The girl in the booth has a remarkable talent. She's Nikki Rapp, one of the stars of The Sims 2 and, now, The Sims 3. She can talk in Simlish, the strange fictional language of the Sims. She's here to record the latest dialogue for the child characters. On screen, a bald six-year-old of indeterminate gender is pissing itself, while Robert Kauker, Audio Director of the Sims games, offers direction.
"I need you to do more horror. More embarrassment."
"Icka-booga-daka-why."
"More emphasis."
"Icka Booga. Daka. WHY."
"Hmm. It's not working. Try sadness, then real shame."
The animation continues to play, the poor little character on-screen in a loop of perpetual urination.
"Oehhh. Err. Ewwwww."
"That's it. Brilliant. Now let's move on to file 2311: motive underscore distress one."
A slightly different-shaped puddle appears underneath the Sim. He or she has had another accident.
Who knew that tormenting little AI people, watching them wee all over the floor, go out, make friends, have babies, and buy bigger better flatscreen TVs would result in such massive success?
In two games, and fourteen expansion packs, The Sims has created an empire for Electronic Arts. 98 million copies of Sims games have been sold worldwide (it's probably passed 100 million by the time you read this). It has a cultural relevance way beyond most games (EA count over 100,000 machinima movies on YouTube released by Sims players), and an appeal that extends way beyond the traditional gamer market.
EA estimate that around 60% of their playerbase is female (by contrast PC Gamer has an almost exclusively male readership), and around 20% are under 17. Your sister, your girlfriend, and your mum: they all love it.
The gibberish whining from the booth is a sign that full production is beginning on The Sims 3, the first really new, full-price game the studio has produced since The Sims 2 four years ago. Nikki faces hundreds of hours in the studio, making up words, pretending to be a six-year-old of indeterminate gender but high emotion. She's not alone.
Ten other voice actors have signed on to speak gibberish, alongside legions of animators and artists. They have a huge task: they want to draw and simulate every human emotion, and every human motion. If you can think to do it, it has to be in the game.
The scale of the production is extraordinary. Talking to the team, you can see that they're proud of their success.
But when you talk games to the engineers and the programmers and designers who develop the game, they talk of the same titles we play. Oblivion. Half-Life. World of Warcraft. Even, wonderfully, Dwarf Fortress. They use expressions like 're-roll', love text adventures, and obsess over RPGs. It seems they've made a conscious decision to bring gamers like us back to the game.
Rod Humble is the creative director of the Sims 'label'. He's smart, funny, rake thin, and what we'd call a hardcore gamer. Originally from Birmingham, he moved to America to be part of the original EverQuest team.
Two years ago, the Sims team was spun out of Electronic Arts and given a kind of creative autonomy. That autonomy, under Rod's creative leadership, has paid dividends. Unlike the typical view of this publisher, where we cynics bemoan recycled updates of the same old games such as FIFA 2008 or NHL 2010, the Sims games have been quietly innovating.
Rod explains that the Sims team has a single goal: creativity. "Our mission is to create new original games that innovate and take creative risks on established franchises. The one thing that we don't do is make the same game every year. Some people hate some of the things we do, but at least we don't do the same thing every year. We really try to take risks."
The funny thing is: the Sims team have been taking risks. We just didn't notice. Sims games cover everything: from the best business game available - the Open for Business expansion - to console versions like MySims, in which you can build houses and cookers and sofas and cars out of electronic Lego, to insane web-platforms like The Sims On-Stage, where users can upload videos of themselves performing poetry, or singing karaoke (Rod boasts that The Sims On-Stage is, hilariously, the most popular poetry site on the web).
Soon there will be a whole Sims web-game portal. And a Sim Animals game. And more expansion packs. And The Sims 3.
"When we started work on The Sims 3," says Rod as he shows us an early prototype, "I had two directives for the Sims team. One: it's not going to work unless you can cross the street and see your neighbour's kids playing. And two: no more hamster cages."
The hamster cage refers to the typical gamer complaint about The Sims: that it's sometimes nothing more than directing your chosen character from the bath, to the fridge, to the toilet. For many, The Sims 2 is less about character development as it is about time-management.
You're not guiding semi-autonomous beings, but playing nurse-maid to incontinent babies. Goal One is to make the interesting part of the game - the guiding of a character's life, from cradle to grave - more apparent. It's about turning a toilet sim into a modern roleplaying game; where you're constantly faced with interesting choices, and the opportunity to play what-if with near-perfect people.
