Amazon and EA are making a Sims movie, but I can’t imagine any simulation game translating to the silver screen well without embracing the fact it’s a simulation, since the genre is — as you’d guess — about imitating ordinary life. The Sims could be a fun sitcom, but at that point, why not just make an original show? For the movie to stand out whatsoever, it needs to lean into its origins.
The series is about an all-seeing god, you, who controls the most miniscule aspects of a Sims’ life. You determine what they do in every moment, who they love, and in some cases, even how they die. There is no free will. These are NPCs for us to play with, and unravelling that in a movie could make for the next Truman Show.
Sims being aware that someone is making them commit all of these acts isn’t unprecedented. The Sims 2 had several fourth wall breaks, as characters were keenly aware that they weren’t fully in control. For instance, if you make a shy Sim kiss their partner in public, they will look directly at the camera, irritated and disgusted with you. It’s uncanny, but moments like these have paved the way for a movie that leans directly into the true reality of Sims, their lack of autonomy.
Sims even look to the camera in desperation when they’re in dire need for food or sleep.
You could embrace the horror of an all-powerful overseer who strips away pool ladders to drown characters or makes doors vanish as fire engulfs a home, but this is probably too dark for the family friendly vibes The Sims has spent years cultivating. The characters coming to learn that everything in their life is A) controlled, and B) a simulation, opens the door for more internal conflict than sheer terror.
We’ve seen this idea used fairly recently with Free Guy in 2021, but that was loosely based on GTA Online, until it became a big sandbox of Ryan Reynolds’ and Shawn Levy’s favourite IP. The Sims is far more subdued, so an NPC gaining sentience and realising the world around them is manufactured and carefully run by someone ‘real’ would be far more isolated. It wouldn’t be the smorgasbord of zany references and viral Twitch streamers that Free Guy fell into, or at least I hope it wouldn’t.
Everything being a simulation would also allow for some of that iconic imagery to come through, like the giant floating green diamonds.
Instead, we’d see Sims ‘waking up’, trying to shake others out of their conditioning and break from the control of this overseer. If anything, it’d be closer to Barbie than Free Guy, as these unsuspecting otherworldly creations of humanity trigger a revolution among themselves and earn true independence. Or maybe the green diamond blinks above their head and a queue starts to form, and hope dwindles. Wherever the story goes, embracing that it’s all a simulation is far more interesting than a family of four bickering at the park.
The Sims can’t just be a suburban story about one of its famous families, loosely based on some in-game lore, because nothing about that says The Sims at its core. The families in the worlds come and go with each game, but The Sims’ heart is in its mechanics and its plumbob. In a world where video game adaptations are starting to embrace their origins more faithfully, it would be a shame to see EA and Amazon do the opposite here, skirting the very foundation of the series to tell a bog-standard story in a bog-standard world. The Sims is a simulation — it’s in the name.
The Sims 4
4.0/5
- Released
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September 2, 2014
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Maxis
- Engine
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Proprietary Engine
- Cross-Platform Play
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Xbox, PlayStation, and computer versions of Sims 4 are all separate games incompatible with each other
- Cross Save
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no
