The Sims celebrate their 25th anniversary. The original lead designer, wants to Wright, revealed a funny detail about the first game in the series on the occasion of the birthday. The AI was far too good at an early stage of development.
Why did the AI have to get worse? As soon as a player does not intervene in the action, the wildest things pass into the Sims. The chaos that runs in autopilot mode is intended. Wright revealed that the AI was intentionally worse because it was too good at the beginning.
“Almost everything the player did was worse than the Sims that ran on autopilot.”
Therefore, the development team worked some mistakes so that unpredictable things happened. For example, it can happen that your Sim makes a toast after not making it to the toilet. Another example called Wright is the bite of a guinea pig that suddenly leads to a fatal illness.
If the AI had not been worsened, a player shouldn’t have done anything to keep his Sim alive. The Sims would have processed their needs perfectly and would have been well cared for. In order for the players to do something, they had to make mistakes, which is why the AI was screwed.
The Sims is known for its many extensions. You can see one of them here in the trailer:
The Sims 4 Trailer for the extension of high school years
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Players should feel like gods
How did the autopilot come about? The Sims should actually become an architecture simulation, but the idea was left out at some point. The basic idea for the autopilot comes from a tragic accident. In 1991 a huge fire raged in Oakland, where the Wright’s house was also burned down.
When he returned to the ashes of his house, he saw that only ants survived the fire. He probably gave them a lot of attention. Because he thought about what if people like ants would use pheromones to communicate. So you would know directly if you were hungry that you have to automatically have to go to the fridge.
Wright initially developed the insect simulator Simant, but later the Sims emerged. The AIM, which was initially too good, is due to the observations of the ants whose behavior wanted to incorporate Wright into the life simulation.
Wright found an analogy to the ants: With the Sims, the developer wanted players like gods to feel the small, stupid ants. In truth, however, they are the ants that believed to be gods. Even the cheats should only serve one purpose: players should believe that they can break the game.
A new game that the Sims wants to compete with is Inzoi. The Korean life simulation relies on pure realism. This is noticeable in the fact that you can even transfer your own face: Inzoi transfers your face into play and you can try the alternative to Sims tomorrow