Because they are mostly sandbox game replicating, but in a funnier way, complex aspects of people's lives that, in most cases won't be experienced by the player (sim city for ex.)
Why are simulaton games fun?
Something else to keep in mind is the history of The Sims shows that greatness doesn't always start out as anything like the game which you know. The Sims started as a house building simulator and the sims were just intended to "live there" and provide feedback without direct user control. It was basically SimCity except taken to a micro level where you built a "house" to make sims happy/comfortable, basically like other "sims" variations such as Tower and all that. The Sims grew out of an experimental concept which was nothing like the end product. What makes things fun is realizing when something like a simulator needs a change of focus. SimCity and related items are obviously about the city and had a lot of interaction with the player to keep things interesting. SimHouse was falling on it's face until it was realized that to keep the interest level, interaction with the sims was required. Once that realization was made, SimHouse became no more and The Sims were born.
The concept of "simulation as fun" is not really the question as I see it. It is what "part" of a simulation is fun and how best to involve the player. Simulating a city can be fun because it is a challenge to build something stable given a set of rules. Simulating someones life (albeit a moron) can be fun if your intention is to give them "smarts" where they lack them. Simoleans, items etc are just a form of "leveling" as you go and with good game design they open up more options and keep you interested.
I'm not saying anyone is wrong in their comments, and I'm not saying I'm correct in anything specific. I just mean to suggest that any simulation can be done where a certain level of the simulation can be extracted for player control and made fun. The Sims was an example of picking the correct focal point out of something originally intended as something completely different.
Something else to keep in mind is the history of The Sims shows that greatness doesn't always start out as anything like the game which you know. The Sims started as a house building simulator and the sims were just intended to "live there" and provide feedback without direct user control. It was basically SimCity except taken to a micro level where you built a "house" to make sims happy/comfortable, basically like other "sims" variations such as Tower and all that. The Sims grew out of an experimental concept which was nothing like the end product. What makes things fun is realizing when something like a simulator needs a change of focus. SimCity and related items are obviously about the city and had a lot of interaction with the player to keep things interesting. SimHouse was falling on it's face until it was realized that to keep the interest level, interaction with the sims was required. Once that realization was made, SimHouse became no more and The Sims were born.
Interestingly, the groundwork was there long before that change was made, in the sense that Will Wright had years earlier played the game Little Computer People, which was a 1985 game where users played with a premade house that had 1 virtual person in it who was quite a bit like a sim. Will Wright said in an interview that he consulted with the designer of Little Computer People while developing Sims 1. The Creatures series was also involved - it was originally pitched as "little computer ewoks" by its designer, and, while I couldn't find a direct statement that Will Wright had played it, it would be really surprising if he hadn't, since it's so relevant to his interests and was big in the 4 years before Sims1 came out.
Interestingly, the groundwork was there long before that change was made, in the sense that Will Wright had years earlier played the game Little Computer People, which was a 1985 game where users played with a premade house that had 1 virtual person in it who was quite a bit like a sim. Will Wright said in an interview that he consulted with the designer of Little Computer People while developing Sims 1. The Creatures series was also involved - it was originally pitched as "little computer ewoks" by its designer, and, while I couldn't find a direct statement that Will Wright had played it, it would be really surprising if he hadn't, since it's so relevant to his interests and was big in the 4 years before Sims1 came out.
Most definitely, I don't believe there is much really original that can be done anymore in terms that it won't have influences from prior work in some manner. This is simply a fact of making games, there is little remaining which is truly original. Originality is generally a case of choosing things to best make a fun game anymore. With The Sims it was picking out the bits which where fun, using emergent behavior (i.e. fuzzy randoms+traits) instead of "trained" behaviors (Creatures/LCP) etc which made it a popular game. Not having the smarts of the other games gave the player a reason to interact with their moron, err Sim... :)
Originality is generally a case of choosing things to best make a fun game anymore.
It's interesting yet very frustrating that no one ever agrees on this choice. That's why we have so many people trying to start their own projects all the time, and so few people cooperating. (Naturally I wish everyone agreed with my own idea of what would make the most fun game, lol)
Originality is generally a case of choosing things to best make a fun game anymore.
It's interesting yet very frustrating that no one ever agrees on this choice. That's why we have so many people trying to start their own projects all the time, and so few people cooperating. (Naturally I wish everyone agreed with my own idea of what would make the most fun game, lol)
Guess after you make games for a while, you know that nothing is really "original". The frustration level is very high every time I hear comments like "but X does Y" as some reason "not" to explore alternatives. 10 years ago I worked on "games", now I just make rehashes with minor variations work and it annoys the crap outta me. :(
Originality is generally a case of choosing things to best make a fun game anymore.
It's interesting yet very frustrating that no one ever agrees on this choice. That's why we have so many people trying to start their own projects all the time, and so few people cooperating. (Naturally I wish everyone agreed with my own idea of what would make the most fun game, lol)
Guess after you make games for a while, you know that nothing is really "original". The frustration level is very high every time I hear comments like "but X does Y" as some reason "not" to explore alternatives. 10 years ago I worked on "games", now I just make rehashes with minor variations work and it annoys the crap outta me.
My experience has been a little different, I guess - I was always annoyed by hate against cliches or repurposing traditional elements, and I got familiar with the phrase "nothing new under the sun" in the context of writing fiction while I was still in college. I've always found it amusing how my ideas to me are obviously game X + game Y + feature Q from a third game - W annoying feature, with trope set A substituted for with trope set B; yet other people look at the result as if it came from Mars. If you're just doing rehashes with minor variations maybe you need to get your source material from a wider range of genres or switch the target genre you're trying to design.
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