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Games Entertainment

In-Depth Sims Online Development Story 135

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-take-care-of-my-needs dept.
Nicholas Palmer writes "GameSpot has a really in-depth feature story on the development process behind The Sims Online. It gets into things like how the team had to refactor the game's 3 million lines of code last year. Will Wright mentions his desire to see TSO to grow into a community similar to Slashdot's." Great game - although the latest wipe of the game means all Blockstackers' hard work on our house will be gone. Still, the social dynamics, IMHO, are much more interesting in TSO, because it enforces cooperation.
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In-Depth Sims Online Development Story More

In-Depth Sims Online Development Story

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  • for all of us having to pull the Friday after thanksgiving!
  • I couldn't figure out why they had invented the game. Now I know. Check out the serial killer: http://gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/simsonlin e/wright_hand.html
  • At least TRY ! damnit

    slashdot [slashdot.org]

  • A community like slashdot? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:24AM (#4779442)
    You mean there will be simtrolls?
    The will be sim gnu/hippies?
    sim linux zealots (running simlinux)
    Sim janitors (and their dupes)
    And the abillity to sim-mod simtrolls to -1?
  • So do you have to find the red pill to leave the game?

  • Go outside ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rudy Rodarte ( 597418 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:27AM (#4779451) Homepage Journal
    ..and make some real friends!! Leave these Sims alone.

    Now, excuse me while I go play some Metriod Prime.
    Enters dark room, all alone with only some Diet Rite and some leftover turkey Ahh, sweet sweet bliss.

  • I'm not that interested in an on-line game that limits the types of additions that players can add. It looks like I'm staying with Ancient Anguish [anguish.org] for a while longer.

    • >>It looks like I'm staying with Ancient Anguish >>[anguish.org] for a while longer.

      The trolls will really like this page that describes how to Finger an Ancient Anguish player [anguish.org].

    • Ancient Anguish is 10 years old. Think about it a bit. A 10 year oldtext-only game, that a people still play regularly. How many other games have a staying power like that ? Sure, a text-only game does not look fancy, so you have to use your imagination and visualize your surroundings...but perhaps that is what makes this game so addictive and attractive. (Well, it's not only that, actually - I could list 10-20 reasons why this game lasts while other similar mud-style games that were popular 10 years ago have lost all their players, but well...if you are interested, go find out.)

  • People flow (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    when playing the sims, i find that i spend alot of time 1. designing the house 2. then watching the sims walk around. then repeat steps 1 and 2 again.

    was just wondering whether there is some tool out there that has such simulations of people walking around objects. something like air flow dynamics, except it is people flow.

    c0

  • Just like slashdot?? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How are they gonna simulate repeat stories?
  • Will Wright mentions his desire to see TSO to grow into a community similar to Slashdot's."

    What? A community where everyone goes around saying "IANAL, but "?

    Not sure I want to play this ...

  • All bets are off (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cheekymonkey_68 ( 156096 ) <amcd.webguru@uk@net> on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:41AM (#4779485)
    How long before ..TSO has its 1st divorce in game ...is cited in a real divorce case when the TSO players other half, can't play the latest doom/quake/enter generic fps online, because their missus spends all day gossiping on TSO. .. bill gates, global corporations, the illuminanti, aliens, hyperintelligent mice, the masons etc secretly control the lives of your sims online
    • with apologies for forgetting the newline tags...

      How long before ..

      ... TSO has its 1st divorce in game

      ...is cited in a real divorce case when the TSO players other half, can't play the latest doom/quake/enter generic fps online, because their missus spends all day gossiping on TSO

      ... bill gates, global corporations, the illuminanti, aliens, hyperintelligent mice, the masons etc secretly control the lives of your sims online

  • huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:42AM (#4779486) Journal
    With The Sims Online, Wright believes the community will form in a way similar to the one formed around Slashdot.org, the popular technology news site. "There's no central editor on Slashdot, but it's a collection of readers who have evolved it into a great site for news."


    He must be thinking of Kuro5hin...

