The Sims 3: Rod Humble - Part One
The head of the EA Play label looks at the history of the franchise, and user-gen content
The impact that The Sims has had on the games industry can't really be underestimated. First released in 2000, the franchise has now sold over 100 million units and, arguably, created the lucrative expansions business.
Looking ahead to the release of the game this week (June 5 in Europe), we'll be taking a look back at why it's become such an iconic title with a series of features over the next few days. Here, head of the EA Play label that is responsible for The Sims, Rob Humble, talks about user-generated content, cross-gender appeal, and why Simlish as a language is so important for the game.
I can remember, I was working at Sony when number one was announced. I saw the preview for the game and I think like a lot of core gamers I just thought "What the hell is this? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever!" I was so negative on it, I just couldn't believe anybody would be releasing this - it was from the guys that did SimCity, which was one of my favourite games, and it seemed to be a game about watching other people sitting around the house, on a computer. It just seemed so lame.
But then a friend of mine bought the game when it came out, and he was a super-hardcore player. He showed me how he was playing it, and where I was going wrong, and then I was hooked - that changed my mind.
You're right, it is like soap operas... I think it was when my friend, and then others I knew, started telling stories about what they'd done in the game. That's always been the magic of it for me - you get these amazing stories, but they're all emergent. None of them are scripted.
The other day I was playing The Sims 3 and I hit the random button, and the Sim came up as a crook. Then later, when he went shopping, he bumped into a girl, they fell in love... but as he got to know her it turned out she was a cop. They moved in together, and eventually he went on the straight and narrow.
That's a pretty good story, but the fact that it was generated within the game, that none of it is scripted, is amazing. So when these stories - and obviously they weren't that detailed in The Sims 1 - but when they were starting to be told, that's when I thought there might be something to it.
But full disclosure: I was amazed at how successful it was, absolutely blown away. PC gaming back then - it was a different time, and it would never had occurred to me to get a game that brought in half the population. Amazing.
Yeah, I think it was. A lot of the elements in The Sims, from talking to the original team, they just put a lot of stuff in that felt good. Various bits took off, and to this day we're very wary about taking away elements, even if we think they're useless.
The way I describe it, if you're familiar with the Terry Pratchett books, is his description of magic: Magicians know that 90 per cent of what they do is utterly useless - sacrificing goats, waving hands, saying chants - but they don't know which is the 10 per cent that works... I feel a lot like that with The Sims... I think, "Maybe that's the magic source, better leave that alone!"
So there's a lot of stuff in there that we keep in, and is there because we love it, we're not entirely sure that's the secret source, but I don't think there's any single thing that's the key to success.
Yeah - the game itself started... the hallmark of the franchise is the ability to build your own house, and make your own environment. That just never goes away - that was the starting point, and it carries through. The people came later actually, and although I think they ended up being the focus of the game, the starting point was building your own little house. So we'll always do that.
When you look at our players, they tend to be cut up into three broad categories. One is builders and creators - they love making stuff, they love the editors, they love sharing content. Then there are story-tellers, who like playing stories and living out different lives. And the third category is deviants, who just love messing with this stuff - they're the guys who like doing disasters, they love watching Sims die, they just mess up the whole thing and do the weird, outlandish stuff.
All three of those audiences have stayed throughout the evolution of The Sims, and we have to cater to each one with every single extension and version we do. Because they each love the game in their own way.