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Game Informer: Thematically, The Sims 3 is shifting focus from a single household to a whole community. Does that mean players will be managing multiple families simultaneously?
Ben Bell: The focus is still around your one household, like it was in The Sims 2. The key difference is that your household is a new context – your context is now that your household is in a seamless, living neighborhood where all of the sims around you are basically alive all the time. You see folks in one household, and you control their lives, and then you can switch to a different household.

GI: So, like in previous games, you’ll still be able to populate other lots with families you create?
Bell: Exactly. If you want to take all of the characters from, say… what’s you’re favorite TV show?

GI: Um… Let’s say 24 right now.
Bell: Okay, so, if you wanted to put Jack Bauer and all the characters from that show in your neighborhood, you can do that.

GI: With time continuing to pass for all families regardless of the one you’re playing, how are you ensuring that bad things don’t happen to one group while you’re controlling another?
Bell: The example we’ve always is two Sims who started as kids in the game, they knew each other as kids and grew up together. In the Sims 2, one could turn into an adult and the other would stay a kid, and that would be really creepy. In Sims 3, they will age together, so other characters will develop alongside you. To a certain extent, you’re turning over control of the characters you aren’t playing. But what you can do – because we have a segment of our audience that really loves to craft perfectly detailed stories where they control every beat – you can develop families separately and bring them together. Like, you can have two different towns, and you can develop these characters and then bring them together to create a specific situation. It’s just that there are different ways of doing what was possible before, and now you also have the ability to see the whole town develop together.

GI: So, time passes normally, but it isn’t as though huge life events are happening to your sims when you aren’t controlling them?
Bell: No, things will happen to them. The sims will age, and eventually they’ll pass on. They’ll have new families and new generations. So, you’ll definitely see the sims across the street have babies, and they’ll grow into adults and get married and move out. The whole face of the town will change, but you have a great deal of influence over in how you interact with people. If you were trying to tell a story – like you’re dating your neighbor – they’re not going to just disappear on you without you knowing about it and having a logical reason. It’ll be connected to the story of the town.

GI: Let’s say you just take your hands off the controls and watch your sims. What kinds of things govern their behavior? How do they interact and respond to the world?
Bell: We really want the game to be about the story of your sims and you fulfilling your sims’ destinies, so they are actually much more capable of taking care of themselves than they were in the past. In previous games, a lot of the gameplay was about the nuts and bolts of life, and in Sims 3 it’s really about storytelling. If you take your hands off the controls in Sims 3, they’re pretty much going to take care of themselves. They’re going to do that based on their everyday needs, which are just like those of people. They’re going to want to socialize, and they’re going to want to have fun. They’ll go to work on their own. But if you want your sims to get ahead – or if you want to tell a particular story – that’s where you can get involved as a player. You can really drive them forward and fulfill their destiny and take control, and the more devious players will probably create very uncomfortable situations for their sims.

GI: So, if you aren’t controlling them directly, it’s no longer guaranteed that their household will descend into squalor?
Bell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can tell that story if you want to, but you’re going to architect it. You’ll push them towards that. You can take things away from them. You can modify their environment. One of the really cool things you can do now, because of the Trait system, is you can put sims who really shouldn’t be living together in the same household just to see what happens. You can put a good sim with an evil sim to see how they get along. Watch one sim be really nice to the other while he gets tortured. You can put the kleptomaniac sim in the big household and watch him steal from all his roommates. You can have the party animal with the shy and gloomy sim so you have the total Odd Couple situation – where one guy hates being around people and the other guy is constantly throwing parties. In terms of how you can be devious, there are a lot more possibilities, and a lot of them come from the trait system.

GI: There are lots of people out there – and I’m hardly innocent – who like to give their sims a hard time. When developing The Sims, do you take those things into account? Do you intentionally create opportunities for that?
Bell: Yes, absolutely. You know, we’re trying to make a game where people can tell their stories. So, part of the development is having lots of small ideas, but we definitely think about how the ideas cross-pollinate and how some of the parts can be something really special. We thought about all the traits, and thought that every trait that could have a counterpart should so that you have those possibilities, where you can pair sims together that maybe don’t belong to create that powerful storytelling angle.

