|  |
This interview was originally posted by PC Gameplay.
 06 August 01 PC Gameplay SimsVille Interview |
| THE NEW PLEASANTVILLE? In our last Sims expose we take a look at the thriving town of Simsville. A boring half-breed of The Sims and Sim City, or a highly entertaining and original game in its own right? That’s what we wanted to know about Simsville, and in our final interview with the people behind The Sims, we ask “Is Simsville a Sims game too far?” Joining us in the hot seat for the customary PC GAMEPLAY grilling this time we have Executive Producer Kana Ryan and Associate Producer Virginia McArthur. PCG: Can you explain to us in a nutshell what Simsville is all about? VM: Simsville is about both the good and bad relationships that you can create by building a community for your Sims. In The Sims you’re managing and maintaining the individual Sims, and in Simsville you’re maintaining that community and those relationships amongst the families within the community. PCG: How do you play the game? VM: Simsville uses the same user interface as The Sims – Live, Buy, and Build. Live mode in Simsville is where you’ll maintain the Sims and follow them through their daily life. Buy mode is just like in The Sims, because the Sims love to buy stuff. And Build mode is where you actually build up the community. The first thing you’ll do is place down houses. The way you entice people is based on friendliness. So obviously at the beginning of a game you’ll probably have one house next to another because you want them to be friends right away. KR: There’ll be variety of houses in different styles and price ranges. When you start out you’ll probably put in the less expensive houses because Sims only come in with a certain amount of money. As you build them up, they’ll be able to afford bigger places. We also want to give users tools that will allow them to customise their houses. PCG: It looks like a completely new engine, with zoomable 3D, is that right? KR: Yes. In The Sims the characters were 3D but not the world. PCG: Does that mean it will need a higher-end PC? KR: We’re going to try to optimise so it can run on a low-end machine. We know how important that is. We’re looking at a PII 400, and obviously you can get better performance out of hardware acceleration. PCG: So you’ve built some houses and enticed some people in. So what’s next for your town? VM: After you’ve placed those buildings, you have the ability to find jobs for your Sims and places for them to be entertained. If you don’t, your Sims might get angry with you and things will decay. For instance, you might not supply enough jobs in town, or enough places to shop. PCG: What sort of things can you buy to entertain your Sims? VM: Within Buy mode you’re going to be able to buy vehicles, landscaping objects, entertainment objects like a pool or a hot tub, or party props that will actually go away over time. So for a brief period of time you can put a dancefloor in the park. And then you can entice people to come for a certain period of time, and it’ll advertise to everyone in town: “Come and hang out at the dancefloor, this is a great way to meet people.” KR: Over time you’re going to become pretty successful, and you’ll end up growing your town to quite a few people. So soon you lose the ability to monitor all these people. Parties can bring people together. So I can have a family throw a party in the back yard, or have the town throw a party in a park or another location. The benefit is that suddenly your relationships will have a positive impact. If everybody at the party is having a good time, their relationships are going to be good and their social scores will get better. Of course, there’s a downside. If someone turns up that you don’t get along with for some reason, fights can break out and your party might have the opposite effect. VM: You can focus on your Sims’ social relationships – pick them up and take them across town so they can meet new people [using a new grab tool]. This is an environment I’d like to create within Simsville. My Sims are happy, everyone’s getting on with their day, they are gathering on their own socially, and you start to get rewards. One of the first rewards you get is a town hall. This enables you to have block parties, or maybe even a concert in the park. KR: So in much the same way as in The Sims, where you don’t have one end goal, in Simsville you can choose how to run your town. If you want to put in the X-rated theater or a porno shop, that’s completely under your control. PCG: Is that some of the content that you’ll be providing for your game? KR: Yes. And it’s the player’s challenge how they are going to make those businesses successful. So they have to get people that will take jobs in those businesses, and people who’ll go there to satisfy their needs. So the player can tell the story of