The Sims design mastermind Will Wright says the first Sims ever made were "too good" at staying alive and needed to be stupider for the game to be fun

A female sim in a red dress in front of a fire in an official Sims 1 render.

(Image credit: EA)

According to The Sims mastermind Will Wright, the original life sim had to be dumbed down as Sims' autonomy was simply "too good" to be enjoyable.

Speaking in a recent interview with The New York Times, Wright discusses the conception of The Sims – a title that "everyone in the room hated the idea of" but arguably revolutionized the simulation genre. "In early versions of the game," admits the developer, "the autonomy was too good." So good, in fact, that the Sims actually managed to outplay the players in a way. "Almost anything the player did was worse than the Sims running on autopilot."

There's no fun in a life sim without any "sim" elements, so to speak – so what did Wright do? He stirred some chaotic energy into the mix and got the game's Sims to a comfortable, much more user-reliant stage in which controlling them felt rewarding. Suddenly, things could take a turn for the worse very quickly. A grilled cheese sandwich could morph into a killer fire, and a pet guinea pig's bite could leave Sims with a deadly disease.

According to Wright, the ridiculous and often nonsensical way Sims approach problems is a deliberate inclusion on the devs' behalf. All of us long-time fans of The Sims have witnessed it firsthand: a fire breaks out, and Sims react by flailing their arms around wildly while yelling rather than extinguishing the flames themselves. It's what makes the series so wonderfully whacky, though, and it gives players a sense of godlike purpose.

The difficulty of managing everything isn't for everyone, however, and recent reactions to EA's The Sims and The Sims 2 re-releases on PC prove as much. In fact, the original game seems to be teaching newer fans of The Sims 4 a lesson in retro life sim difficulty, and as a hardened Simmer myself, I get it – my own Sims 2 re-release preview discusses how much harder (and more rewarding) the series used to be.

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After spending years with her head in various fantastical realms' clouds, Anna studied English Literature and then Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh, going on to specialize in narrative design and video game journalism as a writer. She has written for various publications since her postgraduate studies, including Dexerto, Fanbyte, GameSpot, IGN, PCGamesN, and more. When she's not frantically trying to form words into coherent sentences, she's probably daydreaming about becoming a fairy druid and befriending every animal or she's spending a thousand (more) hours traversing the Underdark in Baldur's Gate 3. If you spot her away from her PC, you'll always find Anna with a fantasy book, a handheld video game console of some sort, and a Tamagotchi or two on hand.