TBH, I grew up with a Nintendo, and I did play some games (Mario Bros was my fave), but it was never more than a pass time, when I had time. As I grew through my early 20's (pre-Sims) I played Crash, Donkey Kong, Tekken, and a few others. We owned a few consoles but - again - it was never more than a occasional pass time.
My husband was always more into the consoles, playing pretty much most every chance he got.
We bought our first computer, and I got into programming and learning how to create and run scrips and the tech side of computers. He had his consoles, I had my computers. I'd play solitaire or a random silly game on the PC occassionally, but never more than - you guessed it - something to just pass a short amount of time.
Then 2000 hit. I kept seeing this sims game on the computer and in the stores. Not sure why it drew my attention, exactly, since I never seen an actual ad or anything about game play on it but I decided to give it a try. And I was completely and thoroughly hooked. I went from a casual gamer, who only played for maybe 20-30 minutes (on a long session) to pass time shortly, to staying up all night while my kids slept on Sims. I was running on 2 hours of sleep a day and about 3 pots of coffee.
And I have been addicted to Sims since. Now that my kids are mostly grown and moved out, and I have all my free time to do as I please, I spend a great deal of time playing games. 90% of my gaming time is spent on sims, but I do enjoy a random different game periodically.
I can see Sims being "dolls". I'm not offended by that, either. I really enjoyed Dolls as a child, it makes sense that a computer game to that degree would be what would interest me the most as an adult.
I enjoy all aspects of the Sims 4. I enjoy creating sims, building, decorating, and playing. So it's definitely "Dolls 2020 Edition". So I have been a casual gamer my whole life, but it was definitely the sims series that brought me from a casual gamer to a full time gamer.