And the neighbours' kids? Rod wants to break down the barriers, let Sims wander freely through a town, take in the sights, not be constrained by the prison-like 'lots' of old games. He wants to turn the game into an open world, where Sims can stroll, meet their friends, go to work, interact with each other. And piss themselves in the gym. It's GTA: Pleasantville.
In the demo we're shown, the camera is centred on a single character. And then the view zooms out. Eventually we can see an entire neighbourhood, a perfect slice of American Mid-West life, all picket fences, rolling hills and redbrick town halls. Sims walk along the pavement, greeting each other, stopping to chat. Cars whizz past.
We zoom back in for a voyeur's perspective, peeking through the windows, spotting Sims as they cook, and chat, and paint their pretty pictures. It feels like a living, open town, a place where stuff happens, where the day-to-day lives of interesting people intersect in infinite ways.
Now we zoom back in, on a single character. Let's see how all this fits together. Let's meet SimMatt.
Matt is a chef. He lives in a lovely detached house on the top of the hill of a SimPleasantville town. He is young-ish, has a hot wife and a flatscreen TV. But today his wife is in a bad mood, and Matt is desperate for a promotion.
First problem: it is morning and time for work. In the old Sims games, this early morning work run would be a nightmare of task juggling: a terrifying assault course of late alarm clocks, standing breakfasts, hurried defecation and swift showers, all while a workmate hovers outside in a car, beeping his horn, impatiently waiting for you to get ready.
In The Sims 3, a bubble appears in the bottom left. "Matt is hungry. Click here to feed him." One click, and his needs for the morning are taken care of.
Second problem: work. In The Sims 2, unless you bought the Open for Business expansion, work happened off-screen, the clock whizzing by while your house was left empty.
In The Sims 3, work is part of the routine. Matt has bought some home with him: the dishwasher at work broke down, so he's offered to clean some dishes for his boss. Completing the task will put him a little closer to a promotion. It is, in effect, a quest, experience and reward system.
Matt washes the dishes, and then leaves. He opens the door and begins running. And running. And running. He is Forrest Gump in a chef's hat.
Rod explains that, for the moment, they've disabled the car code because it was suffering from bugs. But the point is, your job exists in the neighbourhood. Matt would normally drive to it. There, he'd do the cooking. Or the growing. Or the fishing.
The next big change in The Sims: it has an inventory system.
Matt is horny, and wants to impress his missus with a special Valentine's day meal. She loves spaghetti bolognaise. He could buy a frozen meal from the shops, but that's not going to impress her. He'd do well to buy the ingredients from the local greengrocer. Or he could grow them fresh.
Behind the restaurant, Matt has a tomato patch. He's been growing these tomatoes for days now. They're ripe, juicy, and full of vim. A bit like Matt. He picks the tomatoes, takes them home, and starts preparing his meal.
Suddenly this is starting to feel closer to a traditional, un-Sims, PC game. Clear objectives. Inventories. Then, an icon appears at the bottom of the screen. It is a 'moodlet'. Matt has just snogged his hot wife. And he's in a great mood. For the next five days, he's going to be happy as Larry. He'll be more alert. He'll learn faster, get to work quicker, and make more friends. It looks like... Wait. We've seen this in MMORPGs. Is that a... buff?
Rod laughs. "We've got a design pickle. We need infinitely large metaphysical aspects to your Sim. That sounds crazy, but if you look at The Sims 2, it had the environment score, the bladder score... six bars in total. But human beings aren't like that. You don't say 'I'm 75% ready to pee.' You just say 'I really need to pee'. Instead of having to choose six things that define a person's mood, we wanted an infinite number of ways to say how a Sim was feeling.
"We looked around for design mechanisms that we could use, and sure enough, we were like 'hey, buffs! that really works.' Now there are buffs for everything. You can be in a bad mood because you just pissed yourself. You could be in a good mood because you like sitting in sofas. You could be sad because your lover died. Or you could be happy because you're pregnant."
Other ideas have been pinched from our nerd world. Character creation is far more rich than in The Sims 2. Rather than assigning numerical values to a Sim - say, three points to neatness, five to intelligence - the team have come up with a system of traits.
