I.D. Magazine, March/April 2000
THE SIMS
CD-ROM for Windows, Maxis, $49.95, www.thesims.com/us
It seemed like a harmless decision at first, placing the computer on a desk in the bedroom since there was no room elsewhere in the house. Besides, they were only computer-created characters inhabiting a virtual domicile—what did it matter? A virtual hour later, the Clintons were having a tiff in the bedroom; Mrs. Clinton had been enjoying a nap after a tough day of throwing away fly-infested pizza boxes (she doesn't cook) when she was awakened by Mr. Clinton, who was busy playing the latest first-person shooter on his new computer. An irritated Hillary (polygonal arms akimbo) was scolding Bill in a steady stream of graphical icons in angry bubbles. The game was making a point.
In 1989, Will Wright put the edutainment genre on the map with his now classic game for the Macintosh, SimCity. This urban simulation, in which the player is given the responsibility of governing a virtual city as mayor, proved that games could be an effective textbook for otherwise impenetrable subjects such as the civic implications of urban planning decisions. Its overwhelming success has spawned other "Sim" brand macromodels, such as SimEarth, SimLife and SimHealth, alongside the continuing SimCity series. Now, after five years in the making, Wright's latest and highly anticipated challenge, SimCity, finally inverts the lens, allowing players to zoom into the homes of ordinary Sim-people or create (as I did) not-so-ordinary characters like Bill and Hillary.
This time, the engine under the simulation hood had to be completely rethought to model the nature of human interaction realistically. "In general, SimCity is more based on statistical patterns (via cellular automata)," according to Wright, "while SimCity is in the realm of object-oriented, goal-seeking AI." Also, SimCity has a more complicated graphics system," he adds, "because the characters are drawn as 3-D models that animate through skeletal transformations," giving each character a fairly large vocabulary of bodily gestures. The player must learn how to read not only the characters' body language, but also the situations they are in, and then—in what is ostensibly the object of the game (if there is one at all)—make everyone happy.
The idea of winning or losing has never been a critical component of Will Wright's games. Thanks in large part to the well-roundedness and complexity of his simulations, there are a multitude of paths to success or failure, and you are likely to learn something with any route you take. In SimCity, you may find yourself struggling to manage each member's base needs ("Bladder," "Hunger," "Fun" and "Room," the latter of which measures the impact of your interior-space designs on the characters' well-being), but focusing only on these factors is not enough. Since characters carry a matrix of inborn personality traits that can be tweaked at the game's beginning ("Neat," "Outgoing," "Playful," etc.), they are not simply automatons living in their own personal worlds; they are, in fact, social creatures. These traits have implications in their relationships with other Sims and in their jobs, two categories which can be tracked and even cultivated as the game progresses. For example, to increase Hillary's charisma, you can have her practice speaking in front of the mirror in her spare time—which will better her performance as a salesperson, which will improve her financial status, and so on. Or if Bill becomes friendly enough with the buxom next-door neighbor, he can attempt to give her a backrub—which she may or may not stand for, depending on how receptive she is to his character. In fact, the relationship between two people can go sour if, for instance, Bill walks into the bathroom while his neighbor is sitting on the toilet and they have not yet reached that level of intimacy—a subtle point and one surprising to find in a game.
The extent to which human-social interaction can be reduced to a set of equations is just one revelation of *The Sims*. That Wright had originally chosen to call the game *Dollhouse* points to its origins as a study of the quantitative efficiency of home design. The home-building components allow users to design and build a house from the ground up, putting up walls, installing plumbing and lighting and furnishing each room with appliances and furniture. In fact, the Sim characters initially evolved as a way to test the player's designs, measuring factors such as the number of steps it would take a Sim to perform a repeated task like taking out the trash or getting food from the refrigerator. Wright quickly came to realize that psycho-social forces could be a crucial element of the game, if not its most entertaining feature.
SimCity operates on the time unit of the year, but SimCity runs on an only slightly accelerated timescale, in which hours pass like minutes—making time itself the most critical resource in the life of the Sims. In the course of building SimCity, Will Wright found that he had developed "a newfound appreciation for the value of time" in his own life. A fitting but somewhat ironic conclusion, since a true exploration of Wright's world requires a significant investment of time. And soon, with the possibility of creating "voodoo" families with customized skins and downloadable custom-built furniture, real life for some may begin to look a lot like SimCity.
IRWIN CHEN