Is The Sims A Virtual Dollhouse?

As I someone who rarely controls my Sims & prefer watching Sims doing their own things, no, not at all. Dolls in a dollhouse wouldn’t move themselves & would require me to actively play them.

I like The Sims because it tries to simulate people, not because I get to control them.

The way I play, yeah, kinda. I like to control my little computer people.

"sunblond;c-16943839" wrote:
I played with my sister's dollhouse and her Barbie's and I had a GI Joe, is it any wonder I love the sims?

My brothers as well. They had no problem picking up my barbie dolls and playing with me in my Barbie dream house and it never occurred to me that it might be 'strange' for me to play GI Joes with them. I'll never understand the 'boy/girl' stigma people put on toys. They are entertainment. Our little sims virtual dolls are no different. My baby brother is the one who introduced me to the sims and his opening line?

"Hey sis, I found these really cool little people for us to play with! Reminds me of playing when we were little." We played Sims 1 together and traded save files for years when we didn't live in the same city/state.

Simple answer.,.,, it’s like playing with Barbies for adults.... lol!

Personally, I think it's more of a simulation than a dollhouse, but that may be my own personal biases showing. I was a tomboy growing up, and while I had dolls, I hardly ever played with them - they were a bit too boring and girly for my tastes.

It certainly does not feel like a virtual dollhouse. There are many autonomy and progression aspects that tilt it towards life simulation more than a dollhouse simulator. If I were to call The Sims a virtual dollhouse, then any and every other life simulation to ever exist would also be that, so a no for me.

For me it is although it's also much more. It's a means to tell stories using your imagination and move around your little characters and dress them up.. so yeah that part is dollhouse and is quite wonderful. It also is much deeper in that it's own gameplay comes out. Some unexpected things can happen. You can learn how to make their lives easier or figure out the different things that can occur because you went down some game play path (had them join a career, paired them up with a sim with different traits, gave them a bad reputation ect.. ect...) You can also watch and barely guide them casually, or manage their time fiercely to keep on top of needs or goals (either game driven or player driven).
I still mostly think of it as a dollhouse for brevity though. Probably because it lets me more vividly do what I most want to do .. tell myself a story.

It's how I see it. I loved dolls as a kid, and I still do.

"WildIrishBanshee;c-16944501" wrote:
Personally, I think it's more of a simulation than a dollhouse, but that may be my own personal biases showing. I was a tomboy growing up, and while I had dolls, I hardly ever played with them - they were a bit too boring and girly for my tastes.

That was me - I never played with my dolls. They were dust collectors. LOL. They just stood there doing nothing so I could never consider my sims a doll in a doll house. LOL.

As others have said, I like the unpredictability of the Sims games, that's not really something you can ever get from a dollhouse playing by yourself. There are many qualities of the games that are able to attract players who didn't like dolls as kids so I never made the correlation of Sims being a virtual dollhouse.