Why did you get into The Sims? What got you hooked? What keeps you playing still? «12...Next Go

MantleJackal

My first sims game was the Sims 2 Pets for the console. I mainly played it for the pets and I would spend hours creating and customizing dogs and cats to play around with. The sims themselves were secondary and I never really played them. Although, I didn't play the pets either since they were not controllable so really I was just creating a bunch of pets, giving them their essentials, and watching them interact with the world like it's the SimAnimals. (Had that for the DS, but it stopped working. Anyone else remember these games?)

What kept my interest was all the YouTube videos on the Sims 2 showing all the gameplay and features on the pc version that wasn't on console, seeing as they were completely different games. I always wished that I would be able to play the pc version instead of the console but the little laptop I had than was beyond a potato and not suitable for gaming.

The Sims 3 Pets for the Xbox 360 was more similar to the pc version with obvious differences such as the karmic powers or the fact that cats could hunt and capture ghosts, or the little mystery storylines you could play through. I played that game for hours until I finally got the Sims 3 for PC and I haven't looked back since.

heiblume

My son got me into Sims 1. I have always been a dedicated RPG player and thought there was no way I would enjoy this silly little kids game. LOL! I love the easy, no pressure play compared to RPGs.

Like OP I have always had a dream of hand building a dollhouse. I had at one time wanted to be a historical architect. Ironically enough I suck at building/decorating Sim houses.

I also love fantasy and history and adding in faeries, dragons, vampires, etc made my day. I still play Sims 3 at times, and wait impatiently to see what Sims 5 will be like. I love being able to explore life in the Sim world the way I cannot in the real world.

Wrenry

I started with Sim City and after falling in love with Maxis work I played every title I could find. And then lo and behold they released The Sims and my love grew even more.

I’ve played every PC version of the Sims, a few of the console versions, and the Urbz.

And though there’s been…set backs….from time to time, being able to tell stories, build what passes as a home, and woo hoo keeps the franchise fun for me.

ddd994

I first played the sims bustin out on console as a kid, and was immediately hooked. Building dream houses and kooky characters presented itself with endless possibilities. And then I got TS2 on pc and my mind was blown again, a huge upgrade in graphics as well as gameplay and building opportunities. I continued my console collection as the family pc was kinda frowned upon being loaded up with games.. the urbz, TS2 and castaway were all brilliant, new additions with different themes and filled with character. My brother and I would play split screen on each game, we loved playing together through the storylines and building more dream houses together. TS3 released when I was a bit older, and I played on a friends computer. The creat a style tool and open world seemed like interesting innovations, but teamed with the unnatractive new art style and lag.. I lost interest in the franchise. The console seemed to also lose out on games at this point in time, and so I guess I moved on. Years later TS4 released and I held off for a year or 2. The artsyle and innovative build style were far more inviting but I was in no rush to get back on the boat, especially considering TS4 seemed to be an overall step backwards for the franchise, lacking a lot of basic features upon release. But this time I kept my eye on the game via YouTubers, and finally took the plunge around the release of vampires hearing how positively it was received. And I guess the rest is history. TS4 is the game I’ve been most invested in, and when it dropped on console I switched over to that, opting to play on the sofa vs the office desk haha TS4 is by no means perfect, but it has been patched and pampered over the past 6/7 years and is a far different beast to when it released. I mainly build now, as the gameplay is still kinda underwhelming tbh.. but I do still love the game. I just wish it was handled some what differently sometimes.. I prefer the original kookiness and charm the games used to have. Obviously it’s a life sim, but I enjoyed how the world of the sims had a fantasy element to it. The grim reaper, vampires and aliens etc.. I hope Ts5 returns to its roots, yes with a strong emphasis on family play, but also personality and unpredictability in the sims themselves. And controversial opinion, but I welcome the return of multiplayer. Some of my favourite sims memories are playing with friends and family. I’d also love an urbz2 at some point haha

Ray_Trace

Okay so I got into The Sims as recently as 2020. Hi.

