History VideoGame / TheSims

* GhostlyAnimals: As with humans, it is possible for cats, dogs, and horses to die and leave a translucent versions of themselves.

** In all the four mainline games, some expansions feature giant, collective bubble blowers that are pretty much G-Rated hookahs. In The Sims 3: Late Night and The Sims 4: City Living, the bubbles even have different flavors. In City Living, sims can even show distate for sims that blow bubbles in public, making the nod to tobacco even more obvious.

** The Sims 4: City Living adds bubble machine where differenr flavors have different effects. Nearby Sims often show distaste for sims blowing bubbles in public

* If you want altered forms of play, there's ''Videogame/MySims''[[/index]] for the UsefulNotes/NintendoWii and UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, which has the dressings of ''The Sims'' but lacks a lot of the essentials of the game. Instead, it's more like ''Videogame/AnimalCrossing'', but for people who prefer to work with cute chibi humans instead of a bossy tanuki. And there was a Website/{{Facebook}} version, ''The Sims Social'', merging the game with a ''Videogame/{{Farmville}}'' experience, but it was eventually closed due to lackluster player reception.

* SurvivalSandbox: Believe it or not, the series can be thought of as an antecedent to/parody of this. While it completely lacks a combat mechanic beyond getting into harmless fights with other Sims[[note]]Unless you're playing ''VideoGame/TheSimsMedieval'', or with one of the many [[GameMod mods]] that add violence, weapons, and murder to the game[[/note]], it still requires players to closely observe and manage their Sims' wants, needs, and relationships, and if they don't have a way of making money, they're not paying for food or keeping a roof over their heads. With few exceptions[[note]]The UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 port of [[VideoGame/TheSims1 the first game]], ''VideoGame/TheSimsBustinOut'', ''The Sims Stories'', ''VideoGame/TheUrbz'', and the ''[=StrangerVille=]'' expansion for ''VideoGame/TheSims4''[[/note]], there is no storyline other than that which the player forges for their Sims; the [[EmergentGameplay gameplay]] and [[EmergentNarrative narratives]] are entirely emergent. Later games even let you fish, grow a garden, and pick wild plants, which you can then sell or use to cook meals and brew herbal recipes. In short, it takes many of the tropes of the survival sandbox genre and applies them to [[StepfordSuburbia suburban life]].

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Some people ignore the point of the games and just spend their time killing their Sims.

* SelfInsert: It's possible to make a Sim based off of yourself.

* ObviousBeta: ''The Sims 3'' and ''4'' are both this, but for opposite reasons. ''3'' was very ambitious and deep, but extremely glitchy and so poorly optimized that even on modern gaming [=PCs=] it's difficult to get it to run smoothly - nevermind the cheap budget laptops that most of the ''Sims'' audience plays on. Meanwhile, ''4'' is generally very well polished (though this can come and go depending on the expansions that are installed) and runs great on just about anything, but is heavily scaled back in terms of depth - including removing the open-world that was the major selling point of ''3''. It also lacked features standard to the series like pools, toddlers or ghosts, which all got patched back in later. Even then ''4'' isn't lacking in technical issues either, where scripts of things to do tend to be clogged by active Sims, including NPC Sims, causing them to stand in place (especially in public places where gatherings of up to 20 Sims happening) while their needs plummet.
** ''The Sims 2'' leaves support, as the final expansion pack was released in 2008, relatively stable and playable, except the fact that things like deleting a Sim, deleting gravestones (that contains embedded Sim character data), saving while calling a telephone (due to a temporary Sim being placed to gauge relationship and it's improperly removed if loaded from an in-progress save), and saving while playing an RC car (due to the game treating those moving object like a temporary Sim), can cause long-term corruption due to the remaining Sims trying to reference the deleted character, but those garbled code eventually spread to other inner workings of the game, forcing a complete purge of the neighborhood and starting anew. It didn't help that some expansion ships with unwanted pre-made Sims that playing with them causes so much corruption as is deleting them. The engine also can't really handle machines released many years after, which causes issues ranging from glitchy shadow effects (that can be fixed by completely turning off shadows) to loading times not improving compared to a native machine.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: You can make your Sims go barefoot all the time. Originally, this was tied to legs overall, and work uniforms overrode this temporarily, forcing your Sims into footwear; however, ''The Sims 3'' has footwear as its own category and [[http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims_3/Patch_31 patch 31]] added the option to fully customize your work uniform(s), so you can now invoke this [[BunnyEarsLawyer even at work]].

