Top Games of E3 2001
"No other game at E3 2001 seemed as guaranteed to be a surefire hit as The Sims Online."
The Sims Online
No other game at E3 2001 seemed as guaranteed to be a surefire hit as The Sims Online, the forthcoming massively multiplayer version of Will Wright's incredibly popular people simulator. The game takes the strongest elements of The Sims--namely, that game's social interaction features--and greatly expands upon them. You might first assume that The Sims Online lacks the same sort of creative spark that made The Sims seem so original--after all, The Sims Online is clearly derivative of its namesake. And yet the design decisions in the making of The Sims Online are every bit as ingenious as those that made the original game so remarkably successful.
Already, online games have clearly established themselves as being essential to the PC gaming market. But it'll take a game like The Sims Online, which will be extremely easy to play yet also very versatile and appealing, to make online gaming transcend its current boundaries to become the way in which a majority of people will prefer to play games.