It was GrayStillPlays and Let's Game It Out's Sims 4 videos that got me into it. It pretty much fulfilled my criteria: can you mess around in this game, and how customizable is it. I'm aware of the series existence for quite a while, and my sister got the Sims 3DS in the 3ds launch window, but playing as human avatars didn't really captivate me (unlike Spore, which was my first Maxis game and I played that one since 2008) and my sis didn't really like, hung onto it for too long.

However, the best way to describe the Sims in two words is that they're infinitely charming, both the characters and the flavor text (within the game and patch notes included), which has completely captivated me to them. Unlike other games with avatars (say, Miis), this one I could actively believe that the Sims were indeed my characters. The customization aspect was just a big bonus, and ridiculous outfits and wacky lots were my forte, and I love how I can make horrendous abomination Sims and cram a base, a castle, and a dungeon all in one lot. I'd love to spend more time building very weird, unconventional looking lots (such as your house looking like a prison or a crypt, but it's homey in the inside, that sort of thing) but it's the funny animations and the hilarious radio spamming that has won me over.

I also don't play stories. Anything Goes in my game really, if I feel like making a mean ugly descipable Sim in my 30 Sim lot brawl another Sim, and then he dies later on because someone else hates his guts, I'll do that. Mods are sooo good lmao.

The Sims 3 has won me over and I played bits of The Sims 1 and got addicted to its gameplay loop so there's that. I have yet to play 2, but I really want to, plus there's also the spin offs I'd like to try out as well, The Sims Medieval is my number one pick.

Brandontaylor

My first experience playing any Sims game was either with Sims 1 or Sims Bustin' Out on console. I would have been in grade school at the time. My cousin had a few of the console games, then my brother and I got them as well. I kind of remember doing research into Sims 3 about the time that it was coming out. I saw a few TV commercials but I didn't really think about buying the game. Sometime after it's release, probably about 2010, my brother bought Sims 3 for his PC. He only played it a little bit before he uninstalled it because he couldn't figure it out very well. I ended up playing it for a bit on an older laptop, I remembered that I was just getting into DC Comics at the time and one of my first Sims was based off of Power Girl (an alternate version of Supergirl known for her chest size) and I had her living with the Landgraabs in an attempt to steal Geoffrey. However, the PC ended up quitting eventually so I had to get rid of the game.

Fast forward to 2016, and my aunt was telling about games she was playing. She started talking about her Sims 3 and it got me interested in wanting to play a Sims game again. I ended up buying Sims 4 but I was having bad issues with Origin not loading properly on my PC. I wanted to just be a white screen and you couldn't put in a username and password since it was just white. I was pretty mad, but I thought I could play Sims 3 instead. Well, little did I know that newer versions of Sims 3 needed Origin too. My aunt and uncle ended up buying me the base game again and as many EP's as they could get and gave them to me for my birthday. I had trouble figuring out what to do when I got the same Origin issue as before. I asked a friend of mine who knew about computers but he didn't really have an answer. Finally, I found out that I could still get a username and password to work on Origin even though it was white. I was finally able to play the game, and Origin eventually had an update that ended up fixing the game for me.

I was really excited about finally being able to play Sims 3 the way I wanted to. I ended up creating many different families, including a female Sim who ended up marrying Matthew Hamming from Bridgeport, and a homeless teenager who built a home up and ended up marrying Bebe Hart. That teenager was based off a character I had created for a fictional story based in the DC Universe that I never ended up writing due to not being a good writer. That Sims name was Brandon Taylor and he was one I had a lot of fun with. I loved being able to create any character I wanted and then doing whatever I wanted with them. I wasn't good at building and still am not, so when I play, I'm always focused on the Sims. I learned about Carl's Sim Guide and that helped me learn more about the different things in the game. The Brandon Taylor Sim was the inspiration for my forums name, to be honest.

I've stayed hooked on Sims 3 because it has everything I want in the game. I only have a bit of issues with the looks of the Sims, but it doesn't bother me like some people. I love watching my family grow and change over time, but I never seem to go far with families. I am currently playing a family that has reached 6 generations though and I love it.

CareyEve36

I think I first got into The Sims 4 after Get to Work and Get Famous were released. So somewhere between 2015 and 2016. But I only had the base game. I didn't start buying expansion packs until Seasons came out but I didn't get it right away either! I think only until mid to late 2019 was when I started buying more expansion packs. I now have all the expansion packs except for three, Vampires, Cottage living and My Wedding Stories! I usually play it when I'm bored of playing other games as well!

