With each character that she conjured in Create-A-Sim, a new story was born, and Virgil was in charge of every twist and turn that would follow. Though Virgil was originally drawn to the fast-paced nature of SimCity and its sequels, The Sims allowed her to tap into her inner storyteller.

By the early 2000s, the gameplay had evolved to be less city planning and more soap opera, focusing on the human aspects of the Game of Life: getting married, climbing the career ladder, and dealing with freak accidents, like drowning in a pool with no ladder to escape - you know, the usual. The earliest iterations of the Electronic Arts game launched in 1989 with SimCity, giving players the chance to build and sustain their own metropolis.