“The Sims” Launched 26 Years Ago, and Players Are Still Obsessed with the Iconic Life Simulation Game

NEED TO KNOW

• The Sims franchise launched 26 years ago today on Feb. 4, 2000.

• The franchise became a gaming classic, and its latest iteration, The Sims 4 , is among today's most popular games

• Details on future games are scant, but Margot Robbie is attached to a film inspired by the franchise

Become a millionaire overnight. Get a promotion on your first day of work. Find your one true love.

It's all possible with The Sims, the beloved life simulation franchise that launched 26 years ago on Feb. 4, 2000.

Created by developer Will Wright and distributed by Electronic Arts, the game allows players to create their own human-like avatars called sims. Players can build a home for their sims, have them start a family, climb the corporate ladder, and do just about anything real people can do.

The Sims 1 was an runaway success, selling more than 41 million copies within four years of its release. It spawned three sequels, The Sims 2 , The Sims 3 , and its most recent iteration, The Sims 4 , which was released in 2014.

Wright conceived of the game as a satire of consumerism. "I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic," said Wright in a 2025 interview with The New York Times . "I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed."

He continued, "You buy all these things, fridges and TVs. And all these things promise to make you happy. But at some point they all start breaking down."

The game offers players a chance at almost unlimited creativity. You can dress your sim up however you'd like, and design their home down to the smallest details. Since The Sims 1 , the game has allowed for the inclusion of custom content, player-created items and gameplay that expand the limits of whats possible in the game. The sharing of Sims content online has given way to a thriving virtual community.

Ahead of The Sims' 25th anniversary last year, PEOPLE spoke with Lyndsay Pearson, VP Franchise Creative of Electronic Arts (Who has been with Electronic Arts since 2002) about the game and how players use the game to express their creativity.

"[In]  The Sims 1   it was really difficult to keep those sims alive, so there wasn't as much focus at the time necessarily on self-expression, but that's where players started to push it," said Pearson. "And they started to mod it. They started to use  Sims 1 tools to put in their own skins and outfits, and you really got the sense that like, oh, people are projecting into this, this layer of storytelling and expression that we didn't foresee."

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The Sims 4 base game became free to play in October 2022. Since then, the game has earned more than 16 million new players.

In recent years, The Sims has teased the development of the next generation of Sims games. In 2022, Project Rene was announced as a working title for a future game in development. In 2024, Electronic Arts revealed that the upcoming game will not be The Sims 5 , but rather another game will run alongside The Sims 4 .

" The Sims  will move beyond linear, sequential  Sims  releases and offer more options for players than ever before," the company said in a statement.

In 2024, reports circulated that Margot Robbie was among the producers of a film adaptation of the game.

"It's one of these things where I can't talk about it much, because it's going to be unique," said Roy Lee, a producer of the upcoming film, in an interview with  The Direct . "I'm producing with Margot Robbie. And [audiences] were probably wondering, 'What could a Barbie movie be?' Somewhere in between both The Lego Movie and Barbie is where The Sims movie will be."

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