it claims to be — a simulation, not a drama. No drama simulates the real world. In
Shakespeare’s play, in the middle of Henry V’s speech to the soldiers at Agincourt, he
doesn’t say, “Just a minute, guys, I have to take a pee.” However, inThe Sims, he does.
Once when I was playingThe Sims, a little girl couldn’t get to sleep because there were
spooks coming and frightening her. The spooks are a very nice touch, by the way. They
kept her awake all night long, and she wandered all around until she fell asleep, because
a sim who stays up too long is overcome with drowsiness. She happened to fall asleep
on the floor of her parents’ bedroom. Morning came, mommy woke up, stretched, got
up out of bed, and walked to the bathroom, stepping over the inert body of her daughter!
This is a good simulation of the physical processes of daily living. It is an atrocious sim-
ulation of the emotional processes of daily living.
Will built an excellent physical simulator. But it has no people content. It’s a direct
violation of my “people not things” argument in that it focuses on the things aspect of
life, on all the mechanical details. Going to the bathroom is a major module in that pro-
gram, whereas emotional processes simply aren’t there. I don’t want to criticize a
brilliant product: Will set out with a clear goal and he achieved it, and that’s wonderful.
But he didn’t set out to do what I’m doing and, lo and behold, he didn’t achieve it. I
refuse to criticizeThe Sims, because as a design it is magnificent. It has a clear purpose
and it achieves that purpose brilliantly. It’s just a different product, and it’s not interac-
tive storytelling.
So what makes you want to pursue interactive storytelling?
It’s a hell of a lot more relevant. Furthermore, I think it’s a hell of a lot more interesting
than game design. The design problems of computer games nowadays bore me,
because they’re not very involved problems. They tend to be very small models, quite
easy to calculate. I continue to be appalled at the low level of intelligence in a lot of
these games. The computer opponent is really stupid, and that’s about the only element
that still interests me. I might like to do a game with some really good AI, where the
computer opponent can really outsmart you, and I don’t mean that in the sense of chess,
I mean that in something complicated like a wargame. But wargames themselves are
obvious. I feel that I have mastered that form and so why should I continue to indulge in
it? There are so many other, more important tasks, such as interactive storytelling.
This is a challenge! Something I can really sink my teeth into. Unfortunately, it appears
I have sunk my teeth into the tail of a tiger.
Do you ever fear that you will always be dissatisfied with the Erasmatron?
I consider this to be my life’s work. This is the culmination of everything I’ve been lead-
ing up to. I have no doubts that if I continue working on this I can continue to improve
this technology. I have major doubts as to its commercial feasibility right now. That is,
I’m quite certain that twenty years from now people will realize that interactive story-
telling is a commercially wonderful thing and, golly gee, we ought to do it. I believe we
can make products that people will find far more entertaining than computer games,
because they’ll be about drama instead of resource management. Unfortunately, I don’t
think people quite see that yet. Certainly the games industry does not and will not.
They will feel thatThe Simsrepresents the correct step in that direction. They can
278 Chapter 14: Interview: Chris Crawford