lol. made me laugh also I guess we are all obsessed with the sims. Glad you are still paying and writing sim stories. Have fun with your sims.

bekkasan

I started playing in 2012 when my hubby gifted me Sims 3 with Supernatural for my birthday as well as the medieval version. By the time it officially ended I had all the EP's, SP's and store stuff. I was addicted! I had no desire to move on to the next version which was too cartoony for my taste and no open world was a big step backwards.

loaferman

I first started playing sims as a teenager.im 58 years old now and playing sims 4.when I first started playing sims back in 2000:there was sims, liven large, housr party, hot date ect. I had bought all those expansion packs too it. then sims 2 came out and wow what a differance in game play.over the years sims have made alot of developments in growth and how we interact as sims go. On a differant note could someone please tell me why origin's sign on page is still unavailable. I have been tring too buy the new sims 4 expansion pack( High school years) it requires me to sign in before i can buy it through origin. it just wont let me. Please help me.

Jade47

I started with The Sims. I can't believe that was 22 years ago. I always found it really hard at the time. I got into playing Sims 2 and the sheer amount of animations was amazing for the time but I never got into it because my PC broke and I couldn't afford to replace it at the time and I eded up buying a cheap console instead, I remember getting The Sims: Urbz. When I got back into PC gaming I mainly played RPG's and didn't get Sims 3 until later when I could pick up the retail version and expansions cheap. Found an old copy of The Sims second hand with all the expansions last Xmas and even now its still as hard as I found it back then, juggling needs in that game is really tiring. Only bought Sims 4 this year in the Steam sale and got most of the expansions I was interested in while they were heavily discounted.

Rsanda

The first game I played was TS1, but that was at a friend's house, and I didn't really understood what was going on. My actual first Sims game was TS2 Castaway on PSP. I still love that game. The ability to craft, sometimes funny sometimes creepy bottle messages, collecting stuff, building boats to get across, monkeys etc. it blew my mind.

Afterwards, I looked for a PC copy of that game because I wanted to play it on a bigger screen. I came upon Castaway Stories, which was my first PC Sims game that I played properly. At first few minutes it disappointed me because it was so different from the console version, but I kinda loved it just the same after finishing it, because it was actually first proper Sims title that I ever played. You know like get married, have kids, have a job etc. The console version didn't have that stuff.

From there, I jumped to TS2 + Apartment Life + Ikea Stuff for a brief moment. I didn't play it as much as Castaway Stories, because I missed my family from the previous game (it was my first Sims family so I was attached). I also really liked the general gameplay of CS better. And to this day I still think Castaway Stories is better than TS2, but that is probably nostalgia at this point. I loved playing with witches though, because Harry Potter.

To this day, I still play TS3. It took me until 2011 to get a proper PC that can actually play that thing, but since I jumped to TS3 I never looked back. I own all the DLC + something like 80% of the Store. I have like 2k hours on Origin alone + however long I played on discs and Steam. It is my absolute favorite TS game, all because of open world. You know what, it is my favorite game, it is the game I played the most so I guess it deserves that title.

I also played TS4 btw, but I have more hours on its CAS demo than the actual game

Lucy_Henley

My first experience was with the console games, specifically PS2. I played Sims 1 first. One time, though, one of my Sims died in a fire and it freaked me out. I vowed to never play the game again… famous last words.
I’ve played all the PS2 Sims games apart from The Urbz, which has never really appealed to me.
I don’t know when I got into the PC Sims games. It may have been around 2009? I got Sims 2 Double Deluxe and then acquired the expansion and stuff packs gradually. I didn’t complete my collection until 2020, when I got Apartment Life and Glamour Life Stuff off eBay (yup, I got into Sims 2 again over lockdown).
As for Sims 3, I have every expansion and almost every stuff pack except Diesel, 70s/80s/90s and Movie. (I don’t have Sweet Treats either, but it’s not available anymore so I couldn’t get it even if I was interested).
I only ever had the base game for Sims 1 PC. I did once get a second hand copy of The Sims Unleashed, but there was no manual in the box and therefore no way of installing it. *sad trombone*