Remember “The Sims”? Brains Behind Viral Game Spill Secrets on the Memorable Music — and How 'Simlish' Came About (Exclusive)

Since the first game in The Sims franchise was released in February 2000, there have been three new installments, dozens of expansion packs, a few spinoff titles and millions of players indulging in the game at various stages of its lifespan. The video game has become a staple for many, even those who wouldn’t consider themselves “gamers,” building their own characters in-game and either subjecting them to a ladder-less pool or creating a messy love triangle.

All of the drama that unfolds in an individual’s save file is done entirely in Simlish, the game’s own made-up language.

Though Simlish is made up of plenty of recognizable phrases — “sul sul” and “dag dag” used interchangeably as “hello” or “goodbye,” “lurve” for “love” and many other things romance-related, and “nooboo” for “baby” — Simlish does not have a one-to-one translation. In fact, most of the dialogue in the game is completely ad-libbed.

“We quickly realized that English or any other real language would get super repetitive very quickly, and that led us to go, ’Okay, how else can we show the communication?’ “ Chief Sound Designer Robi Kauker recounts exclusively to PEOPLE. “Because really at that time, what they were saying didn't matter — it was how they were saying it.”

The development team for The Sims 1 tried a variety of different non-language sounds to play in place of dialogue in-game.

“We tried all sorts of silly things. We tried music instruments. We tried a silly kind of Charlie Brown, ‘Wah wah wah,’ type ideas,” Kauker says. Ultimately, it was a week-long recording session with some local improv actors that produced the sounds Sims players know and love today.

The sounds improved in the recording booth were then edited to fit the game's needs, with much of the original recordings becoming unrecognizable. But it’s also where some of the game’s best-recognized phrases originated.

“They were amazing giving us pieces of words and things that we could stitch together … dag dag and sul sul came from those [sessions] — neither of which were actually really said as dag dag and sul sul,” Kauker says. “It was all about the emotional intent. That was really the goal.”

As the Sims celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, it does so with a long roster of musical collaborations under its belt. Artists like Aly & AJ, Natasha Bedingfield, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, 5 Seconds of Summer, Soulja Boy, Rita Ora, Lizzo and Carly Rae Jepsen (just to name a few) have covered their own songs in Simlish for the franchise’s various games. For many of these collaborations, the musical artists expressed an interest in contributing to the game.

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“[EA’s] worldwide music team is great at having all these connections and they'll be talking to a band about being in Madden or EAFC, and the band wants to talk to them about being in The Sims,” Kaurker recounts. “That's where we're at our happiest. We have so many players who have grown up with us who want to be a part of our world.”

Jackie Gratz, the games’ voice director, works closely with the musical artists to help them prepare their songs for a Simlish translation. She is, as Kauker says, the closest thing the developer has to an English-to-Simlish dictionary.

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“It's been interesting to see how [the process has] evolved over the years because now it's almost the opposite of what happened in The Sims 1, where [now] we train the actors and we really work with the actors so that the performance they're giving is filled with the emotion and using the words to emote with,” Gratz says.

When an artist expresses interest in covering their song for The Sims, Gratz will listen through the song and then create a draft of Simlish lyrics for the artist to riff off of. Her main goal is trying to maintain the emotion and lyrical style of the track more than creating a direct translation — and the artists are often encouraged to improv once in the studio.

“When I get the English lyrics I really like to preserve the lyrical style. So I'm absorbing the Simlish into the vibe that the lyrics already have,” she explains. “I pick out the kind of lyrical techniques that are being used — so rhyming, alliteration, repetition, things like that — and then I try to preserve those.”

Most of the Simlish lyric writing is done “on the fly,” Gratz says, singing along to the made-up words as she writes to ensure it won’t be too difficult for the artist to record. She says the biggest challenge is working with K-pop or J-pop artists, as she’s often translating the original lyrics to English before doing the Simlish translation.

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“That's when I feel like my job is the weirdest, where I'm literally taking lyrics that are in a language I do not understand, and I'm translating them into another language that I'm making up,” she laughs. “We give them free rein to change the words if they need to, especially if it helps them with the singing part of it.”

“This kind of flexibility allows it to always be about the emotion without the players going and hearing the same thing over and over again,” Kauker adds.

A personal favorite of Kauker’s was The Last Dinner Party’s Simlish cover of their song “Nothing Matters.” He admits he took eight months tracking the band down “because I love that band so much.”

“It's such a great song already — [it’s] a brilliant song,” Kauker says. “To hear it in The Sims, you're like, wow, nothing's really lost in it, but it became more open and gave us a lot of range. It's one of those brilliant things.”

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