In 1991, the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm swept through those suburbs and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. One of them belonged to Bill Wright. His family was okay, and the loss of his house and possessions didn't traumatize him, but the process of rebuilding afterward caused him to think hard about the process of acquiring possessions and life building itself. Within a few years he turned that process into a video game called The Sims.
The Sims was a "sandbox" game, which already existed, but it was the first to allow players to create people instead of just architecture and build their daily lives from scratch. Critics expected it to be too boring. Electronic Arts was prepared to see it flop, but crossed their fingers anyway. And The Sims was a runaway hit, becoming the biggest-selling PC game of all time. The Sims has just turned 25 years old, and it's still a hit among both those who first played it a quarter-century ago and those who are just learning about world building. Read how The Sims changed the way we play video games at Smithsonian, and if you're interested, find a ton of links about The Sims at Metafilter.