maxima in the game design space, and occasionally I’ll find a nice maxima likeSimCity
orThe Sims. And then of course the company wants to keep exploring that maxima,
doing a lot of things, basically build a franchise. But at some point I just have to walk
away and go look for another maxima.
Were there guiding principles that people had to follow when designing and
developing the Sim family of games?
Well, we basically always saw them as being for the most part non-violent, although we
have broken that rule on occasion. But for the most part we’ve considered that one of
our distinguishing features. A lot of our employees who work for us really want to work
for Maxis because Maxis is known for their non-violent games. I don’t want to sound
like I’m making some moralistic statement, because I loveDoomandQuakeand those
things myself. Some of my favorite games are wargames. I play wargames heavily. I just
think that there are so many people making those games that we don’t need to, and
they’re doing a good job of it too. So I’d rather be making games that nobody’s making.
But from the public’s point of view, we do have this reputation for tending toward the
more non-violent, more educational, more socially relevant games.
Do you ever feel constrained by making Maxis-style simulation games? Do you
ever want to makeRaid Over Bungeling Bay II?
In some senseSimCopter
was almost Raid Over
Bungeling Bay II. There
were a lot of Easter eggs
hidden in SimCopter.In
fact, you could get an
Apache and lay waste to
the city. In fact, if you had
the Apache and you came
across a nuclear power
plant, you could blow up
the entire city. Even in
The Sims, a couple of
times, I tried to get away
from the political correct-
ness here and there. So
there are a lot of things we
did inThe Simsthat aren’t terribly politically correct, that didn’t even make sense, you
know, more of the wacky side. We didn’t try to let the Maxis thing constrain us, but the
domestic violence thing was probably a good example. You’ll see a lot of games where
there’s a much higher level of violence, much higher than a man slapping a woman. But
we were sensitive to how people would be interpreting this, knowing that families
would be playing it.
Chapter 22: Interview: Will Wright 445
SimCopter