This is Objection Network’s countdown of the top 25 video game series of all-time. We’re counting down to the best franchise ever on March 31. For more info on the voting process, click here.

20) The Sims (1 vote, 75 points)

Chris: I’ve been placed in a difficult spot here. Jason, who had this as his No. 2 pick and thus gave it enough points to sneak into the top 20, is not here. I’ve never played a Sims game. I fell off the wagon during the earlier SimCity releases, building towns to my heart’s content and then destroying them with natural disasters and unnatural Godzillas. That’s all I know.

I will say this, though: Sims 4 actually has me interested. Between the core game and its wide-reaching DLC, I almost considered pulling the trigger a couple weeks ago before I remembered the half-dozen titles sitting in my backlog and feeling neglected. There’s a very good chance that if/when Origin runs a sale on the main title or some kind of Game of the Year edition gets released, I’m in.

And to be clear, I know OF The Sims. More than 200 million copies sold. Babies that glitch through the floor and never return. Desperate attempts to interact with the Grim Reaper. It’s all part of a life simulation experience that no other game has ever come close to emulating, so I have no qualms with it appearing on our list.

Michelle: *sweeps in like Adele* Hello.  Okay. Okay okay okay. The Sims was my life when I was in high school. But let’s rewind. Even before that, I was mad obsessed with SimCity and SimCity 2000. My brother and I would strategize and play those games for hours on the shared family computer, only to watch our entire city burn to the ground in like a minute flat. Devastating. Life ruining. But I loved it. I sincerely loved those games more than my own brother.

Fast forward to high school. My parents naively bought my brother and me The Sims for the PC. My brother was entirely uninterested in the social aspect (he preferred cheating so that he could have endless amounts of money to create shockingly beautifully made mansions and furnishing them for the characters to live in), while the social part was literally all I cared about. We split duties; he would build the houses and I would ruin the lives of everyone living in them. We eventually acquired a nice little collection of those stupidly expensive expansions as well, but we couldn’t even install most of them on our computer because of how little RAM our computer had and how huge those expansions were. I never got to play the Pets expansion because I wouldn’t let go of the morally bankrupt Hot Date expansion — which literally just gave you more options for your Sims to have sex. You could bone in hot tubs! I… yeah, I regret talking about this.

Anyway, the Sims games excel in their capacity to provide endless  entertainment for the player — because it’s entirely up to you and what you want to accomplish. Plus, it makes you feel like God. Who’s to say that’s a bad thing — in small doses. I mean, sure, letting your Sim go for a swim and then removing the step ladder, watching him swim around in a circle, trying and failing to get out, sobbing and moaning out of hunger, and then ultimately dying of starvation while the Grim Reaper weirdly hovers over the water  is probably not the best way to spend one’s time. But I turned out fine. Whatever.

RELATED LINKS:
(21) Grand Theft Auto
(22) Halo
(23) Animal Crossing
(24) Silent Hill
(25) Donkey Kong
#50-26
Intro/Honorable Mention

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