The Sims lets players live out their own version of domestic bliss, creating their dream homes and ideal family. The Sims also lets players create an inescapable hell, torturing their Sims by trapping them inside swimming pools and forcing them to live with their own excrement. It’s a true sandbox, which gives it near limitless potential for player-created shenanigans. As a result, challenges and player-created gameplay modifications are a popular mainstay for the series. When people tire of domestic bliss, there are plenty more… eccentric ways to play.
While a variety of challenges exist, one of the most popular is the “100 Baby Challenge.” This recently received recognition on the main menu of The Sims 4 when EA included a thumbnail and link to Kelsey Impicciche’s YouTube series.
The 100 Baby Challenge sees players create a female Sims character and attempt to have 100 babies with 100 different male partners before the female Sim dies of old age. It has been around since The Sims 2 in 2012.
Impicciche’s series started when she was a producer at BuzzFeed. It proved extremely popular, attracting audiences in the tens of millions. Her series playing through the challenge contains over 100 episodes and has continued despite her leaving BuzzFeed in March 2021. Impicciche has also posted other related content and various spinoffs, including gaining 100 boyfriends and girlfriends for a single Sim.
However, Impicciche is not the only YouTube creator to have taken part in this trend. Zach Letter has taken part in many challenges during his YouTube career running multiple channels with audiences in the millions, including “AviatorGaming” and “AviatorGamez”. But this was different, Letter tells USA Today. “It’s a very ‘out there’ challenge,” Letter explains. “My viewer base convinced me to try [it]. It was one I avoided as I don’t even have a kid [in real life and] I know how challenging raising a family can be.”
The 100 Baby Challenge is not your average Sims trial – such as playing as a princess or living entirely off the grid—requiring foresight and planning to complete successfully. This is because the challenge far exceeds the physical boundaries of the game. Electronic Arts hardcoded a limitation into The Sims regarding the number of Sims that a player can have under their control in any one household. Players are limited to eight Sims total, which means players can only raise a maximum of seven Sims at a time. The player has to find a way to move their offspring out of the house before they can birth some more. This must be repeated 15 times before their female Sim becomes an elder and dies of old age. It pushes “what’s possible to do in a single lifespan,” says Letter.
MeganPlays, another YouTuber who has taken part in the challenge, agrees that it is far harder than it seems. She has created a series of videos participating in the challenge, which she shared with her millions of followers. Megan says that she does not recall how she came to take part, but does remember that she was initially attracted by its deceptively “simple” premise: just have 100 babies! She’s happy that EA is giving the playstyle the recognition it deserves.
“I think EA is getting more involved in their community,” she says. “I think they’re trying to give their audience new, informal ways to play and imagine in the game. They are just listening to the community and allowing them to have a big part in the game they create for every day.” Further to this, she thinks it “would be really cool if they had a particular page” for helping “users find challenges”.
Dawn, better known to her army of fans as SimLicy, runs a YouTube channel with over 300,000 subscribers. She is also one of a handful of Simmers who helped to build premade lots for EA’s official Snowy Escape expansion. Though she doesn’t think she would take part in the challenge, she does see its appeal. “I think the 100 Baby Challenge has become so popular because people tend to love family gameplay and silly challenges,” she says. “This challenge brings out both those aspects.”
“I enjoy that EA spotlights the community surrounding their games,” adds Letter. “It encourages creativity and keeps the game alive for some. It’s the sheer ridiculousness of it all.”
Megan agrees, stating that “it’s a unique challenge that a lot of people can easily wrap their heads around. It’s simple and can provide hundreds of unique pieces of content on one’s [YouTube] channel.” For viewers, it is especially attractive because “it’s pretty easy for them to watch from any point and understand the premise of the series.”
“They help give creators a rubric to go off of when creating content, and help guide the specific story you’re trying to tell,” she continues. “They’re easily relatable and your audience can play along on their own save, making it more relatable. I believe a lot of people are driven by goal completion, especially in video games. So completing a checklist of quests and goals is fulfilling to creators and viewers alike.”
Letter, who had a near brush with homelessness a decade ago after a construction company he worked for went bankrupt, explains that there are “so many fun and exciting challenges out there for The Sims. I think everyone really enjoys a great rags to riches story. As Drake would say, we started from the bottom… Those are really interesting challenges that can all be in good fun, it would be cool to see those featured as well.”
Dawn believes that challenges are so popular with the community due to the fact that, in a game without an end-state, they bring a tangible end-goal and the possibility of beating said goal. “I think EA displaying the 100 Baby Challenge on the main menu of The Sims 4 is a fun idea,” Dawn says. “It opens the door for other challenges to be featured in the future and it brings awareness to other types of gameplay and creators.”
In The Sims, nothing is off-limits. Players can use their imagination to accomplish anything, from being a national leader to birthing the population of a small town… or both at once. This limitless potential is, by far, a large appeal to the series for players. If you put your imagination to the test, maybe your idea will be the next one to be featured on the main menu inside The Sims 4.
Written by Kyle Wilson on behalf of GLHF.
