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441 Million seconds. 5,113 Days. 14 Years
Can you believe it? The Sims is now 14 years old. That’s right, The Sims came out on February 4, 2000 in North America and to celebrate this momentous date, we are declaring today “Wear a Plumbob Day” around the world; and we are giving all players of The Sims 3 a Stuff Pack* to thank them for all of their wonderful support. Read on to find out more about both!
Let’s take a quick moment to reflect on the past 14 years of The Sims. Did you know that we were the answer to a question on Teen Jeopardy, or that we were once featured in the New York Times Crossword puzzle? In 2005 the French postal service gave us our own postage stamp; and who could forget the amazing Glass House in Belgium where we put our fans in control of a real life family?
The Sims continues to be a part of everyday life and we owe much of that success to the many incredible fan sites, as well as the wonderful YouTubers and Let’s Players that continue to pop up every single day.
What inspired us to create The Sims? The simple answer would be “You.” At Maxis we thrive off of the quirky, unexpected moments that make each day worth living. It’s all about making our virtual little people fun reflections of the people that we see around us all the time. They’re us, they’re you.
And that gets me to my next point: today is all about You. You’ve spent 14 years playing our games and we’ve spent 14 years being fueled by your creativity. Each day marks hundreds of more creations uploaded to The Sims 3 Exchange, stories shared on our Forums and experiences posted to our social channels, and it’s your excitement that drives us each and every day.
Numbers can be fun. Over the last 14 years, significant milestones have taken place within the world of The Sims:
♦ If you were to take all of the boxes of The Sims that are in people’s houses around the world and laid them flat from end to end, they would circle the circumference of the planet Mercury more than twice. That’s more than 33,250 kilometers worth of The Sims games!
♦ Players have built more than 20.3 million neighborhoods, each of which have approximately 120 Sims. If we were to make a continent filled with Sims it would have a higher population than the people of Germany, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom put together!
♦ Over 1.7 Million player-created Sims have been uploaded to The Sims 3 Exchange, that’s more than the population of the entire states of Vermont, Wyoming and North Dakota, combined!
♦ More than 892,000 Homes have been created and uploaded by our players to The Sims 3 Exchange, that’s almost as many households as the entire country of Singapore!
♦ Players have pulled more than 3.2 million pranks with their Sims, that’s a lot of whoopee cushions!
♦ More than 300 of the world’s most popular musical artists have recorded their songs in Simlish; that’s hours of original recordings from Grammy Winners such as the Black Eyed Peas, fun. and Christina Aguilera.
These are just a few fun facts over the years, but for all you trivia fans, stay tuned. Next week, we kick-off This Week in The Sims History – a compilation of interesting, funny, embarrassing and sometimes bizarre tidbits about The Sims. These fun facts will be shared on our Twitter, so make sure you follow @TheSims3 for all of the fun.
I’ve thrown a ton of numbers at you, but I want to mention the most important number of all, the number 1. That’s what you are to us. Our family, our friends. We’d like to start by thanking you with a digital download of The Sims 3 Town Life Stuff – a stuff pack filled with new venues and objects to give your Sims’ homes and worlds a bit of a makeover. To redeem your copy of The Sims 3 Town Life Stuff, click here.
So in celebration of The Sims as a franchise and its 14 years of existence, we’ve decided to officially declare February 4 as “Wear a Plumbob Day”! The Plumbob has always appeared in The Sims, representing the direct connection between you and your Sim. In honor of you, we invite everyone around the world to put on their Plumbob and wear it proudly. Don’t have a Plumbob? Here’s where you can go to make your very own. Our studio is all joining in on this celebration and their photos will be shared on Facebook and Twitter throughout the day. Join the fun, snap a selfie and use the hashtag #WearAPlumbob! We’ll retweet our favorites.
To pull a page out of the book of clichés, I’d like to say that we’re getting better with age. I’ve been playing The Sims 4 every single day and our virtual little people are still learning new tricks. The Sims 4 knocks my socks off in a way that I haven’t felt before. The advancements we’re making to Create A Sim are fantastic. It’s easier to create Sims and you can personalize them like never before. It’s awesome to see what happens to my Sim’s emotional state when one thing leads to another in my game.
The stories are so entertaining and I’m thrilled when I see how natural the Sims move and behave. It’s so believable, beyond what we’ve been able to achieve before. It’s freaking awesome. There are so many surprises up our sleeves, believe me when I say that Autumn 2014 will be here before you know it. Keep up with our website so that you don’t miss out on the latest. As someone who was there from the very start, this is dream realm type stuff for me.
So as we say hello to the start of our 15th year, I want to welcome you into The Year of The Sims. We have lots of great stuff planned for you, all of it celebrating everything that we love about The Sims, and everything that we love about you.
From all of us at The Sims Studio, I want to thank you for 14 fantastic years of memories, laughter and inspiration. We can’t wait for you to see what this New Year for The Sims brings.