the town they want to build. PCG: Are you going for a 50s look here too? KR: We’re going for that nostalgic look from The Sims, that kind of 60s sitcom, small-town feel that we’re all nostalgic about but probably never existed. PCG: Do you deal with the economy of the whole town? Say if you have a movie theater, that’s got to mean you have a population of a few hundred at least. That’s a lot of people to look after. Do you have to lay down 300 houses? KR: Our scale is a little different than reality. So to have a movie theater, you might need more like 20 people. A lot of the stuff we’re going to be struggling with when we’re tuning this game is what is the balance between population and the facilities you can have. There’s a lot of things to manage. You have to manage relationships. You can get information about who they know, who they’re friends with, who they’re romantic with. You can also see a wedding happen. If the family is very happy they might actually want to have a baby, and then a stork will fly overhead and deliver the little bundle of joy. We have a lot of fun things that you couldn’t do with The Sims because you were focused on one house. Here, because you have the whole community, you can really expose things a lot of Sims players were anxious for. Now you’re going to have the ability to buy a vehicle and have a choice of different cars. You can even buy a motorcycle. If you want you can have a completely vehicle-free town and make it bicycles only. PCG: If you don’t buy your Sim a car, will your Sim buy a car anyway? KR: No. You buy things for them. You’re the one who decides what happens to your Sims. VM: And anything you choose to buy for a family comes out of their family pot of money. KR: You’re managing the environment, but you’re also controlling the Sims’ ambitions. So they will get their first job, but for the most part they are just going to stay in that job. If you want them to advance and get a better job, you have to improve their skills and you have to go and apply for that job. PCG: Is there a natural limit on the number of houses and the number of people? The Sims is about managing a house and SimCity is about managing a city hall, but here you’re managing everything. Could that get quite stressful? KR: We’re very conscious about that, and a lot of that comes from good tuning. But given the fact that the Sims do a lot of things on their own, you don’t have to direct them all the time. VM: We’re thinking about 30 – 40 houses per town. KR: You can have eight people in a family, but of course we’ll vary that. PCG: What kind of public buildings can you have? VM: We’ve got a town hall, a fire station… KR: We’re also imagining an art museum, a stadium, an amphitheater for concerts, and of course a school. There’s an adult school and a kids’ school. The adult school is where people will go to improve their skills. Kids will be a big chaos factor here. If they decide not to go to school or they’re not doing well at school, they will be out causing trouble. VM: It’s really interesting. If you have kids in town and you don’t have a school and then you place a school, immediately kids flock to school. It’s great. KR: Which is not really what you’d expect kids to do! PCG: What kind of industries can you put in the town? KR: We’ve got a vineyard, a farm, a farmer’s market, a recycling center, mining, an oil refinery. VM: We’re thinking about having a fashion magazine and a radio station so you can change the Simsville music and replace it with MP3s. KR: We put the fashion magazine in for the 13-year-old girls. PCG: How would that look in the game, because you can’t see inside the building? KR: Well, for example with the movie theater, there would be an outdoor-looking set. And when you place the theater a number of careers become available. You might have an actor, an actress, a director. Because it’s an open set, you’d be able to see them working. PCG: If you had a stadium, would you have professional athletes? KR: That would be a possible career, certainly. There’s a lot of wish-fulfillment that we could have. PCG: A lot of that was user-created in The Sims. Are you doing the same here? KR: Right now we’re looking at letting you create characters in The Sims and bring them in here. We’d like to get to a place where we had a tool that would allow you to create Simsville characters as well, but we’re not sure we’re there yet. Thanks to Kana and Virginia for answering all our question, and thanks to all the folks at Maxis for putting up with our constant badgering. Looks like The Sims are going to be in the Top 10 of the sales charts for some time yet! |
shop@noctalis THE SIMS 3  THE SIMS CARNIVAL BUMPER BLAST THE SIMS CARNIVAL SNAPCITY |
 |
shop@noctalis
| |||
| nu in noctalis ::
Neopets |
Medieval II Total War |
Heroes of Might and Magic IV & V Download Free Casual Games :: |
