The Sims Online Review

The Sims, the top-selling line of "life simulator" games, has made the move to the world of online gaming.  A lot of the aspects of the single player games, like motives, skills, and interactive objects, have been transitioned to the online world, but all of the AI-controlled people, or "sims", have been replaced by human players.  The result is a game that is at once familiar and yet fundamentally changed, leaving a gaming experience that some will enjoy but others will not.

You start the game by creating your sim.  This involves selecting a head and body for your sim and choosing the city in which your sim will live.  There are no personality traits to customize your sim's behavior as in the original games, because you have far more control over your sim's behavior in The Sims Online and the game does not have to use the traits as a guide to determining your sim's personality.  There are a fair number of heads and bodies from which to choose, along with three degrees of skin coloration for each, but as of now there is no way to import custom skins for your sim.  With all the possible combinations of heads and bodies it is not very likely that you'll encounter your sim double, but the possibility does exist.  You can further personalize your sim through your choice of his or her name and by adding a bio/description/interests blurb that can be read by other players.  Selecting a city essentially assigns your sim to a server, and once assigned your sim can never move to another city.  The game plays the same no matter which city you select, so your choice only really matters if you are looking to play online with some of your real world friends.

Once your sim is ready to go, you are taken to a map of your city.  Properties that are currently occupied by other players appear as flashing red dots so you can see at a glance where the activity is.  The game also provides a number of filters and lists that let you quickly see the most popular locales in a number of categories, and how many players are currently in each one.  Clicking on a property will transport you there and into the real part of the game.  Although you are in a city, the game really works as a set of disjoint locales.  Leaving a property takes you back to the map screen - there is no way to wander a neighborhood and no "public" destinations such as parks.

The game's interface is essentially the same as that of all the Sims games, so if you've played The Sims you'll be right at home in The Sims Online.  Right-clicking on a location, object, or another sim will display a menu with the available actions that can be performed.  Unlike The Sims, though, you can not queue actions and your sim will never undertake actions on his or her own.  Also, interactions with other sims no longer depend upon moods, interests, and relationships.  All of the sims are human-controlled, so their reactions are determined by the person sitting at the keyboard.  The little cartoon icon speech balloons used to simulate conversations between sims are gone, replaced with the text typed by players.  While these changes can certainly make things more dynamic, it also changes the nature of the game, making it less, well, game-like.  Part of the fun of The Sims is in managing the relationships of your sim with the other sims in the game and this component of the game is missing in the online version.  You can add other players to a friends list known as a friendship web, but this really has no effect on gameplay other than letting you see who are your friends' friends.

The motives which affect your sim's mood - hunger, bladder, social, energy, etc. - are present in The Sims Online, and can be satisfied in much the same way as the original.  Use a toilet to relieve your bladder, take a shower to improve your hygiene, and take a snooze to restore your energy.  In The Sims, it is quite a challenge to satisfy all of your sim's needs as the game clock is merciless.  By the time you shower, eat, sleep, etc. and spend a third of the day at work you are left with little extra time to do other things.  In The Sims Online, however, satisfying your sim's needs is not nearly as big a challenge.  The needs do not decrease as quickly, they are easy to satisfy at most properties that you visit, and you are not forced to send your sim to work.  This frees you from spending so much time satisfying your sims basic needs and allows you to concentrate on socializing and building your sim's skills.

Skills rate your sim's aptitude at several classes of tasks on a ten point scale.  The skill areas are the same as those in The Sims, and include mechanical, logic, and creativity scores.  You build your skills by spending time interacting with special objects - play chess and you increase your logic skill or practice a speech in a mirror to improve creativity.  If there are several skill-building objects placed near to each other, then the speed at which your sim accumulates skill points increases.  Each successive point in a skill area takes progressively longer to earn and skill ratings will decline over time, so you'll be forced to spend a significant amount of your time online interacting with skill objects.  From your point of view this is a very passive activity as your only interaction with the game while working on skill points is to stare at the screen.  You're free to type in chat messages while working, but people in the skill-building focused properties tend to concentrate on building their skills instead of chatting. 

By making skill points so hard to earn and by having the skill levels erode, the game forces players to concentrate on no more than two or three primary skills.  However, this removes a lot of the "game" out of The Sims Online.  The best way to build your skills is to visit a property with plenty of skill-building objects and lots of other sims using them.  Most of these properties provide beds, buffets, and bathrooms for your use, so you can just plop your sim down at a skill-building object and sit back, only needing to interact with your computer when it is time to tell your sim to use the toilet or to eat.  Some players will find the reward of high skill ratings enough motivation to go through this passive process, but others will quickly get bored out of their minds by it.

Skills are important to gameplay because they are necessary to earn higher returns from the game's skill and job objects.  Your sim can interact with a skill object in order to earn more of the game's currency, simoleans.  Your skill rating will determine the speed at which you create something of value, and how much you will earn from it.  For example, a sim with a high logic skill can earn money by working at a blackboard and selling formulas.  As with the skill-building objects, adjacent skill objects will generate higher income when used by more than one sim.

Job objects are special money-generating objects that require several sims to operate.  These objects have multiple stations that are tied to a particular skill.  The higher the corresponding skill of the sim operating the station, the higher the total payout to all of the sims using the job object.  Job objects are more interactive than the skill objects and actually play as little mini games.  For example, in one game three sims work together to break a three letter code.  The games are all pretty basic, but at least they allow you to interact with the object along with your sim.

The only real way to earn money in the game is to own your own property and open it up to other players.  You'll generate some money when you have visitors on your property, and will take a small cut of all money they earn using your skill and job objects.  The Sims Online also allows you to charge for anything - pay toilets, food, even a cover charge just to enter the property are all possible money makers.  You're free to create a restaurant and charge for meals, a dance club with a cover charge, game shows with cash prizes - there's a lot of room for creativity.  The downside to this is that your property is only open to other sims when you (or one of your roommates) is online and at the property, so it won't earn money for you while you are gone.

If you are planning on building the next sim hot spot, prepare to be patient.  The game starts your sim off with 10,000 simoleans, and an empty property will cost you at least a third of that.  Everything that you add to your property costs money; objects, walls, floor tiles, wallpaper, you name it.  Creating your dream property takes a lot of money and it will take you some time to earn it.  The game allows you to pool your resources with other sims by allowing several sims to run a property as roommates.  Since roommates are other players in the game, you'll need to choose them as carefully as you would in real-life to ensure that they share your vision of the perfect property and that they will pull their weight.