millions of people playing the game. Once a house is built or purchased, players can
concentrate on filling it up with all manner of interesting possessions, which have a
variety of effects on the inhabitants of the house. Of course, players get to construct the
inhabitants as well, picking from a large range of personalities, body types, ages, eth-
nicities, and even hairstyles, with the option to make children or adults as well as males
or females. Once the sims move into the house, players are able to determine what they
eat, what they study, what career they pursue, how they have their fun, and with whom
they socialize. Whether it be house building, property acquisition and placement, char-
acter creation, or life control, any one of these components includes far more choices
than most games provide. When all of these different systems are combined, the range
of choices available to players increases exponentially, creating a game with truly
unprecedented depth.
Of course, what the sims cannot do in the game is significant as well. The sims can-
not leave their homes except to go to work, and when they do players cannot follow
them. Being able to go to other places would be nice, but consider how much more com-
plex the game would need to be to simulate the rest of the world. A massive amount of
additional work would have been required, and had that sensible limitation not been
made early on in the title’s development it might never have been completed. By focus-
ing on the home life, the game is able to “get it right” in a way it could not have had the
game-world ofThe Simsbeen larger. In short, what would have been gained in breadth
would have been lost in depth. If a designer spends all her time adding an unreasonable
range of possibilities to the game, it is likely that any one of the features the game
includes will be far shallower than if the designer knows how to focus her efforts.
The Simsalso expertly captures the “just one more thing” style of gameplay. This
type of gameplay is perhaps best exemplified byCivilization, where players are con-
stantly looking forward to the next technology to be discovered, the next unit to be
built, or the next discovery of new territory. Similarly inThe Sims, players may be
working on having their sims meet new people, trying to advance their careers, hoping
to put an addition on the house, and thinking of someday having them raise a child, all at
the same time. Because of these constant aspirations, there is never a good place to
stop playing the game; there is constantly something on the horizon to look forward to.
Hence the game is fabulously addictive, with captivated players devoting hour upon
hour, day after day, and week after week of their lives to the game.
Interface...................................
The best a game’s interface can hope to do is to not ruin the players’ experience. The
interface’s job is to communicate to players the state of the world and to receive input
from players as to what they want to change in that game-world. The act of using this
input/output interface is not meant to be fun in and of itself; it is the players’ interaction
with the world that should be the compelling experience. But since the interface deter-
mines how players interact with the world, if that interface is not up to the task then at
best players will become frustrated and at worst players will be unable to perform the
actions they want.
The Sims’ user interface is a beautiful example of how to do an interface correctly.
It provides players with a staggering amount of information about the game-world,
Chapter 20: Game Analysis:The Sims 387