"It is a game about people and real life and an opportunity to create sort of a virtual world I guess that parallels a lot of the world that we know in real life."
The game is being played on PCs, game machines of all kinds…and even on mobile phones. And while Electronic Arts has created and sold a long list of add-ons…for The Sims….a lot of what keeps the game fresh comes from the players themselves…
"Well we have a very active player community around the world. We are published in 22 languages and are sold in 60 countries around the world. And in many of these countries we have online communities where players come together to share what they are creating inside the game, to talk about the characters they create, the stories they tell, the fashion designs they might be making, the interior designs, the architectural lots that they're building."
It can be very, very involved. Some new features are adding to the fun. For instance there's the performance community…
"So people go in and do amazing singing performances on camera and record them and people rate them and there are weekly contests around certain types of music and performance."
There are would be stand up comics along with poets and story tellers…living out their fantasies as well at TheSimsOnStage.com. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.