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"The Sims" Release
The Sims allows players to create a home, get a job, and form relationships in a free-form world. Designed by a team at Maxis led by Wil Wright, The Sims took concepts from Wright's previous game Sim City. Characters controlled by the player were customizable and spoke an artificial language called Simlish. The Sims became exceptionally popular with women, who accounted for more than sixty percent of players. -
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Computer Inventions
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"Mac OS X" Release
OS X introduced a more stable and reliable platform and multiple applications could more efficiently be run at the same time. It was a significant departure from the classic Mac OS as it was based on the Unix-like operating systems FreeBSD, NetBSD and NeXTSTEP/OpenStep -
"Earth Simulator Supercomputer" Invention
Developed by the Japanese government to create global climate models, the Earth Simulator is a massively parallel, vector-based system that costs nearly 600 million. To protect it from earthquakes, the building housing was built using a seismic isolation system that used rubber supports. The Earth Simulator was listed as the fastest supercomputer in the world from 2002 to 2004. -
"PowerMax G5" Release
While larger than the previous G4 towers, the G5 had comparatively limited space for expansion. Virginia Tech used more than a thousand PowerMac G5s to create the System X cluster supercomputer, rated #3 in November of that year on the world’s TOP500 fastest computers. -
"World of Warcraft" Release
Centered on the fantasy world of Azeroth, Warcraft allows players to choose an avatar to go “questing.” Players form guilds and raiding parties, as well as form strong social, connections through the game’s built-in chat function. World of Warcraft has been dominant in the MMORPG market since its release. -
"NASA Ames Research Center supercomputer Columbia" Release
In honor of the space shuttle which broke-up on re-entry, the Columbia supercomputer is an important part of Columbia was used in space vehicle analysis. At its introduction, it was listed as the second fastest supercomputer in the world and this single system increased NASA's supercomputing capacity 10-fold. The system was kept at NASA Ames Research Center until 2013, when it was removed to make way for two new supercomputers.