Game News Top Ten Sellers for Jan-Oct 2002

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights

<a href="http://www.npdtechworld.com/">NPD Techworld</a> has posted a list of the top ten selling games for the first 10 months of 2002. Here's that list:
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<blockquote>1. The Sims: Vacation Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $29
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2. Warcraft III: Reign Of Chaos - Vivendi Universal Publishing $57
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3. The Sims - Electronic Arts $42
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4. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault - Electronic Arts $45
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5. The Sims: Hot Date Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $29
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6. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone - Electronic Arts $27
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7. Roller Coaster Tycoon - Infogrames Entertainment $19
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8. The Sims: Unleashed Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts $29
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<b>9. Neverwinter Nights - Infogrames Entertainment $54</b>
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10. MS Zoo Tycoon - Microsoft $27</blockquote>
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Spotted this at <a href="http://www.homelanfed.com/">HomeLAN Fed</a>.
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[Chadeo]

Could someone please explain to me why the SIMS is so popular? I honestly don't get it.

Which is why I am doomed to never make a living off of making games, my tastes are clearly vastly different than 95% of the game buying public.

Oh well

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Could someone please explain to me why the SIMS is so popular? I honestly don't get it.

Which is why I am doomed to never make a living off of making games, my tastes are clearly vastly different than 95% of the game buying public.

Oh well

My wife loves the game. I honestly have no idea why. None. It makes no sense to me at all. To me, The Sim is micromanagement hell, with no hope for less micromanagement later on.

 

[Spazmo]

The Sims is sort of fun, until you realise it isn't. But it's very strange. It has infinite appeal for non-gamers, but the rest of us hate it. I remember a little while ago, GameSpot ran a poll after Sims: Hot Date was released. It was asking about where readers thought the Sims should go next. There was stuff like "Wild West," "The Moon," "Under the Sea," and some other dumb ones. The last option was "Away, please."

It won by a landslide.

 

[Section8]

The Sims has a lot of appealling features/hooks:

• A virtual life free of consequence
• A catchy and kind of cute artistic style
• Character advancement
• Non-Linear gameplay
• Voyeuristic appeal
• Nothing offensive
• Constant Interaction

I'll admit that I quite enjoyed the Sims when I first played it, as it was a pretty nifty idea, but the appeal wears off when you realise that it's repetitive micromanagement without any real goal. I can fully understand why it's so popular though, it's very accessible, easy to interface with, but also provides a lot of challenges based around micromanagement in a limited timeframe.

One thing I find interesting though is that the Sims is effectively a present day RPG. It shares many common elements, and even though it's RPG-lite it's got inifinitely more RPing potential than Baldur's Gate. It doesn't have a pause to queue orders function to completely break the challenge of trying to do too many things in not enough time, it has basic character stats, and then layer of skills on top of that. It has stat enhancing items, it has NPCs who react to your actions both positively and negatively, it has a great deal of superficial choices to tailor things to exactly how you envisage it.

The biggest problem I have with the Sims is that it suffers from the same things that any non-linear game without a goal suffers from. Unless the player has their own goals and motivations, the game soon becomes kind of aimless. You begin to question why you want to advance your character when everything is just fine as it is. When you make some major decisions, such as buying a huge house, getting married or having children, it doesn't actually make the game better, it just makes it harder with less returns. The Sims makes some interesting social statements. :D

What I want is for someone to explain to me how the fuck MOHAA got so popular? It's a horrible FPS full of design ideas that were unanimously decided to be bad back in the 80s, and doesn't really offer anything new to the genre. Is the WW2 setting really that much of a hook?

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

Do not view it as a game. View it as a quasi-interactive movie. When you look at a lot of linear stuff in that light, you begin to see the pluses.
Not only that, but in many situations the attention to detail is immense. Not to mention the pulse pounding combat.
While I realize that it is not a true "game" in most respects, I get some kinda kick out of it.

 

[Section8]

Well I play games for the gameplay involved, and it wasn't too crash hot. If I want something non-interactive, I'll watch movies, because most of the time, those who make movies for a living are better at making movies than people who make games for a living.

 

[VasikkA]

I think it's kinda sad The Sims and its three add-ons are on the top 10 list. Sure it's good for the game industry and it appeals to women(!), but that's also the negative side. Sims Online is gonna destroy your social life, so lock away your wives! Also, I'd much rather see the really good games hitting the top spots in the charts, but that aint ever gonna happen. Media sexiness and pre-release hype sells. Same thing with movies, music etc...

 

[chrisbeddoes]

The sims is a contemporary non violent rpg .
Also those %$&$^ females :wink: can be persuaded that the Sims is a good game and they allow you to play it .
They also play it themshelves . Amazing !!

 

[Mistress]

I can fully understand why The Sims is so popular. I enjoyed the original game for a while - its kind of entertaining for a short time. The addons are madness though.....

I'm a much bigger fan of the Simcity series...

 

[JJ86]

The biggest problem I have with the Sims is that it suffers from the same things that any non-linear game without a goal suffers from. Unless the player has their own goals and motivations, the game soon becomes kind of aimless. You begin to question why you want to advance your character when everything is just fine as it is. When you make some major decisions, such as buying a huge house, getting married or having children, it doesn't actually make the game better, it just makes it harder with less returns. The Sims makes some interesting social statements. :D

I bought The Sims and played it for quite awhile before I got bored with it for that reason. I have no goals. I can't identify with the goals of having a high paying job so I can gets lots of stuff and thus having lots of friends so I can entertain them in a big house. Plus there didn't seem to be enough dark-side appeal. The social open-endedness was pretty interesting though. I wouldn't mind seeing a similar thing done with Fallout but with a goal.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I can fully understand why The Sims is so popular. I enjoyed the original game for a while - its kind of entertaining for a short time. The addons are madness though.....

I'm a much bigger fan of the Simcity series...

SimCity wasn't MicroManagement hell, though. The Sims is. Other than power stations blowing up after a certain number of years, there really wasn't any micromanagement. You even had hours in between when plants were going to go BOOM.

The Sims, however, you have to tell your guy when to eat, when to drink, when to crap, when to get up, when to go to bed, and so on.. EVERY SINGLE DAY! There isn't a time when you're not drudging through the same tasks, over and over again.

About the only real advancement in your character's life is job promotions, and that's something you don't even have a part in beyond getting your character up and to work on time.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

The Sims is like the electronic version of Barbie TM and Jon-Jon TM.