The Sims Community Comes Together
Since 1999, The Sims franchise has been the largest life simulator to date. It has sold over 200 million copies and is one of the best selling game franchises of all time. It only makes sense that there is a huge online following for the games on multiple platforms, intertwining with each other in many ways. Simmers have their own name, news source, and custom content. While I only just started exploring this vast online world in the last few years, I know that it has been around since the first game came out and captured fan’s hearts. The lastest installation of the game, The Sims 4, has been around since 2014, with 6 expansion packs, 7 game packs, and 14 stuff packs, and as of April 9th a new one of each has been announced. Right now the community is abuzz and very excited for all the new possibilities for game play.
Which brings me to how people like to show off their Sims content online. There are many gaming YouTubers who focus on the game and creating stories, builds, and families, for their followers to watch like its an actual show. This community is the most interesting because it can show other Simmers, like myself, the possibilities of what I could do in my own game. One of the most popular is The Sim Supply, or James Turner, an Australian Simmer that posts all sorts of Sims content from builds and tutorials to “challenges.” He has just over 1 million followers on YouTube, and after his 10 years on the platform, it may be safe to say that you start your Simstube as hobby first (at least that’s what my mom said I had to do). His content is so well liked and fun that the game company, EA, has sponsored him as an EA Game Changer, which is a high honor from the company as a trusted content creator and a reviewer for every new pack that comes out. He has great videos detailing what each new pack contains just days before it drops to help promote it, as well as give players a look into what they may get. This is a very strange thing when we think about how most people don’t have all the packs like Turner may, and other YouTubers, such as Deligracy or Clare Siobhan, actually use custom content from the internet, so if you don’t download the content from where they got it you actually wouldn’t be able to download from the gallery what they made unless you want a weirdly naked sim.
One thing that I think is strange is that on Youtube and Instagram, most of the people that create content for it highly alter it with custom content, and while there is nothing wrong with that, it just means its harder to use their creations for your own game. That is something that the Sims Gallery promotes, sharing and using each other’s content, but so many people alter the game so much it can be hard to download everything you want for your own game. Custom content doesn’t take much space on your computer, but a lot of it will, and with game already so large, it can make everything run a lot slower, plus with every update, you do have to take out the content that doesn’t update with it. To me it is tedious work keeping up with all your custom content, but I don’t deny it’d be so much fun to create Sims that are just a bit more glamorous than what I’m able to create with the packs I have as it is. It’s be fun to download people’s sims, but without the same custom content, or even packs as someone else, I’m quite limited.
The Sims community is really interesting in how they can intertwine with one another as well as the developers (or gurus). Sometimes they open their Twitters up to suggestions and questions on the game. They can’t answer any questions on things in development, but it is something they probably like to ask so they can curate their work for their fans to continue to buy. A few years ago, they started taking polls from their fans to create a stuff pack, something they had never done before. They asked for what fans wanted most in the content, to the themes, colors, actual items they could use, and finally the name of the pack and the symbol for it. This create Laundry Day stuff pack, one of the biggest stuff packs, as well as one of the most favored by the community. It is one of my favorite packs I own, and if there is a Sims family, I didn’t create with at least one of the items from it, I made it before it came out. The pack is so new and inventive that everyone loved it and the gurus are considering doing another. The community love for the pack and the actual sales of it has marked it one of the best endeavors by the gurus of all time (at least that’s my opinion. I just love it so much).
The Sims is such a loved and well respected game that it will probably be around when I have kids in college, and they’ll probably sit around with their friends and play it while watching the Food Network like I did as a freshman. The community grows online, and with the love and help from the gurus, I think that the game may never die. People are still playing the original game, the second, and the third game. It isn’t something that will die easily. Its supported by such amazing fans, and it will be around for who knows how long, especially with the help of social media. The rise of social media has created such a bigger love for the game, and it connects players with developers in such a way that there is an entire pack that is a collaboration between the two. This constant collaboration between the two groups, may also be the future for the game. At least I hope it is!
