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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