There's a kind of epiphany that a lot of players go through, when in the game, you can buy a computer for your Sim, and on the computer you can have your Sim actually play little games. A lot of players get to the point where it's 2 in the morning for the Sim and the Sim is up playing computer games, and the player is trying to get him to stop playing because the Sim has to get up in the morning. Then they step back and realize it's actually 2 in the morning and that they actually need to go to work. It's almost a creepy model of the real world.

There was also an interview with Wright at the BBC News site last week: Simulating life, love and the Universe:

Building and managing the complex social, emotional and economic well-being of people in real life is hard enough.

But, said Wright, doing it with your own computerised world can teach people some profound lessons in life.

I've purposely not been reading a lot about The Sims2, since I'm almost exclusively a Mac user now (I have both a Mac and a PC at work, but only use the PC for testing purposes, and only use a Mac at home, although Bob has a PC) and there hasn't been any official word on how long it might be before a Mac version is available (or even if there will be one).

It does look beautiful, though, and very interesting.