You can pick up to six in the current version. Traits are brief descriptions of your Sim. Words like evil. Or playful. Or genius. Or perfectionist. Or paranoid. Or shmoozer. Matt is rude, a daredevil, and shy. His neighbour Chad is grumpy, frugal, insensitive and inappropriate. When Matt goes over to his neighbour's house to chat, Chad turns away. Then he pisses himself. And laughs.
Rod explains that the inspiration for traits came "from looking at how people best describe themselves. We ended up looking at personal ads. Developing your characters is now about picking how you'd describe them, rather than arbitrarily moving sliders." Traits dramatically feed back into the game world. Derek is a kleptomaniac. As we watch the early prototype, he picks up a park bench, and starts running away with it.
As we carry on into town, we meet Teresa, out jogging. She has the trait 'Outdoorsman'. Every time she leaves the house, this lady's mood lifts.
The traits aren't the only improvement to Sim creation. The Sims themselves look better. On immediate viewing, the improvements aren't apparent - it's only once you place screenshots of The Sims 3 next to The Sims 2, the difference becomes clear. Their skin is more natural, more real. Their faces move in ever so slightly more real ways.
Their hair is different. There are now sliders for weight and musculature, meaning a near-infinite range of body types. Obese Sims (as seen on the previous page) are easy to create. So too are muscle men or skinny size zero types.
If you find creating Sims to be a bore, and want pre-made characters to torture/treat, the developers have got you covered: a range of personality types and models will be built in. On the menu screen we saw a would-be rock star with a bright purple punk mohawk, wearing tartan, and with the 'genius' trait. There was also a modern-day mother character, a pert and prim yummy mummy with the 'family orientated' trait. The more she sprogs, the happier she gets. Sex her. Sex her good.
These presets also tie into the improved functionality of the Sims 3 website. Players will be able to upload their Sims to their own homepage, where they can be stored for other players to download and introduce into their own neighbourhoods.
The question is, how hard will the Sims developers push connectivity? First: there's no multiplayer. You can't invite a friend to join your neighbourhood. According to EA's research, their players don't want that. They say that "Sims players want complete ownership of their neighbourhoods" - they don't want anyone else to mess up their creations. But there will be some form of improved social networking.
"We tend to follow our players a lot, and they tend to tell us what they've been doing in The Sims," says Rod. "They tell us they love social networking (sites like Facebook and MySpace). That feeds well into The Sims 2. We have four million people come back to The Sims Exchange (home of EA's official Sims downloaders) every month.
"All they're doing is sharing their creations. Obviously Spore (the incredible life, the universe and everything sim from Sims creator Will Wright - Ed) is coming from EA, and we're learning a lot from them. But we'll talk about the community features of The Sims 3 later."
What they're also not talking about: the potential for expansions. Despite their ubiquity, expansions to The Sims have rarely sat well within their host game - they're almost always too self-contained. That's partly to do with the lot model that the game uses: if a Sim is off at University, the evening action of Nightlife is paused. Similarly, if a Sim goes on holiday in Free Time, his coffee shop in Open for Business is left abandoned.
The open-world nature of The Sims 3 has enormous possibility for expansion. But that doesn't mean Rod has a plan for what those expansions would be. He just knows they're coming. "The fact that it's a seamless world means that eventually - not to give away too much of our expansion pack strategy, but in theory - The Sims 3 could expand into an entire seamless world. You can imagine a Sims country which you could just live your life in."
Does that mean that The Sims 3 won't be a complete game without buying more packs? Are future expansions mapped out during the original's development? "When we're making the game, during the development process, we don't leave anything out deliberately," he explains. "We try and get as much into the game as possible. Absolutely everything we can. Then at some point, it's like, OK, it's been five years in development, we really should ship this."
Fair enough - but can we learn anything more about the direction of The Sims 3 from their previous work? What, to Rod, was their most successful expansion pack? He laughs. "The most successful financially was Pets. The one I got most out of from a design perspective was Open for Business.What we did was make a business simulator in an expansion pack. You could make any kind of business you wanted.
"We didn't have specific code for running a bakery, or running a coffee shop. We found a really elegant solution. We separated the world into places where you paid to get in and out of, places where you pick things off shelves, and places where you could pay to have a go on an item.
"One of my businesses was playing as kids in a house when the parents were away. I have a rave business - letting kids come and party. It was really key for The Sims 3: it showed us how open we can make our systems, to let players goof around with them."
