User blog:LostInRiverview/Happy anniversary!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! This week, The Sims celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, and The Sims Wiki celebrates its tenth.

It is so hard to believe that a quirky little game like The Sims could turn into a worldwide phenomenon. Who could have guessed that Will Wright's people simulator could have given rise to one of the most successful video game franchises in history? Since the release of The Sims on February 4, 2000, the game and its sequels have sold tens of millions of copies, as well as literally dozens of expansions and stuff packs. We've seen hundreds of pre-created Sims, families, and houses in dozens of neighborhoods and towns.

On top of this, thousands of fans have created countless new Sims, families, houses, neighborhoods and worlds, as well as custom objects, skins, clothing and hairstyles, and have pushed the games further than ever with massive modifications. The magic of The Sims is that each player can create a world of their choosing, and can play according to their own wishes. Each player has helped to create one of the largest and strongest fan communities around, and continue to re-invent The Sims in new and awesome ways.

This community has helped to grow The Sims Wiki too. In ten years, we've managed to build a wiki more than 10,000 articles strong, and with an active and vibrant group of contributors. Today we are a community of editors working together to collect and improve our knowledge about the games we love. Each new game and new creation means even more work for us to improve our encyclopedia.

In honor of these major milestones, we'd like to reflect on where we've been and where we're going. And, we'd like to celebrate.

The Sims Wiki game giveaway
To celebrate The Sims and The Sims Wiki anniversaries, we're giving away some games! The winners will be selected from the people who comment on this blog post, and answer the following question: What is your best memory of playing The Sims?

To find out how to qualify to win, read these rules:


 * Rules
 * 1) A person must be registered with Wikia and logged-in to be eligible to win. Unregistered users can register here for free.
 * 2) Each person may only comment once. People who add more than one comment will be disqualified from winning. Users must be in good standing on The Sims Wiki (i.e. cannot be blocked) at the time the winners are selected, in order to win.
 * 3) The Sims Wiki administrators and bureaucrats are ineligible to win.
 * 4) In order to be eligible to win, comments must in some way answer the question asked above. Comments which do not answer the question or which are irrelevant will be deleted.
 * 5) Comments must follow wiki policies. Comments violating policy may be deleted and the person making the comment may be subject to warning or block.
 * 6) Comments made in reply to other comments will not be eligible to win. Users may reply to comments, even if they have already commented on the blog, without losing eligibility to win.

Three winners will be selected at random from all qualifying comments to this blog. The first winner will be given a game code for The Sims 4 Digital Deluxe edition, redeemable through Origin. The second and third winners will be able to choose: a game code for any The Sims 3 expansion pack (redeemable through Origin or another client), or, a game code for The Sims 4: Outdoor Retreat game pack (redeemable through Origin). Physical copies of the games will not be awarded.
 * Prizes

All comments must be submitted by no later than 23:59:59 on 7 February 2015 Comments received on or after 8 February 2015 (UTC) will not be eligible to win. The drawing will be conducted by the administrators on 8 February 2015, and the winners will be notified on their respective talk pages by a member of the administrative team.
 * Deadline and drawing

If there are any questions or concerns about this drawing, please notify an administrator through the Administrators' Noticeboard