The Sims: A brief history of the most successful life simulator in history
The Sims is one of the most popular video games on the planet and at the same time one of the longest-lived industry. Her path to triumph was not easy, but the talent, professionalism and perseverance of the author-Will Wright, simply doomed her to success. But with all this, it is unlikely that the game would have become so successful, if not for a few accidents.
Will Wright was born and raised in Atlanta, and like many American boys, he dreamed of becoming a NASA astronaut. At the same time, Will's dream was not just to fly into space, but to colonize other planets that could solve the problem of overpopulation of the Earth. The dreamer's room was filled with models of spaceships, hung with maps of the starry sky and portraits of space explorers.
But life turned out so that at the age of 16, Wright entered the University of Louisiana, and then transferred to Louisiana Tech University, which he also did not graduate from. The guy received a full education at a New school in Manhattan, in New York, specializing in robotics.
Being engaged in smart mechanisms, Will became interested in robot fights, in which he repeatedly became a champion. The cunning man used a special technology of immobilizing the enemy with the help of gauze, which no one could resist. It got to the point that this win-win method of attack was officially banned as "unsportsmanlike", which greatly amused Wright.
After playing with adult toys, Will Wright got married and moved to Oakland, California. There he decided to change the field of activity and moved from creating mechanisms to programming. On his old PC Commodore 64, he created the first helicopter gunship simulator game Raid on Bungeling Bay, which became popular.
In the game, an attack helicopter destroyed the fortifications on the island and during the work on the project, Will suddenly discovered a craving for creation. In the working process, he was more interested in creating buildings, developing their layout and architecture. Then for the first time he thought about a simulator in which it would be possible to build houses, offices, factories and shops.
So there was a great SimCity city simulator. Strange as it may seem, but the game, which is still breaking records for downloads, did not impress the giants of the gaming industry in the late 80s. The company Broderbund, which released Wright's game with a helicopter, did not get into the idea of a simulator – they wanted to see a game in which you can go to victory, and not build and manage cities.
Fortunately, the project got the right to life thanks to Wright's meeting with businessman and programmer Jeff Brown. This person was engaged in the creation of fonts and dreamed of entering the gaming industry. Together they created the company Maxis Software, which released SimCity in 1989.
At first, the game was not in demand and its publishers had a hard time. They couldn't even afford an office and worked from home. But in 1991, experts in the field of urban planning drew attention to an unusual simulator and recommended it to students of construction and architectural universities as a training material. After that, finally, came the recognition and the first serious money.
The idea of The Sims game appeared after a fire in which in 1991 the new house of the Wright family and one of the cars burned down. The blame for everything was forest fires, which are not uncommon for California. The fire deprived Will of all his property, but his developments were in a recently rented office and survived.
After the fire, Wright reflected on the fact that all material goods in this world are unreliable and only relationships between people are valuable. In his head, the idea arose to create a life simulator in which the consumer essence of modern people chasing things and trends would be ridiculed.
In the new world, invented by the programmer, there lived people-sims, virtual, but obsessed, like real people, with a passion for shopping and entertainment. For the money, called simoleons, they could buy clothes, jewelry, household appliances, cars and much more. Purchases affected the level of happiness of the sims. For example, the owners of a cheap mattress did not receive enough energy and life improved only after purchasing a new one.
But the idea of the game, which received the working name Doll House ("Doll House"), did not like Wright's companions. Even his close friend Brown believed that a simulator in which you need to clean toilets and buy spoons and vacuum cleaners is doomed to failure. Will Wright lost in this confrontation and it was decided to curtail the development of the game.
Instead, all the forces of Maxis Software were thrown into creating a promising game SimCity 2000. But Wright did not give up on his dream and secretly worked on "Dollhouse" in his spare time. He even hired a programmer for his own money to make things move faster.
The breakthrough occurred in 1997, when the gaming industry giant Electronic Arts acquired the company Maxis Software. The new owners of the company allowed Will to work on his project and the work began to boil. Sims and their world became better and more realistic – even physiological needs appeared in the game, such as sleep and emptying the bladder, which can affect the level of happiness of the character.
In order for the Sims to communicate with each other, Wright created a funny language for them from meaningless words. At first, there was an idea to make the characters speak existing languages, for example, the Navajo Indian language or Ukrainian, but this greatly raised the cost of development, since it required the involvement of professional translators and voice-over specialists.
The game turned out to be cool without exaggeration, but Electronic Arts reacted to it without enthusiasm. At the Electronics Entertainment Expo 1999, the company allocated Wright a tiny pavilion on the outskirts for his novelty, which could not be noticed against the background of bright neighbors.
But The success of The Sims was a foregone conclusion and a huge role in it was played by... same-sex relationships. At first, Wright considered introducing this theme into the game, but Maxis and Electronic Arts were against it. However, the LGBT theme appeared in the game by accident, as a result of haste in preparing for the exhibition.
The demo video for the event included a scene of the Sims ' wedding. Since time was running out, the programmers clearly spelled out only the actions of the main characters, and most of the guests were controlled by artificial intelligence. In one place, two women appeared next to each other at the table, who quite accidentally kissed. This happened during the presentation, and the game immediately began to be actively discussed.
The game, which touched on the topic of LGBT relations, turned out to be on everyone's lips and in February 2000, when sales began, it began to be swept off the shelves of stores. In a short time, 16 million copies were sold and it was an absolute record. Only The Sims 2 simulator managed to beat it in 2004.
The game became a franchise and began to develop actively. The Sims 3 was released in 2009, and The Sims 4-in 2014. Updated in 2009 became a full-fledged same-sex marriage, the latest version of 2019 appeared sebenarnya genders. To date, more than 200 million copies of the game have been sold. Additions are released regularly and do not cease to delight fans of the simulator with new extraordinary ideas.
Thus, Will Wright, who once dreamed of saving the planet from overpopulation, became the creator of a virtual community in which hundreds of millions of characters live. Their number is growing rapidly, but the good news is that they do not take up any space on our planet at all.
For many, The Sims is not just a game, but a source of inspiration. The Moschino brand has even released a line of clothes in honor of the popular simulator.
Keywords: Technologies | Design and architecture | Simulator | Community | Consumption | Video game | Developer