Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The Sims
This section takes an extensive look at
The Sims
(and its sequels and many mod-
ules), because it is by far the most successful A-life game ever created. It is also
almost the only game of its kind. There was one game a bit like
The Sims
called
Little Computer People
many years ago (it ran on the Commodore 64), but it was a
much simpler game.
The Sims
is a virtual dollhouse: It simulates a family in a sub-
urban home. You can make the people—each of which is called a
sim
—move
around, cause them to complete certain tasks, tell them when to go to bed and
when to get up, and so on. You can indirectly influence their relationships by mak-
ing them talk to each other, but you can't decide what they will say, and you can't
guarantee that they will like each other. Each simulated person comes with his or
her own personality, likes, and dislikes.
NOTE
The term
sim
is usually an abbrevia-
tion of “simulation”
in the game industry,
as in “flight sim.”
However, the designers
of
The Sims
decided to
call the simulated peo-
ple in the game sims. You
can usually tell which is
meant from context.
The Sims
offers multiple ways to play with it, a major selling point. The game
includes the features of both an artificial pet and a construction and management
simulation (CMS). Like a CMS, there is an economy: Sims need money to build
additions to the house and to buy new furniture for it. At least one member of a
Sim family earns that money by having a job. Players can spend quite a lot of time
in the buying-and-building mode, if they can afford it. Some players, the particu-
larly goal-oriented ones, really concentrate on this aspect, working hard to
construct a mansion and fill it with luxuries. Others are more interested in the
interactions and relationships among the sims and spend a lot of the time giving
them things to do and watching their reactions.
NEEDS
The main challenge of
The Sims
is to manage this group of slightly incompetent
people and to improve their career prospects by teaching them things that will
help them get better jobs. In
The Sims 3
, each sim has six needs that she must meet
on an ongoing basis: hunger, hygiene, bladder, energy level, fun, and social interac-
tion (see
Figure 20.2
). These needs drive her behavior. When a sim feels a need,
she takes actions to meet it. If the need goes unmet for too long, the sim becomes
unhappy and can even die (in the case of an unmet hunger need). Each sim has a
list of things to do to meet her current needs, with the most urgent ones at the top.
The player can also give the sim orders, in effect inserting a behavior at the top of
the list.
The need-based behavior simulation in
The Sims
is based upon pioneering work by
the psychologist Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. Maslow organized human needs
into a hierarchy, with physiological needs (such as oxygen and water) at the bot-
tom, and social and psychological needs (such as love and respect) farther up. The
lowest-level needs are the most urgent ones, the ones that a person must meet in
order to stay alive. Other things being equal, a human will try to meet the lower
needs first, but in practice, needs change over time. Once a person has fulfilled his
lower-level needs, he can turn to fulfilling his higher-level ones.
The Sims
uses a
