The Sims is a long-running life simulation game. It is one of the most successful video games in terms of sales and has sold over 175 million copies worldwide. Inspiration for The Sims came to creator Will Wright after his home burned down in the Oakland firestorm of 1991. Wright became fixated with humanity’s affinity toward material things and whether happiness can be bought.

From sexuality to identity to essential life lessons, players have been discovering things about themselves in The Sims for 22 years. So for the first time ever, we leaned into that insight and positioned our game as a self-discovery tool. We were focusing on the potential for exploration and expression. But to resonate with current generations who are coming of age, we had to bring the Sims World into the real world.

To catch the eye of our ideal audience, we knew we had to prioritize platforms this new generation lives on, cast someone the new generation can relate to, and tap into their current obsession with the 90s. We reimagined our favorite 90s sitcoms with a coming-of-age twist: The star “family” was the five different Sim personas of our native-to-social star, Bretman Rock.

We shot our sitcom shorts in social-first formats, crafting stories that could be told well in 15 seconds or less, then ran them where Bretman already had a strong following.

The Find Yourselves campaign drove 2.4 million unique daily visitors, 3.4 million impressions on social media, and received record-high brand sentiment with our ideal audience and current players alike. Sims gained 21.2k new followers on Instagram and 35.8 k followers on Tiktok following the campaign.