In the process of completing his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Will Wright developed a level editor that he found more entertaining than the game itself. Digging deeper into theories of urban planning and architecture, Wright converted the editor into a stand-alone product—arguably more "software toy" than game—that asked players to build and manage a city. You could zone land for residential, commercial, or industrial use, place roads, power lines, police stations, and more, all in the hopes of forging a livable, desirable city that could attract "sims" to settle and work.

In essence, Wright created a city simulator—and he put you in charge, as a kind of all-powerful mayor who lived (and ruled) so long as the city did.

The game was a quintiessential sim: almost entirely open-ended, with no clear goals except those you set yourself. Still, designing the spaces, seeing the dynamic responses as your city faltered or thrived, and trying to better tune the balance in order to attract a larger population proved an immensely satisfying experience. You could burn the city down, reveling in the destruction—and many players did—but at its core, Wright's creation emphasized construction and player creativity.

But the world wasn't ready for Micropolis, and Wright couldn't find a publisher for the unusual Commodore 64 game. In 1987, some three years later, Wright met Jeff Braun at a now-famous pizza party, after which the two formed a company called Maxis. A co-publishing agreement with Brøderbund followed in 1989, with the game—now renamed SimCity—released soon after for Amiga and Macintosh (other platforms followed in 1990).

After a slow start, which was in line with expectations of modest sales from everyone except Braun, word-of-mouth spread and the game turned into a big hit. At a time when games were still very much considered a part of the cultural backwater, SimCity was even discussed favorably in mainstream publications such as Time magazine and The New York Times, while government agencies, private contractors, and educational institutions contacted Maxis about engine-licensing or custom builds.

The desire to simulate reality—to establish a set of rules and systems that represent some aspect of life—seems inherent in all of us. Children play house, have tea parties with invisible tea, and pretend to be cops, robbers, astronauts, explorers, or doctors. Eventually, those children grow up to be game developers, and they start cranking out digital sims of nearly every imaginable activity.

Simulation games existed long before video games came along, of course, but even limiting ourselves this way still leaves a huge pool of potential games. So, before we explore the long history of sims from Wright and others, let's lay out some ground rules for what is and is not included.

Existential questions

In researching this article, I came across two major stumbling blocks. First was the seemingly innocuous question, "What is a sim game?" Some critics take the narrow view that only vehicle sims can claim the label, while others think immediately of the Sim franchise (of which SimCity, SimAnt, and The Sims are perhaps most famous) developed primarily by Maxis and Will Wright.

Others take a holistic view, insisting that anything which accurately models or mimics real-life or real-life systems should be considered a sim game—but this is particularly subjective since it requires a definition of what, precisely, constitutes an "accurate" model and it rules out sims set in the future.

The second issue was deciding where to draw the line between a pure "simulation" and a "simulation game," and then further between a "simulation game" and a "game with sim elements." Is Flight Simulator a game or something else? What about VBS1? Should sports games, racing games, god games, and sim hybrids such as Balance of Power, Stronghold, or Close Combat: First to Fight be included? Can games set in the future be considered valid sims? What about games that simulate social interactions but do so in a fantasy environment—as is the case with Animal Crossing?

Reality being messy as usual, I compromised in a way that I hope provides something close to the best possible overview of the sim genre's evolution in a single article. (Cue the arguments over excluded titles.) Here, then, is my idiosyncratic list of criteria:

Sports games will be ignored completely, with the exception of racing sims—which will be discussed briefly—because sport sims are more a subset of the sports genre than the sim genre (and because they should be examined in their proper context). For similar reasons, tactical shooters are also out, no matter how realistic, unless the shooting is done entirely from within a vehicle.

The pliable nature of sim games makes genre hybrids impossible to avoid completely, but an emphasis will be placed on games that seem to put simulation above roleplaying, story, or strategy elements. In the case of non-vehicle simulations, the less direct the player's control, the more likely it will be covered. For vehicle sims (including space and flight sims), I've leaned more toward "hardcore" simulations which attempt to model physics and controls as realistically as possible, while still remaining anchored in the realm of video games rather than actual training aides.

That said, this article is mostly concerned with influential and/or innovative games—so a number of great sequels and spiritual successors are likely to be glossed over or left out entirely, especially if they were released in the past few years.

Let's dive in.