Camelot? It is a silly place...

Everyone knows it, and almost anyone with an interest in gaming has played it. Released in 2000, The Sims is certainly a game that is contemporaneous with the context of the decade which it has dominated, a decade obsessed with the reality format. Television has regurgitated the likes of Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! due to public demand, to the point that reality TV is a cornerstone of the industry. And this is exactly the same as The Sims, releasing expansion pack after expansion pack to meet with the demands of millions of gamers’ virtual civilians.

I had the first release of The Sims, and in fairness it is one of those games that are terribly addictive. I even went to the length of buying two expansion packs. In fact, the reason I stopped myself from buying the entirety of the series and the new games which followed is because my disc broke and I lost interest. The worrying part of that is that I would consider myself to be quite cynical towards the idea of reality shows and games. So if I can be sucked into it that easily then there is a good chance that most people can. But how long can it all last? Could Maxis, the game's creators, simply release add-ons infinitely?

Technically, they probably could. You can bet your house on it that they will happily continue to create expansions to the game until demand declines. By 2003, the franchise had released seven updates to the game: Livin’ It Up, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, Superstar, and Makin’ Magic, before deciding to move on to make The Sims 2. The price of the first expansion, Livin’ It Up, even now is around £12 at Amazon.co.uk. When you multiply that by 7 and add the price of the original game itself, the cost really begins to add up to get what is technically the complete version of the first Sims game.

"Maybe it’s just me, but fishing is not the most exciting activity I could actually participate in, never mind watching a virtual person sit bored beside a lake and attempt to catch virtual fish."

But when you consider that by March 2002 The Sims had sold more than 6.3 million copies worldwide, the expansion packs where always going to sell well with people unable to get enough of their own simulated world. If that wasn’t the case then The Sims 2 surely would not have been a success, or indeed a big enough success to trump its predecessor with an incredible eight expansion packs. By this stage the expansion packs are an argument in themselves for the idea that The Sims could just forever expand into eternity. Titles like Pets seem understandable and expected, but some are quite odd concepts; for example: Seasons. In this expansion pack, you are given the new feature of changing seasons and weather patterns, along with the ability to go fishing. Maybe it’s just me, but fishing is not the most exciting activity I could actually participate in, never mind watching a virtual person sit bored beside a lake and attempt to catch virtual fish. This proves one thing: that Sims players will probably buy anything. This pack was followed by Free Time, so when you have nothing better to do, you can play The Sims, then when you have played it that long that your virtual self has nothing better to do, it can partake in some hobbies. Perhaps it would have been expedient at this stage to release an expansion pack where your Sims characters can play The Sims, and their characters can play The Sims, ad infinitum.

But in all seriousness, Maxis must have felt like they had struck a gold mine with the ability to make more and more money out of one game title seemingly whenever they like. The franchise has also begun to branch out to other consoles and mobile phones with the release of The Sims 3, which has been even more successful than its predecessors, selling 1.4 million copies in its first week alone. The third release has even had 5 different core versions, along with 3 expansion packs. But perhaps the most worrying thing was the introduction of “stuff packs”: add-ons to the game containing different objects for your Sims to use. The potential for this concept is infinite, as expansions containing different items could forever be issued so long as the creators continue to make them. If you think about all the different things you can purchase or use in the Sims, these can be updated. Then if you consider the millions of things the game has yet to include, these things can simply be added in. Then they could be updated and varied, updates for updates which get updated, forever!

And all of this before the luxury of internet purchasing. The Sims 3 includes an online store where players of The Sims 3 can purchase and download content for their game online for additional fees. To date, unlike its counterpart for The Sims 2, the store in The Sims 3 only offers exclusive objects: clothing, skins, and hairstyles not available through any other medium. The store uses SimPoints on a credit card or Points Card, which may be purchased at retail stores, launched on June 4, 2009 to coincide with the launch of the game. Players can download purchased items using the game launcher or the Store Mode interface found within the game itself. So now you don’t even have to stop playing The Sims in order to update the game!

How is anyone with a passion for the game ever going to stop desiring these new items? It’s a scary thought: simply how much money can The Sims potentially generate on top of what it has already accumulated to date (as the top selling PC franchise of all time, topping 125 million sales over its ten year lifespan)? If the game were to stop production of updates today, you could imagine uproar amongst those longing to expand their Sims’ worlds. So get ready for The Sims Medieval in 2011, core Sims 3 title number 6. And if that isn’t enough, 2012 will see The Sims: The Movie. You’re probably as confused about how that can possibly work as a movie as I am, but we’ll just have to wait and see on that one. If you’re not totally satisfied by how the movie turns out I’m sure a few movie expansion packs will win you over.

See also:

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