It was bound to happen. First there was SimCity. Then there was The Sims. And then came a series of highly successful expansion packs like Hot Date, Livin' Large, House Party and others.
Now comes a fan-made plug-in that allows Sims characters to effectively play SimCity inside The Sims. The Sims franchise has gone meta.
For the uninitiated, The Sims is the most successful line of games ever. It started in the late 1980s with SimCity, a game in which players take the role of a powerful mayor who creates and modifies a city to keep citizens happy. About 10 years later, Electronic Arts, the publisher of the series, released The Sims. In this game, the best-selling title of all time, players control the lives of virtual people, called Sims, and determine their daily activities to keep them content.
Now the series has come full circle. The plug-in from Simslice, called Slice City, lets the Sims in the game play a video game in which they create mini cities. So, along with the many things that Sims can be instructed to do – such as going to work, playing guitar, cooking, socializing and dating – they can blow endless hours creating small urban environments.
"Basically, I wanted to create a game within a game, where a Sim could remain unemployed and make a living 'farming' a mini city that is complete with buildings, houses, offices, parks and even little citizens scurrying around," says Simslice designer Steve Alvey. "There had to be consequences not only for a Sim's actions but also their inactions."
Thus, just like in The Sims, attention to detail breeds success and reward, while inattention breeds disaster.
"The Sims must routinely refurbish the buildings to keep the citizens happy, or just let them deteriorate and force the citizens to become unhappy and move away," says Alvey. "Happy citizens go to work and pay taxes, which the Sims collect as revenue. The higher the profits, the more attractive the city becomes, so more citizens will move into it."
Befitting Slice City's place in the larger Sims community, it has attracted a lot of fans. There are countless Sims-related fan sites, many of which have active forums. The Simslice site is no different.
"I think (it) is the best Sims site ever made," wrote forum member Nasidiuslgnas. "It has awesome objects, skins, houses, floors, walls and more."
In other words, Slice City is just like The Sims and SimCity – except on a mini scale.
Despite the similarities between Slice City and The Sims, there is no relationship between Alvey and Maxis, the Electronic Arts subsidiary that publishes The Sims. But Alvey says the Maxis team liked Slice City enough to spotlight it on the official Sims site for a couple of weeks.
For Alvey, the fun is in hearing what his users are doing with his work.
"It's funny to hear people write us about the garbage strike their citizens went on, and (that they're) having to clean their city of some trash," he says. "Sharing the fun of The Sims game is the backbone of the Sim community, and it's a driving force that keeps (us) running. As long as the community exists, we plan to be part of it."
