The Sims is a computer game, created by Maxis, where the computer simulates the activities of humans, and the player/controller organizes the time of the simulated humans to reach personal advancement goals.  The simulated humans are called 'sims'. These sims have a certain amount of free will, and although you can instruct them to do something, they may decide that something else needs to be done first, or even outright ignore your commands.  The player must make decisions about time spent in personal development, such as exercise, reading, creativity, and logic, by adding activities to the daily agenda of the sims. Daily maintenance requirements must also be scheduled, such as personal hygiene, eating, and sleep. If the simulated humans do not receive the proper amount of maintenance, they will sicken and die. Financial health is simulated by the need to send the sims to find jobs, go to work, pay bills, and leverage personal development and social contacts to advance in their jobs.

In addition, the game includes a very advanced architecture system. Initally, the game was designed as an architecture similulation alone, but it was decided that there was no point in buliding a house if there was nobody to live in it. The architectural side of Sims was more fully developed in the Simcity? series of games. The presentation of the game's Artificial Intelligence is very advanced, and the sims will respond to outside conditions by themselves, although often the player/controller's intervention is neccessary to keep them on the right track. The Sims technically has unlimited replay value, in that there is no way to win the game, and you can play on indefinetly.

There are some limitations to The Sims, most notably that children never grow up to become adults, and there is no concept of a 'weekend'.

The sims are directed totally on the basis of instructing them to interact with another object, be that a television set, a radio, or another sim. Your sims might recieve house guests, which are actually based on the sims of other game files, and you cannot control these sims (although it is important to have your sims interact with them in order to forge a healthy social life).

The Sims uses a combination of [ 3D]? and [ 2D]? graphics techniques. The sims themselves are rendered as high-poly-count 3d objects, but the house, and all its objects are pre-rendered, and displayed as 2d objects.