Behappy1st

2014 My husband died and I had to go through 2 years of Probate hell. I needed something to take my mind off all the stress. Sims saved my sanity. And for that alone I will always love it.

cyncie

I got interested in it when Sims 1 came out just because I loved the concept. I love creative things, and this game seemed to tick all of my boxes. I didn’t actually have a PC at the time and didn’t want to set up an emulator on my Mac. When it finally released for Mac, I was skeptical because most games ported to Mac seemed to have trouble with mine, so I didn’t buy it. I wound up with an illness that affected my financial status and games weren’t in the budget, so I lost track of the game until TS3 came out for both PC and Mac. By that time, I was feeling better and I had the computer and the money, so I took the plunge. I have since purchased a laptop just to play Sims.

So I started with TS3 and FreePlay. I’m a story teller, writer, theater director type, so TS3 suited my character driven play style. When TS4 came out, I held off adopting it, even though I loved the CAS demo. Base game was pretty pricey and I wanted to wait until it had some updates and expansions, because just playing families and jobs is not my game. When enough was available to build my type of game, I added TS4 and now I play it the most. I did get TS2 on the free giveaway, but I prefer the less game controlled approach of TS3/4. I like directing my own play with input from the game, not the other way around.

The Sims, for me, isn’t really a game to beat or play through. It’s is a creative tool for my imagination. I’ll keep coming back to it as long as I need that creative outlet.

GrimlyFiendish

I started playing the Sims around April of 2020. Someone I follow on YouTube had started doing a Sims story series, and the creativity aspect of it got me intrigued, and then when my city went into a hard lockdown because of Covid I was looking for a way to pass the time so I decided to buy the Sims and a couple of packs to see what it was like to play. Initially I was a very vanilla style player, at least whilst I was learning how everything worked, and then I pretty quickly shifted over to a combination of occult and family play. As for what keeps me invested in the game, that would be imagination and a creative outlet.

missroxor

I was simming before simming existed, I kid you not. As a teen in the late 90s I used to spend hours drawing out and furnishing floor plans on paper. Then progressed onto drawing families to live in them, writing their back stories, giving them friends, partners etc. I filled pads full of these drawings. My sister and me used to call it "my crazy" because I was embarrassed to tell anyone I did it in case they thought I was a complete weirdo. In 2000 my then boyfriend introduced me to a game he just bought called The Sims... safe to say my love affair with the sims lasted a couple of decades longer than the boyfriend did.

Sallycutecat

I don't remember what got me into The Sims or how I heard of it. My father played The Sims and at some point he got The Sims 2. When he left he took The Sims 2 with him and left The Sims behind, so my mum put it on our computer and that's when I started playing it. It's a game I had wanted to play, but had not being able to until this point. We also installed it at my grandparents so me and my cousins could play it while there. My grandmother also played The Sims, which she has been playing right to this day (She now wants The Sims 4 with Cottage Living after seeing me play it).

What keeps me playing The Sims is it's a game I enjoy. I have never been into challenging games, whether action or puzzle. The Sims is a game where there is no "game over" or point in which I can not progress. I enjoy the range of different activities for my Sims to do. I have played Sims 1 right through to 4 and Sims 4 is my favourite. The needs decay is at a good pace that allows me to have fun and focus mainly on the fun activities for my Sims to do. Lately I have gotten into making videos of The Sims 4 which I really enjoy doing.

naeshelle

I got into the sims after watching my mom play. TS2 was my first title, then she got TS3 so I played that, now I'm onto TS4.

What got me hooked on the game was probably the fact that you could live another life. I sort of used the game to escape whatever was going on in my real life that was too hard to deal with, if I'm being transparent. Now that I'm older & things are better, I get to play for fun!

I keep playing because I enjoy the game but to be honest, mod & CC creators have kept the game fresh for me & make it something I can spend hours on. I also love that you can tell a million stories in completely different ways through the game. As a writer, I love storytelling & coming up with different plots to involve my sims in. It's pretty fun!