Does Rod find the success of The Sims limiting? As a gamer, with development experience in MMORPGs, does he ever want to return to his fantasy roots? "It occasionally comes up as an idea: doing a fantasy version of The Sims. That was actually one of the first jokes I played when I arrived at Electronic Arts.
"I drove up to meet Will Wright, and the first thing I said was 'As the first expansion pack, I'm really pleased that we've got the Lord of the Rings licence. And we're going to do it.'" Will Wright's reaction is, sadly, lost to history.
Rod thinks for a moment. "We may even get round to it."
ok, a game where you make and control...people. im soiling myself with excitement. i bet theres some original and fantastic expansions already in development such as...sims 3:hot date and sims 3: H&M clothes... As far as im concerned, ea is a monstrocity which has violated the games industry like its sex slave. it has to stop, and by stop i mean we must boycott it.
ok, a game where you make and control...people. im soiling myself with excitement. i bet theres some original and fantastic expansions already in development such as...sims 3:hot date and sims 3: H&M clothes... As far as im concerned, ea is a monstrocity which has violated the games industry like its sex slave. it has to stop, and by stop i mean we must boycott it.
I would boycott them but for 2 reasons:
1. Tiger Woods is a great game and I don't feel like giving it up any time soon.
2. More importantly, my wife LOVES the Sims so there's no way on earth she'll be missing out on this. On the plus side, I get free time on the 360 and I get to upgrade my PC without any complaints!
ok, a game where you make and control...people. im soiling myself with excitement. i bet theres some original and fantastic expansions already in development such as...sims 3:hot date and sims 3: H&M clothes... As far as im concerned, ea is a monstrocity which has violated the games industry like its sex slave. it has to stop, and by stop i mean we must boycott it.
I would boycott them but for 2 reasons:
1. Tiger Woods is a great game and I don't feel like giving it up any time soon.
2. More importantly, my wife LOVES the Sims so there's no way on earth she'll be missing out on this. On the plus side, I get free time on the 360 and I get to upgrade my PC without any complaints!
Good times!
wtf dude? i just dont get people who play sports games??!! what THE HELL IS THE POINT!!! fifa? go outside and play football. tiger woods? go outside and play friggin golf. grrrrrrrrrrrr i friggin do and it feels a lot better than playing it virtually on a computer...
2. More importantly, my wife LOVES the Sims so there's no way on earth she'll be missing out on this. On the plus side, I get free time on the 360 and I get to upgrade my PC without any complaints!
wtf dude? i just dont get people who play sports games??!! what THE HELL IS THE POINT!!! fifa? go outside and play football. tiger woods? go outside and play friggin golf. grrrrrrrrrrrr i friggin do and it feels a lot better than playing it virtually on a computer...
I don't play sports games but I can think of a few reasons...
You get to control an entire team and not just one person.
It might be fun for them to play.
It might actually be a good game.
You can look a hell of a lot cooler doing stuff on screen by accident.
Looking forward to the sims 3 just hope my pc can cope with it, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea and those who don't want to give up their pc for their wives to play then go buy her a nice new rig! Must admit I was hoping they would make it multi player, just think of the fun you could have going in robbing someones house or stealing their missus and the funds she would bring with her, wish they would rethink the MP side of it, at the end of the day you dont have to go online it should be the gamers choice.
wtf dude? i just dont get people who play sports games??!! what THE HELL IS THE POINT!!! fifa? go outside and play football. tiger woods? go outside and play friggin golf. grrrrrrrrrrrr i friggin do and it feels a lot better than playing it virtually on a computer...
This may come as a suprise but different kinds of people like different kinds of games. I know it's a radical concept but take some time to think about it and you'll realise it makes perfect sense.
As it goes I tried Golf in real life and I was s**t at it so I stuck with Tiger woods!! I'm a huge football fan but I still love PES. I don't think I'm unusual or alone in that.
Just as an aside to your little 'Grrrrrr' rant. When the f**k would I ever get the chance to play Golf at St. Andrews or Pebble beach (should I be so inclined)? I know it's not the same but it feels like a lot of fun to me. Stop taking yourself and your games so seriously.
2. More importantly, my wife LOVES the Sims so there's no way on earth she'll be missing out on this. On the plus side, I get free time on the 360 and I get to upgrade my PC without any complaints!
mobile human beings have no excuse to be playing on sports games. i am not a football fan in the slightest, but its still great to play and a hell of a lot better than playing it virtually...
