It is a regular school day and Anastacia M. pedals her bicycle to get home from school. She hangs up her helmet inside the garage and goes to get an apple. She puts A Bug's Life on television and checks her email and Facebook account on her laptop. A couple of hours later, she is still on the computer and an unfinished apple sits beside her. What could she be doing? She is playing The Sims 3 and one of her Sims characters, Annmarie, has just walked in on her husband, Luke, having an affair with another woman. Apparently, she likes making up stories in the Sims that are inspired by movies.

Anastacia, a student at La Canada High School, is a hardcore Sims fan. She even has albums of still-photos and videos of her Sims on her Facebook account. She spends two to nine hours playing per day, depending on the day of the week. "I've played the Sims 2 for almost twelve hours straight once or twice. I truly am insane!" she exclaims.

San Francisco State University alumna Anne Mariano became hooked on the game when she heard about it through a friend who was addicted to The Sims. "The Sims is a world that you make your own," Mariano explains. "You can create Sims that look like you or anyone else you know; advance their careers and balance it with their social lives; create buildings and dream homes."

The very first version of The Sims graced the shelves of every gaming store in the brink of the millennium in 2000. It is the best-selling PC game in the history of PC games. "Customers are more likely to buy games for Xbox and Playstation 3," says GameStop manager Nick Ruperto. "PC is fading into the background but [The Sims 3] is still putting up a fight to stay on the shelves."

With every release since The Sims debut, Maxis, the game's developer, has added improvements and features to both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. The newest version offers players the chance to roam around the neighborhood seamlessly, Sims children to grow visibly when players buy them more birthday cakes, Sims teens can drive, and almost everything can be customized to the player's liking. "[In The Sims 3], they've expanded on many ways the game is played, adding things the Sims can do such as procreate, more elaborate career paths, more stages in the age and their activities, more personality options," says Trixie Jordan, a graphic designer who discovered The Sims due to boredom and curiosity. "The graphics for the houses and decorations are better visually as well. There are different story lines and things are a bit more complex compared to previous versions."

Mariano says that the game is a nice escape from reality but players have to be careful when playing because they can easily lose track of time. "What seems like fifteen minutes is actually hours of playing," she says. "I remember saying one time, 'I'll only play for half an hour,' [but] when I looked at the clock, three hours had already passed."

Jess Reynolds, an architectural photographer, is partial to designing houses in The Sims. She especially likes The Sims 3, because of the improvement in visual graphics and customization. "With the newer version, the 'build mode' is becoming much more intuitive," she explains. "Build mode allows you to make houses and commercial lots for your Sims and might be my favorite part of the game." Reynolds likes using her creativity in building houses and that might also be the reason she keeps going back to playing the Sims. "If I build a house that I really dig, I say to myself, 'Great! Now I need to make a better one,' then off I go building something new. I build the most obnoxious structures, but still end up really loving them," she shares.

Bianca Bonifacio's brother introduced her to the game a few years ago and she's been hooked ever since. Bonifacio likes creating storylines within her Sims' lives. "The thing I like to do with my Sims is make up scenarios like affairs with either the maid, neighbor or co-worker. The game is much more interesting that way," she says. [X]