* GameGourmet: Food affects various game mechanics such as hunger and fitness. There are enough different foods to be classified as cooked meals, instant meals, snacks, raw ingredients, and so on, as well as by the actual meal they can be prepared for.

* HasTwoMommies: ''The Sims'' has no formal relationships, so any adult in a household with a child was considered that child's parent by the game engine. This led to situations where children could end up being raised by parents, step-parents, parents' roommates, two couples at once, and so on - all the while happily regarding them all indiscriminately as his or her parents.
** The Curious brothers in ''The Sims 2'' seem to be preparing to raise [[MisterSeahorse Pascal's]] alien baby between the three of them.
** The Single Moms and Single Dads households (from ''The Sims 3'' and PC and Console versions, respectively) feature same-sex friends who are single parents, share a house and appear to be raising their children together in (initially, at least) platonic relationships.
** Linn Valstrom from ''The Sims 3: Aurora Skies'' DLC is being raised by her adoptive Dad and his male friend - who, incidentally, are ''heavily'' implied to be a couple, although their starting relationship values just have them as [[HideYourGays Best Friends Forever]].
** Dylan and Audrey Shears from ''The Sims 3: Roaring Heights'' DLC are a same-sex couple who have had a biological son together thanks to "advances in science" (possibly referring to the Engineer A Baby interaction that is available to any couple - including same-sex ones - in the Future world of Oasis Landing).
** This trope can be invoked by the player in any ''Sims'' game except ''The Sims Medieval'', where same-sex couples are unable to have children, [[EternalSexualFreedom though they are free to marry]].
*** It's technically still possible even then, but requires a bit of forward planning as you'd have to marry an opposite-sex spouse, have the desired number of children, divorce or kill off said spouse and marry the same-sex partner of your choosing, who would then be recognised as the child's step-parent.
*** Also, if a same-sex couple adopts a child via phone, the child is not their biological child (and can look totally different), but the relationship recognizes that they ''are'' the child's parents, with no qualifiers such as "adoptive-parents".

* GRatedDrug: Has popped up here and there among the many games in the series, although the most frequently appearing one is a thinly veiled disguise for alcohol simply referred to as "juice". You can buy bars in most of the games and mix the "juices" yourself, and they cause "special moodlets" and effects in the sims who drink it (making them more flirty, energized, etc). In terms of references to other drugs, there are "herbs" you can grow in University Life that are pretty obvious nods to weeed.

* GRatedDrug: Has popped up here and there among the many games in the series, although the most frequently appearing one is a thinly veiled disguise for alcohol simply referred to as "juice". You can buy bars in most of the games and mix the "juices" yourself, and they cause "special moodlets" and effects in the sims who drink it (making them more flirty, energized, etc). In terms of references to other drugs, there are "herbs" you can grow in University Life that are pretty obvious nods to weed.

** Nobody's a genius when they panic, but panicking Sims just seem to throw their brains out of the window, panicking too much to call the police, the firefighters, or even run away at all. They just stand there screaming as the dinner burns or the carpet burns or THEY burn. Sometimes the burglar... starts panicking over being caught by your panicking home-owner.
*** And finally, [[TooDumbToLive the mother]] [[ArtificialStupidity of all stupid actions]], ''running directly towards a burning fire or other disaster, then standing shrieking until the fire burns out''. Fire safety is ''not'' big in [=SimNation=]. You can buy a fire-extinguisher and smoke alarm in ''Sims 4'', but they're purely decoration with no function at all.

* BareYourMidriff: The game has outfits you can choose for characters, of course, there are female outfits that show off their bellies.

** [[AutoErotica Cars]], [[TwoPersonPoolParty hot tubs]], photo booths and [[ElevatorGoingDown elevators]] in ''The Sims 2''. Sims 3 and 4 continued to add places like tents, [[ShowerOfLove showers]], bushes, [[ZeroGSpot spaceships]], the closet, your backyard telescope observatory, a coffin, and as bats. Players are always asking for more places to woo-hoo in every expansion.

** Downplayed in ''The Sims 4''; while Sims don't need water to survive, they do receive a negative moodlet (named "Dehydration") if they have not drunk enough recently. Drinking a glass of water removes this moodlet.