The Sims 1 was my first introduction to a video game category that has since become my absolute favourite: life simulation. I loved the fact that I could create characters with their own unique personalities, and watch how they interacted with each other and the world around them. Above all, I loved that my choices, and by extension my Sims’ choices, actually mattered. The notion that you could make a difference, that you could actually shape the unfolding story, was a whole new gameplay element that I still feel is missing from some of today’s most popular releases. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying them, but I still get excited when I come across a game that lets me alter the plot in a meaningful way.

Then, I started playing The Sims 2, which was when it got really good. I was a couple of years older by that point, so I was better able to immerse myself in the lore, which is really the beating heart of this game. The secrets I could uncover by looking through each Sim’s preset memories and the fact that pre-determined storylines unfold of their own accord at the beginning of each save was the perfect set-up to build on and craft a story of my own. All of this established background functioned almost as a set of writing prompts, and the wide range of households available to play ensured that I was always engaging with a new story. The Goth household, for example, is reeling from the mysterious disappearance of matriarch Bella Goth, who was last seen on Don Lothario’s deck and was supposedly abducted by aliens. Don Lothario has on and off flings with Nina and Dina Caliente, the latter of whom has become romantically involved with Bella Goth’s widower, Mortimer Goth. There are so many paths this story can take that starting the game over from scratch never gets old.

One particular neighbourhood in the Sims 2, Veronaville, consists of households based on casts of characters from Shakespearean plays. Romeo Monty and Juliet Capp are teenaged star-crossed lovers completely decked out in Y2K fashion and trying to hide their romance from their rival families. In the Summerdream household, the characters we know from A Midsummer Night’s Dream come together in a very unconventional way, with Puck and Bottom as the two adoptive children of Titania and Oberon, and Puck in love with Hermia Capp (why is Hermia in the Capulet-inspired household? Who knows? Just go with it). These characters have preexisting relationships with each other throughout the town that mirror the relationships they share in the classic plays, and rather than this just being for show, it actually makes a difference in how they interact with each other and the decisions they make. I was able to modernize these classical characters to the time by sending Romeo and Juliet to university together, or by taking Titania on a shopping spree at H&M. In addition to serving as creative storytelling prompts, the stories of Veronaville also allowed me to create my own kind of fan-fiction where I could build upon these beloved stories and make them my own. And no matter how many times I started from scratch and played out a specific plotline, there were always more waiting for me.

The Sims 3 was released in 2009, and it was an enormous step up in terms of graphics, customization, and seamless transfer between locations (open world!). Although it didn’t have as much of the quirky Sims-isms as The Sims 2, several new additions to the game made it so exciting for me as a budding storyteller. Story progression was introduced, meaning that characters other than the ones you’re playing at a given time will continue to live their own lives. This means that you can return to different households and they will have accumulated experiences even though you’re not directly controlling them. That provides even more storytelling opportunity, because every time the story progresses without you, you’re given new prompts to work with both in and out of that particular household.

Storyline-wise, The Sims 3 provided us with many new characters to get to know, and others that we were already familiar with. But there was a twist: these familiar characters sometimes exist in alternate timelines. Bella Bachelor and Mortimer Goth are childhood best friends who live in Sunset Valley, and you have the opportunity to create an alternate reality without the influence of the events that took place in The Sims 2. Elsewhere, Kaylynn Langerak, infamous for her affair in The Sims 2 with a married Daniel Pleasant (which is designed to be discovered immediately when you start playing the Pleasant Family), is still a child and has the chance to forge a different path for herself.

One of my favourite features of The Sims 3, apart from the game itself, was the forum on the Sims 3 Community Site where players would share what they chose to do with their Sims. It was the closest thing, in my opinion, to a fan-fiction forum where we based wildly different stories on the same characters, and came together to share our ideas. I loved weaving my own threads into these preexisting stories, but my first completed project was all my own.

My first full writing project came in the form of a screenplay that I wrote at the age of 12 after The Sims 3: Showtime was released. In this expansion pack, you could make your Sims famous for a variety of talents, and I created my main character Charlene, a singer. This is where I came up with the idea to base a screenplay around Charlene’s rise to fame from a small town, and the impact that the public scrutiny eventually had on her marriage and her relationship with her children. I played through the story from Charlene’s teenage years to her final years, and I made mental notes of everything I wanted to change and add when it came to my own story. The Sims is great for implementing your storytelling ideas, but my play actually required me to understand the motivations behind all of Charlene’s actions that I set into motion. Why did she leave her high school boyfriend, her future husband’s younger brother? Why did she give up on speaking to her children? And why did she eventually shut herself out of the spotlight and relinquish her fame? This was where my imagination needed to fill in the gaps. I finished the play in three acts and even acted it out with my cousin, asking her to play all the secondary characters while I shone as the lead. Charlene’s story was the earliest multi-page story I remember writing fully, and I never would have done it without The Sims.

Eventually, the creative engine that was The Sims started playing more of a background role in my writing. I would keep my ideas fresh by playing out a new story, carefully engineering every twist and turn. I would cobble together elements I enjoyed from each Simming experience and keep them locked away for when I was in need of some inspiration. Down the line, I started enjoying the process of building houses and community spaces within the game. Setting plays an immense role in storytelling, and I found that curating unique spaces for my Sims allowed me to naturally imagine my own characters taking up that space. At this point in my writing journey, I am trying to improve my awareness of physical surroundings and the role they play in conveying the tone and the atmosphere of a scene. It helps to have a platform through which I can easily explore the significance of setting and bring to life what I can see in my head.

When Paralives, a brand new life simulation game, was announced a few years ago, my first thought was how excited I was to be able to tell new stories and explore all the ways this game would encourage me to do that. Following its release in Early Access last month, I can already see the storytelling potential. At the beginning of each new day, the storyteller you select to lead your game (and therefore decide the absurdity of your upcoming day) will offer you several options for changes that will take place on that day. You could get a surprise promotion, develop feelings for a friend, or receive two thousand Paradimes for no reason at all. As someone who used to err on the side of micromanaging my Sims, I can now appreciate the sudden changes offered by Paralives as a chance to continue the story in my own way, to decide motivation and what the end result will be. Again, there are writing prompts everywhere if you know what to look for.

The Sims gave me access to a vast world that extends far beyond the pixels of my laptop screen, where I could visualize creative ideas, try out storylines, and gain inspiration for projects that have made lasting impacts on my writing journey. Ideas are born out of a range of experiences, and if my mom hadn’t brought home the wrong game all those years ago, I would have missed out on an essential experience in my life as a writer. Two decades of immersing myself in these stories taught me about character development, finding inspiration in unlikely places, and shaping a plot from beginning to end — lessons I will take with me to every new world I create.