    *ducks*

  • TSO Like /.? (Score:4, Funny)

    by E-Rock-23 ( 470500 ) <lostprophytNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:43AM (#4779489) Homepage Journal
    If The Sims Online is going to be anything like Slashdot, it's going to have the following things:

    1. Duplicate Everything.
    2. Cheesey polls with the ever-present CowboyNeal option.
    3. Trolls.
    4. Anonymous Sims who think they're smarter than everyone else, but afraid to reveal their true selves.
    5. CmdrTaco's Anime Hut (to me, that'd be a plus)
    6. A Town Hall where geeks with no lives can bitch about Farscape and Firefly being cancled.
    7. Computers that boot into Linux, run WINE, and then play The Sims Online.
    8. Insert Rip on JonKatz Here.
    9. A graveyard with tombstones that read MINIX, FreeBSD, and other OSs people are fond of calling "dead."
    10. UFOs and subsequent Government Cover-Ups.
    11. A Babylon 5 Shrine.
    12. The city of Torvalds, CA.

    What I'd really like to see in TSO would be a hidden Middle Earth landscape, in which case I'd hustle in and set up shop at either Eisengard or Mordor (preferably Mordor). Sim LotR, Sim Hobbits, Sim Uruk-Hai, Sim Rangers, wouldn't that be grand?
  • Does that mean there will be a Sim Natalie Portman?

  • It would be like your worst nightmare/best dream (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dusabre ( 176445 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:08AM (#4779552) Homepage
    Like Slashdot?

    You mean fractured down opinionated economic, moral and technology fault lines?MS-bashers/Linux-bashers, Linus lovers/Linus haters, ecofreak/technojunkies, libertarians/communists, 'information wants to be free' swappers/ 'theft is theft' moralists and JonKatz fans/foes .

    I can just imagine it, your choice of spouse is decided by the ominous by BSD/Red hat question? Or even worse, Star Trek/Lord of the Rings?

    Or you meet a new neighbour and you wonder whether their game house or the computer that they're running it from is more modded?

    Or that neighbour constantly comes round your house asking if you've heard of a free sofa that is also a fridge and a multimedia centre (must play OGGs) and a PDA. And is a eco friendly. And open-source. Or when they should start teaching their kids how to code, at 2, 3 or in the womb?

    I also wonder how many CowboyNeal based aliases there will be on-line.

    Then again, since it'll be a Windows game, I don't think 'all' the Slashdot community will take it up.

  • Someone explain the point of this game to me (Score:3, Redundant)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:18AM (#4779584)
    A traditional online game has a goals of sorts - to adventure, to kill monsters, to work as a team, to compete against other teams, to acquire wealth and status etc.


    How does the Sims Online correspond to that model? This might seem a jaded view, but it looks from the article as if you build houses and wander around. What else is there to do? Do they expect people to 'make their own fun' so to speak or is there actual advancement and tasks that give a point to the thing?

    • The Sims Online is arguably not even a game, just a large virtual world chat system. Your typical gamer won't "get it", but the public is going to eat it up. EA's got a money printing machine on their hands with this one.
    • To earn money in game your Sim must use "job obects," which are similar to paining with the easel in the off-line version. In practice this results in waiting five to ten minutes for your task to complete, earning about $50 (enough to buy almost nothing) and repeating endlessly, pausing on occasion to eat, shower, etc.

      After "playing" the game long enough you realize that it would be more fun to eat, shower, and paint in real life.
    • It allows someone without a real life to simulate one.
      • ... or in some cases I imagine it will have just as many people whose real lives fall apart because they're neglecting them maintain a virtual life in a virtual world.. Wright says in the article that although he expects to see real world marriages happen due to interactions in the Sims Online world, he expects that real world divorces will happen too.

        Shayne

    • Re:Someone explain the point of this game to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ishark ( 245915 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:38AM (#4779662)
      A traditional online game has a goals of sorts - to adventure, to kill monsters, to work as a team, to compete against other teams, to acquire wealth and status etc.

      I should answer RTFA.... They addressed this problem quite clearly, by dividing the players in different categories which like the game for a specific aspect (building, getting rich, socializing...) and trying to include elements which guarantee long playability for all of them.

