Video Game Hall of Fame: All 24 Inductees Ranked - Part I (24-13)

#17 The Sims (inducted in 2016)

Will Wright has made a career out of making games that don't really go anywhere. You can call them "sandbox games", sure. That's as apt a description as any. SimCity, SimAnt, SimEarth... look, if it has "Sim" in the title, chances are it's a Will Wright game.

And most of these games have been very, very successful. But, nothing comes even close to the success that he scored with his 2000 release, The Sims.

To say The Sims was a cultural phenomenon at the time is a bit of an understatement. Two years after it released, it became the biggest-selling PC game in history with nearly 7 million sales. Everybody was playing it. I was playing it. Gary Busey was (probably) playing it.

It was referenced in television shows. Big name music acts would re-record their popular songs in Simlish, the game's fictional language.

It's so far spawned four sequels, expansions too numerous to count, ports to nearly every platform you can think of and, of course, plenty of copycats (for instance, a Playboy Magazine game - not kidding). It became shorthand for a "virtual world".

The Sims managed to take somewhat complicated game mechanics, simplify them, and put them in an environment that appeals to just about everyone.

But, most of all, it gave us a chance to take something we feel we have very little control over - our own everyday lives - and give us near total control. Or, at least the next best thing: someone else's life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a house to mysterious remove all the doors from and set on fire,