develop these long-term relationships with was definitely a later concept.
So that just grew organically out of other aspects of the game?
It had a lot to do with the success of our behavioral model, which was working better
than we thought it would. Or, at least, people’s interpretation of our behavioral model.
Which is to say we were fooling them better than we thought we would.
So you’re saying that people perceive the behavioral model as more impres-
sive than it actually is?
In fact, that became also a
big focus of the design.
There was another book
that became very influen-
tial later in the design, a
book calledUnderstanding
Comicsby Scott McCloud.
And he makes some very
good points that are very
applicable to game design.
One of the ones that we
used the most is the idea
that the activity is a collab-
oration, in this case
between the game
designer and the player.
And also that the level of
abstraction that you present to the player gives them a very significant clue as to how
much of this they should be modeling in their head versus on the computer. So, in fact,
when somebody’s playingThe Simsand interpreting the experience, they may not real-
ize it but they’re doing a lot of the modeling in their head, not on the computer. The
computer will sit there and it will pop up this gibberish conversation. Most people will
actually sit there and roughly interpret what they’re saying. They’ll say, “Oh, I see, he’s
upset because she didn’t take the trash out.” And they’ll be simulating in their heads
the other side of the model to a greater level of detail than the computer ever could.
People can’t help but look at a sequence of events and overlay some kind of narrative
on it.
We noticed that a while back, so we really decided to make use of that. And so when
we designed their conversations and the iconic language and even their gestures, we
tried to leave them open to interpretation so that the players can come in and have fairly
creative interpretations of what they’re seeing on the screen. And then later we were
watching people play the game in early playtest sessions and some of the narratives
they were creating were so entertaining and funny that that’s what gave us the idea to
put in the scrapbook feature. With that, they can actually record their particular narra-
tive of what is going on and then share it.
Chapter 22: Interview: Will Wright 427
The Sims