      Personally, I'll never play it (I may try if they give out a couple of months and the program for free), and some of the comments on the sims newsgroup are very negative (they say it's boring), but there will be certainly tons of people ready to pay for the game just because it's "The Sims" and probably a fair amount of them will appreciate the "glorified chat room" idea and stick around even at $10/month (which seems to be quite a lot of money to me).

      Beside the nice graphics with the "create your own objects" possibility (which will be added later - and will pose lots of troubles, I think), I don't see any advantage over a good old text MUD.
      • Personally, I'll never play it (I may try if they give out a couple of months and the program for free)

        Does this mean that if TSO is not doing well and needs to register more users we will be inundated with millions of CDs entitled
        "TSO 7.0 - Now Better Than Ever!"

        Shoot me now.
    • This game will be successful for the same reason that TV shows like Big Brother and Survivor are successful: A lot of people's lives are so boring, they want to watch somebody else's life :-)

      But seriously, I think it will be successful because it focuses on the one common denominator of pretty much all successful online games: socialization. The human species is a "flock species", in the sense that we prefer to not be alone. Real life socializing (in all it's forms, hehe) is the world's most popular activity. The same thing goes in the online world. Couple that with the fact that this is a game that everybody (including women) can relate to, as opposed to games like Everquest, and you've got a huge blockbuster.

    • Re:Someone explain the point of this game to me (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lebannen ( 626462 ) <slash@@@irowan...com> on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:49AM (#4779703) Homepage
      Amazing article, it goes in real depth into the thinking of both Will Wright - the game's creator - and The Sims Online.

      The original point of the game was for popularity - you get money based on how many visitors you get to your house, and to this end can start gameshows and the like. This was reflected in the Top 10 list, basically the "high-scorers". But... people, unsurprisingly, figured out the money-making tactics [read the article], opened the appropriate house, and everyone visited to make money. So they split the list into several top 10s... most popular, most romantic, etc.

      This alone provides a never-ending goal to the game, which is what you really need in an online environment. It's like a variant of the Red Queen theory - you're not just up against the game, you're up against everyone else. You have to work to stay at the top... but unlike a levelling game, The Sims Online is far more capricious in that popularity doesn't need a vast amount of experience behind it. Start a fad, and poom - you've got people hearing about it from teir friends, visitng... much like the slashdot effect, but in a game. You're at the top of a list for a week.

      In that way it could be far more rewarding than some other online games, and less hard-to-get-into for late starters. Add to that possible features like electing mayors and the like... wow.

      I never was that interested in the Sims myself, but this is fascinating to me. Most online games atm survive because of their community... the Sims Online makes the community the goal as well as the tool. It's gonna be big, folks.

      As for those calling it sad and to try the real world instead... yeah. That's why you're reading slashdot, right? *ducks* :)

      • Amazing article, it goes in real depth into the thinking of both Will Wright - the game's creator - and The Sims Online.

        Agreed.. I was especially impressed by Wright's sense of responsibility for what he is about to unleash upon the world.. Do you think Steve Case ever stops to feel a twinge of guilt for the divorces AOL has caused, the newbie AOLers who've been credit card defrauded in chat rooms, the children (allegedly) kidnapped and/or molested after meeting someone in an AOL chatroom, etc, etc? Does he feel pride for the relationships AOL has created? Doubtful.. To Steve Case AOL is a means to an end - making money. To Will Wright, TSO is all about creating a safe and fun community - and more than that really, sort of a social experiment.

        I know comparing AOL to TSO isn't really an apples to apples comparison, but for the most part the end goal is the same: to provide a (hopefully safe) online environment in which people interact.

        Shayne

      • This alone provides a never-ending goal to the game, which is what you really need in an online environment. It's like a variant of the Red Queen theory - you're not just up against the game, you're up against everyone else. You have to work to stay at the top... but unlike a levelling game, The Sims Online is far more capricious in that popularity doesn't need a vast amount of experience behind it. Start a fad, and poom - you've got people hearing about it from teir friends, visitng... much like the slashdot effect, but in a game. You're at the top of a list for a week.

