Two things have struck players with the official return of these iconic titles—including fans like me, who have been playing these games for decades. The least surprising of the two is that minimum effort has been expended on actually improving the playing experience, with no remastering or additional features being offered at a combined $50. On top of that, The Sims 2 in particular came with a whole host of gameplay-corrupting bugs that are still in the process of being patched.
What has been eye-opening to some simmers, though, was just how much of a departure each game was from the experience of the most recent installment, The Sims 4, which has accrued 70 items of paid downloadable content to accompany it since its release nearly 11 years ago. This wasn’t due to the limitations of the early 2000s game design, but rather the philosophy that surrounded it. “It's fun if you want a strategy game with Sims-like mechanics,” wrote one Twitter user of the “very challenging” TS1, noting a struggle to maintain a Sims character’s needs and build relationships, climb careers, and do just about anything other than survive. Meanwhile, in a 2025 review of TS2 gameplay journalist Anna Koselke noted that it was “ten times” more difficult than The Sims 4. “Every decision matters.”
These conclusions are no coincidence. The first two games, especially TS1, had somewhat different goals to the updated versions of the game that many are more familiar with today. “I never thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic—I always thought of [it] as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed,” said Sims creator Will Wright in a post-rerelease New York Times interview.
The original Sims made it clear that the game was as much of a social commentary on keeping up appearances in suburbia as it was entertainment. Sims were frequently in too bad of a mood from their day-to-day lives to build skills, do homework, or even accept friendly interactions from other Sims. The pamphlet that accompanied the CD-ROM for The Sims included a list of recommended readings, including the likes of architect Christopher Alexander and economist David D. Friedman.
A product of the success of urban construction and management simulator SimCity, it applies much of the same framework to the minutiae of virtual people’s lives with a side order of creepy surrealism seemingly designed to traumatize us generations who played it in our childhoods. One of many examples includes the Tragic Clown, a non-playable character from the first expansion pack Livin’ Large who appears to “cheer up” Sims in a bad mood when his portrait is on a lot.
Pure strategy was not as much at the forefront of The Sims 2. The sequel invested far more than its predecessor in its characters, who now had a full lifespan, as well as transitioning the series into full 3D. Allowing Sims to have fully realized wants, fears, and lifetime aspirations and giving premade characters extensive lore to go along with them. Personality took precedence.
Wright ceased working with the franchise in the early stages of development of the game, claiming retrospectively that he feared it turning into an adaptation of the movie The Truman Show, with “the boundaries as far out as we can make them.”
Where the first game offered satire on a sociological level, the sequel engaged in it by means of a soap opera. It built elaborate stories around Sims that appeared in the previous installment, such as the “Goth” family being blindsided by the mysterious disappearance of the glamorous Bella Goth, and created new ones like the Curious Brothers of Strangetown, tailor-made to introduce the player to the innovation of male pregnancy via alien abduction.
There was not as much of a struggle to maintain needs as The Sims, but it was just as much of a caricature. It underlined the series’ ethos as a spoof of the desire to play God. Infinite wealth was just a few “motherlode” cheats away but your Sim could just as easily get burgled, be cheated on, or accidentally start a house fire that ended it all.
Following the re-release, Sims VP franchise creative Lyndsey Pearson insisted that the current direction of the game “unlocks all this potential to try on identities, experiment with what the world could be like, or what you want the world to be like.” It’s a clear move away from the limitations of previous games, like the laughably average-sized “fat” body type in TS2 or the fact that it took nearly a decade for the series to introduce premade characters in an open queer relationship.
On the other hand, a more uncharitable interpretation would be that there is an expectation to see a greater amount of imagination than ever from the player, and a lot less thought on the part of the game developer. “Something that's easy to forget about The Sims is just how many things we did first,” said Pearson in the same interview with People magazine.
The Sims 4, which fans deduced was originally planned to be an online multiplayer game, has been the most criticized chapter in the franchise. Its initial release in 2014 saw it drop what had previously been integral features of former games, such as swimming pools and the toddler life stage. Countless features, old and new, have been added since. Some were without charge, including the base game being made free to play in 2022, and many more came with a price tag attached. Still, a significant portion of longtime fans maintain that these additions lack investment in detailing animations, storytelling, and the light-hearted ridiculing that makes the earlier Sims installments so beloved.
There are certainly a large number of Simmers who commit to a perfectionist style of playing, something which has encouraged the numerous expansion packs attached to every chapter of the game. The working title of the original game was Dollhouse, after all, and the cynicism didn’t cancel out the deep investment of millions of players in these virtual people.
However, there are just as many for whom the games are a vehicle for intentional chaos. No simmer is a stranger to confronting their dark side as they find interesting ways to make Sims suffer or reach an untimely end via tragedies like starvation, flames, or lack of a swimming pool ladder.
For every Sim TikToker or YouTuber who shows off their latest pristine house build or their meticulously maintained Legacy Challenge (where the same Sims family is played for ten generations), there is somebody throwing a party in TS1 that requires guests to swim through a long and deadly pool maze to access it, or running a bakery in TS2 that turns into a sweatshop manned by adoptive children.
The possibilities for debauchery are only heightened with the “open world” of The Sims 3 (2009). The first game in the series to introduce story progression for unplayed Sims and the only one with no loading screens when Sims travel from home to other lots, it is a notable omission from the anniversary celebrations that Sims players have complained about.
Although no version of The Sims has been a stickler for realism, the re-release of the first two games has proven that it matters what parts get emphasized in this cartoonish observation of life. It is great to have increased representation that recognizes the average simmer’s investment in their Sims, but it does not make up for neglecting to fully develop the immersive parallel universe that made the first two games so compelling.
For many devoted players, the gameplay is a labor of love because it marries the thoughtful with the ridiculous. It’s a sense of humor that has given The Sims a quarter-century of success, but it’s difficult not to feel like it’s turned into the baby on fire.
