When did you first start playing the sims

@007Ecko That is what sisters are for. Glad you got hooked. Have fun with your sims.

@Luna10 Nice that your sister got you into the sims. Good choice the sims 3, best game ever. What a nice remembrance of your sister. Have summer fun with the sims. Have fun with your sims they are the best.

Seventeen years. Started with The Sims 2 and an Elder named Daphne Molyneux. I dropped out of The Sims until 2017, when I got The Sims 3 and a laptop for my birthday, and the rest is history. Recreating Daphne and her family didn't come about until 2018, after I lost a Save via a cloning glitch. When I replayed as Daphne and her family in 2019-2020 I even managed to get my first, and to date, only wedding on that Save (Her eldest brother got married, in front of the mail woman as she was delivering the mail). In the time I have played on The Sims 3 I have played the following Careers:
Athletic Career (A few Sims; this was my go-to Career when I first started playing)
Business Career (This is one of the few Careers in which I have completed a Lifetime Wish)
Law Enforcement Career (Haven't played the Forensic Branch yet, though will do at some point in "The Molyneux Story")
Political Career (Another Career in which I completed a Sim's Lifetime Wish)
Journalism Career (Haven't reached the top of this Career yet)
Military Career (This was the Career I put my Genie through in one Save, in my Oakley Save this is the Career I chose for Dennis. This was the Career route I would have chosen for Harold Rivers in the "Rivers of Riverview" Save)
Firefighting Career (Haven't played this one in a while, not since I got my new laptop)
Self Employed Gardener (I have put a few Sims in this Career)
Self Employed Alchemist (In the original Molyneux Save from 2018, this was what I put Ajax Molyneux in after he completed his Lifetime Wish as a teenager)
Eventually I hope to play through every single Career on The Sims 3

This thread made me realise that I've been playing for twenty years, which is crazy now that I think about it.

I first played the original game a few years after it came out. I was little at the time, and my older brother was moving out. He left me the games that he couldn't take with him, which included The Sims and all of its expansions up to that point. It was a big thing for me, we didn't have a lot of money back then. I still have all of the discs and such.

Bought The Sims 2 when it came along, played it all through my school years with my little brother. We'd stay up until the early hours of the morning playing it sometimes. When The Sims 3 came along, I kept my old PC when I bought a new one so that my little brother and I could play it together. We had all the packs up to Seasons, which I bought two copies of, just so that we would have all the same content. We lost interest when The Sims 4 came out, we don't really enjoy it very much compared to the old games. 2 and 3 all the way for us, though we'd break out 1 sometimes if we could get it working.

@Luna10 So glad you love the sims 3, it is a nice way to remember your sister, glad you are having so much fun. Have fun with your sims.

@Sleepstar so glad you love the sims 3, it is so amazing all the careers your sims have had. that is amazing in itself. You are certainly having fun with your sims. congratulation on all those careers. continue to have fun with your sims.

@PrincipleOfEntropy so glad your older brother got you hooked on the sim. and now you and your younger brother are still having fun with the sims 3, I totally understand the long hours, I too loose time and sometimes it is late at night and still playing, the time flies when you are having fun, and that is what the sims do. Have fun with your sims.

oh man, I think we first bought the Sims 3 in 2011, I was 8 years old haha! My older sister played it with me, and I still remember the first game we ever played was a sims version of our family! Now I'm 19 and I've been playing for more than 10 years and this franchise is really the only one I've stuck with for so long (except Sims 4, I got pretty bored of that tbh). I'm kinda sad I only recently got into the forums, but also I'm glad I wasn't a little kid on the forums haha! Long live the Sims!!

i feel old. If I look back at Will Wright’s body of work. I was 14 when he designed Raid on Bungeling Bay. I was 19 when he released the first ever Simcity (1989). And I was 30 when Sims 1 came along. Since it’s so far back in the nebulous mists of history, I can’t remember if I ever played Raid on Bungeling Bay.

All I can say is he truly hit the mark when he came up with the concept of the Sims.

This makes me realize The Sims 3 has been around for over half of the life of the series. I mean, that actually makes sense since there's four of them, so assuming roughly equal time, it should have been around for half. Since The Sims 4 has had an unusually long life, it's been longer. It just feels strange since The Sims 3 still feels "current" in a way whereas The Sims 2 or especially The Sims 1 feel more legacy. But I'm wondering how much of that is down to me having not moved to The Sims 4.

Anyway... I can't remember the exact time I got into it. It would have been around the mid-2000s though, and it would have initially been with The Sims Complete Collection. A friend had a sister who owned it and she brought it over. Upon my reaction, she also had The Sims 2 base game (which I think was still relatively new) and brought it over. The only thing I remember from this was her being surprised it ran better on my PC than on their family PC. Theirs was newer than mine (If I had to guess, it had a Pentium 4 and I still had one with a Pentium III) but mine had a video card and maybe some more RAM which is probably why it ran better since The Sims 2 was 3D. Going on what I recall from when I replaced that PC as well as when the Sims 2 released in 2004, I'm going to guess it was around 2006-ish when I first played the series. Though, I knew about it long before. I was mostly playing Sims City 2000 back then.

She ended up giving me their copy of The Sims Complete Collection since her sister moved out or went to college or something (which I lost and am sad and wish EA made it available digitally) and my friend was more interested in The Sims 2. I also ended up getting The Sims 2 Double Deluxe via the now defunct Direct-2-Drive digital store in late 2000 since I liked what little I tried of The Sims 2 as well, though I never invested much time into it. The Sims 3 was inbound so I wanted for it, got in 2009, and... I've been stuck there on and off since.

I wish the Sims 1 and 2 were available digitally via EA though. I still have the digital copy of Sims 2 Double Deluxe but I'd probably get the expansion content if it were all available digitally.