        I thought we played that game in the late 90s.. I think we called it "the world wide something something".

        Does this mean that after a couple game years their whole economy will collapse, leaving a few remaining houses? :)
    • A traditional online game has a goals of sorts - to adventure, to kill monsters, to work as a team, to compete against other teams, to acquire wealth and status etc.

      How does the Sims Online correspond to that model?

      When I read the article, it appeared to me that the goal of the game was to encourage players to co-operate with each other. Furthermore, players who creating interesting things would be rewarded with additional resources that would permit them to create more interesting things. To that extent, it fits with the model you have described...

      Another alternative is that MAXIS might view TOS as a zero sum game...

  • There is one thing lacking in these sims... (Score:3, Funny)

    by twoslice ( 457793 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:35AM (#4779645)
    There is no way you can really simulate a bitch slap from your girlfriend 'cause she found out you were screwing her sister...
  • ...I will be hunkered over my Visor playing Sim City Classic [ateliersoftware.com]!

    IMOHO Maxis Jumped the Shark with SimEarth. The original game is still the best!

  • snow crash/metaverse mentioned in the article. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rplacd ( 123904 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:58AM (#4779731) Homepage
    The article mentions that Will Wright has talked stuff over with Neal Stephenson, and that in some ways TSO will be similar to the "Metaverse", as described in Snow Crash. One thing I'd like to see in TSO is the ability for characters to share non-TSO "objects" with other characters. For example, I'd like my character to hand another character a "file" and have a real file transfered from my hard drive to the other character's drive.

    There are a lot of technical issues involved with this sort of stuff -- and some legal ones as well (think MP3s). However, this feature would bring TSO a lot closer to the Metaverse, uh, universe.

  • I really admire these.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NeoCode ( 207863 ) <unnamedplayer AT rogers DOT com> on Friday November 29, 2002 @10:21AM (#4779807)
    stories of the development process. This really gives an in-depth view of the ordeal that the developers go through like the problems they face and the solutions they come up with. Besides being an interesting read, these articles give the players an appreciation of the hard work done by the coders/designers. Geoff has done such Behind The Games [gamespot.com] articles on other games including Black&White. I was so impressed by efforts of the developers and the main designer Peter Molyneux, that although I had a warez copy of the game, I went ahead and bought the game. Being a developer myself, I really wanted to see these guy's hard work pay off.
    Again, thanks to Geoff for bringing these interesting articles to the public without which no one would have had a chance to appreciate the games in a different way.

  • I just wanna add (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @11:30AM (#4780046)
    as a slashdot reader for 3/4 years this would be my first post.I just want to point out how I find it funny how i was nieve to think a cooperation would get in the way of my Daily routins. i'm just going to sum this up by a letter i got. Notice, I'm a Huge FAN that plays sim's online 24 hours. I don't know if i'm part of the demo-graphic, but i'm in utter shock right now. If the Sim's Want to become a community like ours. Then how are we suppose to express our views. Saying nigga'(and yes i added a Hiphin to show he was my friend/bro) is wrong, but NOT ENUF TO GET BANNED OVER. Imagin if EA were to censore flashdot. You'll need a whole new server and enuf space for a huge database. I also wanna point out how limited sim's system fliter yes. We all(seasoned comp freak) what "WTF" stand for, they deem that as unapproit(sp) along with countless other. i'm going to end my rant. TO finish it would take a day or two.

    START

    Hello,

    This letter is to notify you that your account has been temporarily suspended
    for 72 hours for Terms of Service violations.

    Specifically:

    Racial Harassment. nigga' 03:53:08 Master Bishop

    After this suspension, you will be able to rejoin TSO without further
    consequence. However, if you are found to be breaking any of the Terms of
    Service again, your TSO account will be permanently closed.

    Please review the following policies with regards to this issue posted at:

    Terms of Service http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp
    User Agreement: http://player.thesimsonline.ea.com/home/user_agree ment.jsp

    Please take the time to review these documents. Although we would regret the
    closure of your account, we feel that it would be in the best interest of the
    service and community as a whole. This notice serves as your final warning in
    this matter.

