Wired has an interesting article on the negative buzz around multiplayer games at this years E3 gaming conference, including conflicting explanations of why Sims Online has done so badly:

"The Sims Online was flat out the wrong game," said Pachter. "They took a very popular franchise that's a single-player game in which you play with dolls, and when you play with dolls, they follow rules and behave in predictable ways. With The Sims Online, you?re playing real people, and real people don?t behave the way you'd expect them to."

EA spokesman Jeff Brown said the disappointment surrounding The Sims Online is not a function of a market that's not ready or a demographic mismatch. "The people who make The Sims believe that its execution isn't what it should have been when it was launched," he said. In other words, The Sims Online wasn't a very good game.

So is The Sims inherently difficult to port to a social environment, or is it (or something like it) simply waiting for the right version?