Andrew Park Senior Editor

Looking Forward to in 2003: Deus Ex: Invisible War, Unreal Tournament 2004, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Rainbow Six 3, Tony Hawk's Underground (T.H.U.G.), Fire Emblem, Double Dragon Advance Looking Forward to in 2004: Battlefield Vietnam, Doom 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost, Half-Life 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Tribes: Vengeance, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, Rome: Total War, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Syberia II, River City Ransom EX

Demystifying The Sims and Animal Crossing: The Difference Between Casual and Hardcore?

Though The Sims is one of the most popular games of all time, you wouldn't know it by talking to any so-called "hardcore" game fans, most of whom seem to dislike the game. Both The Sims and Animal Crossing for the GameCube are open-ended games that can and do appeal to just about anyone for many different reasons. Could that be why enthusiasts don't like them?

The kitchen is on fire, and Bella Goth has appropriately donned pajamas to fight it. Another day in the life of The Sims.

By now, you've at least heard of The Sims, the remarkable game that lets you create a virtual family of computer-controlled characters called "sims." Though it isn't the first game to have this sort of premise (1985's Little Computer People was), it's groundbreaking in that it's (mostly) nonviolent, very open-ended, and has the unusual (and unnerving) tendency to model real life with its tiny, gibberish-speaking characters. And by now, you've hopefully heard of (and played) Animal Crossing for the GameCube, a 2002 game that lets you play as a villager in a small town filled with animal neighbors who have regular schedules and hobbies and who celebrate holidays based on your GameCube's internal clock and calendar. I would gladly recommend both of these colorful, clever, and highly enjoyable games to anyone who doesn't know much about games (but would like to start playing).

What's remarkable about both of these games, and perhaps why they're so appealing to casual players and beginners, is that neither game pressures you to complete specific goals within time or point limits--but they do offer lots of very real and very interesting objectives with real rewards, if you care to attempt them. That is to say, many fans of The Sims enjoy creating sims with differing personalities, placing them in an enclosed room, and just waiting for them to get at each other's throats.

From the moment you get off the train in Animal Crossing, you're greeted with friendly faces and plenty of things to do...if you want to do them.

But you can also, if you care to, attempt to increase your sims' skills through practice, advance in a career path, earn a certain amount of money, build and design a certain house (with expensive themed furniture), or forge a good (or bad) relationship with every other sim in the neighborhood. Similarly, in Animal Crossing, you're not really forced to do anything, but after chatting with your neighbors, you'll quickly learn about plenty of goals: paying off your house; collecting bugs, fossils, and fish for the local museum; collecting rare items including emulated 8-bit NES games; and achieving a perfect town rating by carefully monitoring how many trees you have in each acre and getting rid of all weeds. What's so remarkable about each game is that though they're both very different games, they each offer plenty of very real and very attainable objectives that yield very visible and tangible rewards--yet there's no pressure to really attempt any of them if you don't want to bother with them. So, whether or not you attempt to complete this or that objective doesn't depend on what the game forces you to do (lest you lose outright), but, rather, on what you yourself feel like doing.

Battlefield 1942 is a fantastic game, but it's a bit much for a beginner to handle. Especially if that beginner is trying to steal MY tank.

Some disdainful enthusiasts will claim that casual players enjoy Animal Crossing because of its cutesy, childish characters and The Sims for its sissified interior-decoration aspects and both games because of how relatively accessible they are. But I actually believe that those games' open-ended nature is what really makes them attractive and is what keeps people playing. (It doesn't hurt that both games are extremely funny, and also very easy to learn, either.) Ask fans of the popular team-based first-person shooter Battlefield 1942 why they like that game so much, and you may get a detailed response about the vehicles, flight modeling, huge maps, and control-point strategies. Ask fans of The Sims or Animal Crossing why they like their favorite game, and they may simply reply, "because there are so many things to do."

I've stated previously that I believe games like these are important for the game industry not just because they're good, but because they can act as "gateway" games that get new players interested in other games. To be perfectly honest, I think this is actually one of the main reasons why enthusiasts don't like them. Much like "underground" music and films, games are "cool" to some fans because not everyone enjoys them or even knows about them. (For examples of this kind of elitism, just check an Internet forum, like this one or this one--but for your own sake, don't ask whether other people have heard about the Half-Life 2 delay or whether people think Dead or Alive 3 is a good fighting game.) Do hardcore fans of games dislike The Sims and Animal Crossing because they feel threatened that a beginner might start playing other games and begin to encroach upon their territory? Or are they, like so many beginners who are considering getting a new game PC or a new console, afraid that if they play such games...they might actually like them?