    EA.com Customer Relations

    We request that you review our EA.com Terms of Services by going to
    http://www.ea.com and clicking on the "Terms of Service" link at the bottom
    of the page.

    If you have any questions about this, please direct your inquiry to TOS@ea.com .

    end

    this Makes AOL look good.
  • One thing I object to after reading the article. During development, they used the character Daria Morgendorffer to represent the people who enjoy torturing their Sims. I would think that Daria, if she even played The Sims, wouldn't torture her characters. That's what "Black And White" is for. :-) Although every indication of Daria's taste in games in the 5 years of the show's run suggest she's more a First-Person Shooter fan.

    I think "The Sims" and "The Sims Online" are more the province of her sister Quinn, though. Manipulation of people's lives is definitely something she'd dig on. I suspect that the entire Fashion Club (except Tiffany, she's too slow to use a computer) might develop a "TSO" addiction.

    Interestingly enough, there are lots of "Daria"-related skins for "The Sims" floating around the Internet. You can basically replicate Daria's Lawndale house, complete with her family and the plastic replicas of brains, bones and cheese that are in Daria's padded room.
    • While it is true that Daria prefers games like Zombie Fragfest (on CDROM), I think she would give The Sims a try, and she would tiorture her Sims, especially the Sims based on Quinn, Kevin, et al. She probably wouldn't play iit for more than a few weeks, or until she had discovered every possible way of killing off the wee little beasties.
  • This reminds me strangely of the PKD novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Specifically the sims being much like perky pat and her world. If only there was some Cand-E for us to live in our sims world :)

  • Not Refactoring (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From the article:

    Refactoring, a programming term, refers to the process of pulling the game's underlying architecture apart and figuring out the most efficient way to reconnect each individual part.

    That definition is way off. Refactoring is the a process for improving code design by making small incremental changes which are supported by extensive automated testing.

  • Good lord. I used to run a major Simgaming (SimCity, The Sims, etc.) web site (SimEden.com) and we didn't have *nearly* the rate of news posts about a single title as /. has been posting over the last week or so.
  • Next thing you'll know we'll be crying for an open source API, so that we can link in with the game and create our own UI.

    Or maybe a scripting language that allows one to create a program for building a house, rather than saving the house data itself.

    Mmmmm, scripting... (drool)
  • A game where people with no life can createa and control fictional characters with no life either.
  • This is the third Sims Online article I've seen posted to the front-page in recent memory (and I can't remember that for back, trust me, puff puff). Is this really "Stuff that matters" so much as to warrant this much advertising? Most of the posts are people saying the beta sucks, or they won't play it, etc... Why so much free advertising for them, then?
  • From the article: Sculpting the technology [gamespot.com]

    "So Barthelet introduced measurable goals and objectives for each programmer. Everything would be tracked, including the number of lines programmers were writing each day."

    Tracking the lines of code written? Talk about an invitation to bloat! Having been on large commerical software projects before, sitting with other developers reviewing code submissions, I can say that one would get laughed out of the room if they merely wrote with a "number of lines submitted" mentality.

    Unasked-for advice to would-be project managers: It's the quality of the code, not the number of lines it takes to make things happen. Experienced developers know what I'm talking about. Number of features implemented, and number of bugs squished, are far more reliable indicators of ones' contribution.

    "Mongo write 500 lines today! Mongo allocate gigabyte! Memory smoke! Computer crash! Mongo sad!"

  • and I thought the real thing was bad.

    Howlong till the first sim_survivor show that becomes a top story for discussion on slashdot ?

    On the other hand I am a pretty big fan of online gaming ideas. I look forward to the day when someone takes the reality and community building aspects that are so much a part of this game and tie it into an adventure game.

    I'll see your Sim_Middle_Earth and raise you a Sim_Starwars_Galaxy complete with a a Jar Jar Binks to kill whenever you like.
  • Peek on over at tsoj.com [tsoj.com] for a nice, simple slash site for The Sims Online stuff.
  • The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
    which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
    least 5000 years old."

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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