Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap
Speaking of looking like crap, I was recently going through my old backups, and ran across an ancient forgotten installer for &quot;The Sims Steering Committee&quot; dated June 4, 1998, an early pre-release version of The Sims that we distributed internally at EA shortly after they bought Maxis, more than a year and a half before we released The Sims in March 2000.<p>Here&#x27;s a screen recording of a demo I made in a VM, which walks through the scenarios, objects, and tools, and also shows some of the &quot;SimAntics&quot; behavior tree code behind the different levels.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zC52jE60KjY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zC52jE60KjY</a><p>It&#x27;s got a &quot;sketchy&quot; user interface, a dot above the selected character&#x27;s head instead of the iconic spinning plumb-bob, a horrifically crude and ugly object placement tool with yellow squares and big red X&#x27;s when you can&#x27;t place an object (but that gladly lets you place bathtubs on hills), and a bare minimal number of crappy objects, some of which have astoundingly terrible graphics and prototypically implemented behaviors.<p>Especially @ 24:25: the vintage Stereo with colorful musical notes dancing above it, the stinky Fish Tank (permanently attached to its own table), the unbelievably nasty Pink Flamingo, the goofy looking Flower (also growing out of a pot on its own table), and the blue bakelite Telephone (glued to its own table as well) which looks like it has Halloween Candy Corn springing out when it rings @ 12:45, then the caller asks you if you&#x27;d like your fingers chewed off by rabid ferrets for $42. It has pixelated censoring @ 13:31, which attempts to disguise the embarrassing fact that they shit and shower with their pants on. Also @ 2:00 it has weird pie menus with placeholder programmer art, and the original characters, including Archie Bunker permanently holding a burning cigar in his hand! Also there&#x27;s some unfortunately worded dialog text that probably wouldn&#x27;t have made it past the ESRB @ 40:50.<p>As ugly as it was, it was just playable enough to convince The Sims Steering Committee at EA not to cancel our project, and to give us another year and a half to complete it.<p>Here&#x27;s an interview with Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims, in which she describes &quot;Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion&quot;.<p>Sims Designer Chris Trottier on Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20110408034710&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donhopkins.com&#x2F;drupal&#x2F;node&#x2F;31" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20110408034710&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donho...</a><p>&gt;The Armchair Empire interviewed Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims and The Sims Online. She touches on some important ideas, including &quot;Tuned Emergence&quot; and &quot;Design by Accretion&quot;.<p>&gt;Chris&#x27; honest analysis of how and why &quot;the gameplay didn&#x27;t come together until the months before the ship&quot; is right on the mark, and that&#x27;s the secret to the success of games like The Sims and SimCity.<p>&gt;The essential element that was missing until the last minute was tuning: The approach to game design that Maxis brought to the table is called &quot;Tuned Emergence&quot; and &quot;Design by Accretion&quot;. Before it was tuned, The Sims wasn&#x27;t missing any structure or content, but it just wasn&#x27;t balanced yet. But it&#x27;s OK, because that&#x27;s how it&#x27;s supposed to work!<p>&gt;In justifying their approach to The Sims, Maxis had to explain to EA that SimCity 2000 was not fun until 6 weeks before it shipped. But EA was not comfortable with that approach, which went against every rule in their play book. It required Will Wright&#x27;s tremendous stamina to convince EA not to cancel The Sims, because according to EA&#x27;s formula, it would never work.<p>&gt;If a game isn&#x27;t tuned, it&#x27;s a drag, and you can&#x27;t stand to play it for an hour. The Sims and SimCity were &quot;designed by accretion&quot;: incrementally assembled together out of &quot;a mass of separate components&quot;, like a planet forming out of a cloud of dust orbiting around star. They had to reach critical mass first, before they could even start down the road towards &quot;Tuned Emergence&quot;, like life finally taking hold on the planet surface. Even then, they weren&#x27;t fun until they were carefully tuned just before they shipped, like the renaissance of civilization suddenly developing science and technology. Before it was properly tuned, The Sims was called &quot;the toilet game&quot;, for the obvious reason that there wasn&#x27;t much else to do!<p>Chris Trottier (Sims Online) Q&amp;A<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20111211182436&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.armchairempire.com&#x2F;Interviews&#x2F;chris-trottier-the-sims.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20111211182436&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.armcha...</a><p>&gt;Q: On paper, a game where you simulate daily life doesn&#x27;t sound that interesting. Yet The Sims is really fun to play, so much so that it is now the biggest-selling PC game ever. Although any development team working with Will Wright has to feel confident in the product they are creating, has the unbelievable popularity of the franchise shocked even the development team?<p>&gt;A: Absolutely. When I was first assigned to The Sims, it was not-very-affectionately-known within the company as &quot;the toilet game.&quot; Will Wright had tremendous stamina for the risk involved with trying something very new, but there were certainly a lot of head-scratchers both on the team and outside of it. In all honesty, the gameplay didn&#x27;t start to really come together until a couple of months before ship. Being involved in that tuning process, and seeing the game take shape from what had previously been a mass of separate components, was one of the most powerful experiences of my career.