Wired: The 15 Most Influential Games of the Decade

It’s the most popular game franchise that debuted this decade, with more than 100 million copies sold. Yet many people don’t even consider The Sims to be a game at all. Will Wright’s people simulator so completely disrupted our beliefs about what a videogame had to be that non-gamers with no expectations had the easiest time wrapping their heads around it. Sims has had a profound influence on videogames in a dozen different ways. The simplified human models with their carefully calibrated hierarchies of needs were revolutionary. The open-ended, accessible game design was the cornerstone of what came to be known as casual games. It was a sandbox game of unprecedented flexibility, allowing every player to create his own goals and play style. It was a platform for both modular add-on packages and user-created content. It was a highly visible property that was ported to every platform in existence, and is the basis for an upcoming feature film. The Sims, to a greater extent than anything else released this decade, broadened the definition of what a game could be. –Chris Baker

I think I’ll be booting to XP in a few minutes to visit my ol’ Sims games.  The original game will forever hold a part of my heart.

Wired:  The 15 Most Influential Games of the Decade