I for 1 cant stand EA and its 'money' over 'art' ideology.
I didnt hate in the past, heck I bought FIFA back in the day (before I discovered PES) and even The Sims. But then outrolled the expansion packs, one after another, and I thought this is starting to get out of hand. Then slowly I started to realise the truth about EA as the years went by and more of the IP's churned out the same stuff one after the other.
On the other hand though, I cant help but praise EA in terms of bringing more people into the wonderful world of gaming. It's like a stepping stone, once they're hooked on The Sims we can wean them onto bigger and greater things, like HL2 or Mass Effect!
And then slowly bit by bit...Geeks will rule the world! (if they dont already lol)
"I think the sims is a great gaming series and all the expansions do is reflect its success."
No all the expansions do is rip off the games playing public, in a blatant attempt to milk it and the public for all they are worth. Most of the expansions they do lack little in content and realistically should either be free downloads or are all bundled into one or two expansions at the most for the same price as they charge for just one of there normal expansions. Its not as if they are bringing us anything new either just more of the same dressed up to make it look prettier, EA are charlatans of the highest order.
mobile human beings have no excuse to be playing on sports games. i am not a football fan in the slightest, but its still great to play and a hell of a lot better than playing it virtually...
You know you can play sports in real life and still play sports games it's not an either or situation. I'm not a big fan of sports games (cause I suck at them) but they are fun to play with some friends. I would like to be playing rugby but what if there aren't enough people or it's raining out side and as someone else said different people do like different types of games.
this could be a good game, but its the sims... i might as well hand my wallet over to the 6 expansions that will come so that i can atually do something. I havent played Sims since ther first one and its army of expansions, i did enjoy for the time i did play it. They jsut need less expansions, i go to EB and what do you no, another expansion....
I do agree, if it gets more ppl gaming then hey im happy with it, i wouldnt mind that. that MP idea of going to ppls sim house;s and stealing there stuff sounds so funny, imagine how many ppl will log in one day, nxt day there house is jsut a shell teehee. I do give credit to EA, they did make a good game, but the expansions is what killed it for me, im not made of money you no.
ok, a game where you make and control...people. im soiling myself with excitement. i bet theres some original and fantastic expansions already in development such as...sims 3:hot date and sims 3: H&M clothes... As far as im concerned, ea is a monstrocity which has violated the games industry like its sex slave. it has to stop, and by stop i mean we must boycott it.
I would boycott them but for 2 reasons:
1. Tiger Woods is a great game and I don't feel like giving it up any time soon.
2. More importantly, my wife LOVES the Sims so there's no way on earth she'll be missing out on this. On the plus side, I get free time on the 360 and I get to upgrade my PC without any complaints!
Good times!
wtf dude? i just dont get people who play sports games??!! what THE HELL IS THE POINT!!! fifa? go outside and play football. tiger woods? go outside and play friggin golf. grrrrrrrrrrrr i friggin do and it feels a lot better than playing it virtually on a computer...
wow someone needs to take a chill pill, different people like different games mate next time i would keep the comment to yourself
I'm still skeptical, anyone who calls the sims the best business simulator is delusional. There are much better business games, one tyhat i've played works exactly like the real world with each person playing online and releying on each other to sell them suplys and to buy their product, supply and demand work just like real life.
If you really can do anything and this is a real simulator of 'what if' it they'll lose at least half of their current players. For starters even though the graphics arn't amazing they will need better hardware to run espesciely with this continuous town plan, but what if someone wants to live in a flat in a metropilis, will they still be able to keep the hardware requirements in reach of their current playership??? Alot of people liked it because they got to care for their sims nurture them from child to adult, this isn't what hardcore gamers want they want to play somthing without the monotony of real life and just go wild or at least do what we normally can't, geting rid of the day to day things is OK but won't that destroy their need to look after them and care for them???
A game is for casual players or hardcore gamers very rarly does a game get played by both. If they want this to work it has to be online.
there are plenty of games played by the hardcore and the casual (theme hospital, GTA, WOW, etc) but this will have to do a lot in order to get any sort of hardcore following. i know my sister will buy this so i'll be able to try it without having to fork out anything.
oh and as for the multiplayer, they made a good choice by not adding it. all the sims players i know shudder at the idea of someone destroying what they've spent so long to build.
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
(if they dont already lol)
