Ooboo Vroose Baa Dooo! That’s “happy birthday” in Simlish, the delightfully nonsensical language of The Sims. The life simulation video game franchise turns 25 this year, making me feel officially old.
Like many others, I grew up playing The Sims, oscillating between designing dream homes and orchestrating ideal careers, and trapping my Sim characters in a tiny block room, removing all the doors and watching the chaos ensue. For the more benevolent among us, The Sims was an endlessly rewarding digital dollhouse.
Game designer Sid Meier (creator of the Civilisation series) defines a video game as “a series of interesting decisions”. In most games, interesting decisions are about which gun to use or which party member to heal. The Sims’ interesting decisions, however, were far more mundane. “What clothes should I make my simulated human (typically a digital avatar of myself or my friends) wear?”; “Who should they date?”; and, most importantly: “Should I use the ‘rosebud’ cheat to give myself infinite money?”