KyreRoen

In my childhood, I'd received a Gameboy Advance: SP for my birthday, along with Pokemon: Fire Red and Yu-Gi-Oh! Destiny Board Traveller. Around Christmas (if I remember correctly) my cousin gifted me Pokemon: Silver as well as either Sims: Bustin' Out or Urbz for the GBA. That whole era got me into Pokemon and Sims, respectively, thoguh with Yu-Gi-Oh I'd stuck to the animation. Years later I managed to get into Sims 3, and when Sims 4 came around, I stayed away for a bit, then hopped in and found it hard to hop back.

ignominiusrex

I was renting next door to a crazy bunch of teens-and-early-20s and one of them introduced me to this new game called The Sims. He played it obsessively and soon, so did I.

I remember getting a lot of expansions, really enjoying Hot Date, really hating the colors and patterns and decor in "Livin' Large", and then there are some years that are a bit of a blur, and I think I played Sims2 but only a bit, as life took some turns. Then I remember later on, trying Sims3 and finding I just didn't have the time, and skipping the tutorial was a huge mistake. I barely scratched the surface of that game and left with a bad impression of it being too grindy.

Then about 3 years ago, got Sims4 and enjoyed it for a while before getting fed up how shallow the gameplay was, then got into using mods, but still couldn't get past the paper-thin veneer of gameplay. Then had issues with the game not working right after an Origin update so I have since deleted Origin and have been playing Sims2 exclusively. Will try reinstalling Origin one of these days, and seeing if the problems with 4 are still there.

What keeps me playing for now, is how cool 2 is even though that, too, has known issues and dangers of corruption I'm learning to avoid.

Smellincoffee

Many, many years ago when the Earth was new, I'd bought SimCity 3000 Unlimited with my allowance and was eager to show it off to my neighbor, who only had SimCity 2000. (We used to trade cities saved on floppy disks, if I'm not aging myself enough already.) The opening contained a trailer for "The Sims", which I thought looked like the coolest thing ever. Come release day, I begged my dad to take me to GameStop (or was it Electronics Boutique....?) and spent the day absorbed in it. I loved building and storytelling. I've been stuck with it ever since! Bought Sims 2 in 2004, Sims 3 in 2013 or so (never really got into it) and Sims 4 in June 2018.

munroele

Started at 6 or so when my aunt had Sims Hot Date on her computer, and I thought it sounded funny, the way 6 year olds think the word sexy is hilarious, and thought it was fun to build houses and make people.

Then got TS2 at around 10 or 11, and bought almost all the packs, but seeing TS3 was coming out soon, it was hard to find a lot of them, and I wasn't able get some, so had to borrow some off a girl at schooll, and she borrowed the ones she didn't have that I did.
Played it obsessively for years, especially on weekends all through high school, but i then got TS3 in about 2011, or so? hated it. didnt play the sims again.

Then TS4 in about 2017, and been playing THAT since.

CK213

I bought the Original Sims game and returned it because I found it depressing.
My Sim would come home from work and start crying because she didn't have any friends.
I had just started my first professional job in a new city and I thought I had better get out the house and make some friends.

So I never really played the Original Sims.
But I jumped back in when The Sims 2 was announced because I saw build mode on YouTube and realized I could design and build homes.
Once I had some homes built, I decided I had better play test them so they would work well for anyone who downloaded them.

Once I started playing sims, I started making up stories.
My first was more of a documentary of my sim giving house tours, and then one of them turned into a story.
After that I was hooked on telling stories with The Sims.

I never did give Machinima a try.
Probably because it would require voice actors.

Techbilt

I believe I was in middle school me and a group of friends got together at someones house and they had Sims 2, was hooked ever sense.

We took turns making our sims and playing with them in their houses in Strange town and building their houses and stuff and it was so much fun. I spent most of my high school career earning money to but Sims 2 stuff (by then Sims 3 was on the verge of coming out to shelves so all the sims 2 stuff was on sale at the stores.) THEN in my college days I ended up getting the sims 3 stuff as they went on sale. Then after I graduated college I bought sims 4.

I also remember playing sim city in school in like 5th grade? I don't remember that much it was the old old one.