The Sims 2 (2004)
Released on September 14, 2004, The Sims 2 took the core of what worked so well about The Sims and expanded upon it. The Sims 2 was the first game in the series to be fully 3D, and deepened the number of customization and interaction options players had at their disposal while also cutting away some of the series’ more frustrating qualities. Sims gained the ability to create memories and have aspirations and lifetime wants, deepening the potential for emergent storytelling. Pearson believes “interconnectedness” is The Sims 2’s greatest strength.
“The Sims 1 was very much a simulation, but The Sims 2 took it to a different level. You introduced a lot of interconnectedness with the families because now they had lifetimes and family relationships…Introducing backstories and memories, it was this whole new layer of The Sims universe, and I think it changed the way that we think about The Sims’ world. Who are these little people that live there? Why? What are their motivations? What do they care about? What are they worried about?”
The Sims 2 was once again a critical and commercial success because it gave players the tools to ask and answer those questions. GameSpot’s review of The Sims 2 highlights that it “successfully took just about everything that was great about the first game and brought it up a notch.” From a development perspective, it’s also Pearson’s favorite in the series, as it was the first The Sims game she worked on from start to finish.
Between 2004 and 2008, The Sims 2 received eight expansions and 10 Stuff Packs. All that extra content made The Sims 2 a very robust, comprehensive package, but also made the jump from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3 all the more daunting for the developers. Maxis grappled with stripping back features with the intial version of each new game as they rebuilt from a new base. Pearson recalled the stress of knowing that each new addition to The Sims 2 would raise expectations regarding the content in potential sequels.
“Any time we move on, we would love to have taken everything that was there and brought everything over. But the reality is that the core feature changes in The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 changed so much about how everything worked that we couldn’t really lift everything one to one…Even though it’s really hard to go back to square one, it’s an opportunity to look within the context of the engine, world, and conceits we’ve built and reenvision them.”
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