How The Sims’ endless customisation fostered one of gaming’s most diverse player communities
Katy Perry is in a recording booth. She turns to the camera, smiles and begins to sing: “Badipsa frooby noop”. As if to confirm that we didn’t mishear her, she repeats “Badipsa frooby noop” and gives the camera a thumbs up.
The moment was captured in 2010, in a behind-the-scenes video of Perry recording her song Last Friday Night in Simlish – the language spoken by characters in The Sims games. It was part of her branded downloadable content (DLC) package, Sweet Treats, which was available to players of The Sims 3.
The Sims is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025, to the chagrin of many a millennial. From its groundbreaking approach to inclusive character creation to the surreal charm of global pop stars re-recording their hits in Simlish, The Sims has always operated at the intersection of individuality and shared culture.
Created by one of the industry’s few auteur game-designers, Will Wright, The Sims 1 was released on the cusp of the millennium and changed the video game landscape forever.
The game harks back to what game studies researcher Jesper Juul described, in his foundational book Half-Real (2005), as the “primordial game structure”. This is a game in which the player doesn’t follow a set story or structure in a linear way, but gets to design their own strategies, combining the rules in often unpredictable ways.
Sul Sul! This article is part of a mini series from The Conversation marking 25 years of The Sims franchise.
More than that, players are able to tell their own stories and build emergent narratives. These narratives are not about war, fantasy worlds or outer space, but regular people, regular homes, regular jobs and plenty of WooHoo (The Sims’ euphemism for sex).
Custom creativity
The Sims franchise provides players with a space to perform and experiment, to be cruel, silly or creative. These modes of play can take the form of machinima – using the game engine to make creative videos. Or using features like the family album, in which players can capture photos of their avatars within the game to make poignant statements about important social issues.
The base game has provided an increasingly diverse range of opportunities for customisation of characters, spaces and activities. And the large quantity of available DLCs and mods (player-made modifications to the game) has offered even more variety.
The Sims offer a diverse range of gender identities for characters.
EA Games
Many of the customisation options have been explicitly related to characters’ identities, and the series has gradually improved its representation. For instance, while the original game already included same-sex relationships, The Sims 2 included a “joined union” option which was similar to marriage. By The Sims 3, same-sex couples could marry with no distinction from opposite-sex couples. Similar developments have taken place in the diversity of skin tones and gender identities as the series progressed.
Read more:
Why The Sims 4’s new inclusion of transgender and disabled sims matters
As a result of these inclusive changes, players enjoy gaming experiences as diverse as they are.
Phillip Ring, executive producer on The Sims 4, provided an overview of the game’s demographics in a Game Developers Conference talk in 2023. Only 21% of Sims players are men, while 55% identify as heterosexual and 62% as white. Ring explained how the game’s developers, Maxis and Electronic Arts, consider equality, diversity and inclusion as part of hiring, development and engaging with the player community. Active inclusivity has become an essential part of The Sims design.
None of this touts The Sims as a digital utopia. The franchise has been criticised for its consumerist ideology, and much of its progressive content has been deeply controversial in different territories of the game’s release.
Katy Perry records Last Friday Night in Simlish.
For better or worse, the game has both reflected and shaped pop culture – which brings us back to Katy Perry. The Simlish version of her song may sound nonsensical, but it reflected a cultural moment – the post-feminist, anthemic pop of the 2010s.
That moment has now passed. In a post-Brat summer era, Perry’s Sims moment feels outdated. The Sims, however, remains relevant, evolving alongside popular culture.
In his book Understanding Video Game Music (2016), musicologist Tim Summers interprets Simlish rerecordings as satires of contemporary pop culture. I disagree. Instead, I believe Simlish is designed to let players “fill in the blanks”, using their imagination to shape meaning.
This has always been central to The Sims – allowing players to project their own stories onto a world within the cultural zeitgeist. Many of us grew up with The Sims. As we’ve evolved, so has the game – which remains a dynamic cultural artefact.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. Läs mer…