GI: With Sims 3, you’ve revamped the meters that display a sim’s needs. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Bell: As a player, you’ll be focused on fulfilling your sim’s destiny or driving them towards some sort of bigger goal you’ve chosen. So, we really want the sims’ basic needs to fall into subtext. Your sims are alive. They’re real, living computer people, so we want them to have that depth where they have basic biological needs. But as a player, you don’t need to spend a lot of time or attention on them. The presentation of those needs is greatly simplified. We’re still playing around with a little bit in terms of development and how we represent those needs and motives. And there’s also a new way of understanding what’s going on in your sim’s life, called Moodlets. They are these little emotional states that happen to your sims that you can collect and instigate by interacting with different things in the world. They’ll boost your sim’s mood significantly. Like, if you get a great espresso machine, you can get a Buzz moodlet before you go to work. That’s going to put you in a great mood so you can really kick ass at your job. Similarly, if you’re going out on a date, you can brush your teeth and get a Minty Fresh moodlet. They’re like little status effects on yours sims that represent the texture of life, but they also have a strategic role.

GI: Balancing all eight of those need meters in previous Sims titles constantly gave players something to maintain. Without that kind of plate-spinning, what sort of moment-to-moment guidance will players receive in The Sims 3?
Bell: All of the gameplay is really going to be about you fulfilling your sims’ destinies. So, at the beginning of the game, if you decide to tell the story of a sim who wants to become an astronaut, and you choose traits that align with that ambition, in the game you’re going to have goals that lead you through that plan. We have a goal system called Wishes, which basically gives you short-term objectives that lead you. I think that there is still an element of plate-spinning; in order to push ahead in the system, to really excel at something, you’re going to have to strategize around the needs of your sim. But the long-term goals also require you to reach out into that seamless neighborhood around you and do something. In the case of the sim who wants to be an astronaut, he or she is going to want to join the military career and get ahead, and getting ahead means schmoozing it up with people, and also building skills and all those things that are really a key part of the Sims experiences. There is still that element of strategy, because you still want to have a happy sim who is in a good mood to get ahead in the game, but the focus is on the achievement.

GI: So, in addition to the Traits you’ve mentioned, there are still skills that you get through reading books or practicing oratory?
Bell: Yep. In the Sims 3, we really want each one of those skills to feel like they are unique. You’ll notice that the skill systems are quite different. The way that you get ahead in one skill is going to feel very different from another. They’re really connected that that seamless, living neighborhood. Say you have a sim who wants to become the top chef in the town: You can also use the gardening skill. There are some collection games associated with the gardening skill that enhance it, so you can grow the coolest vegetables and create some kind of new dish that’s never been seen before. Then that will feed into your career system. So, really each one of those skills should feel different from what they were before. Our E3 video showed that one of the careers is music – if you’re in that career, you can take your guitar and head downtown and you can play for tips and to build up skill. There’s a lot different ways to get out there and have that enhance your skills.
GI: Does every career have a kind of recognition like that?
Bell: No, but most careers do. Some of the don’t, because it just doesn’t fit fictionally. Like, the guy in the business career…he gets some cool outfits and cars and stuff, but he doesn’t get the salute thing.

GI: You mentioned Wishes a little bit ago. Is this the system that replaces the Wants and Fears from Sims 2?
Bell: Yeah, there are a lot of parallels. Your sims have these wishes to do things in life, and you can promise to fulfill their wish. Their wishes are sort of aligned around your sim’s life goal, and your traits. So, a sim whose dreams of becoming and astronaut is going to have wishes to join the military career, build up their athletics skill, and everything they’re going to need to get to that point in life where they can become an astronaut.

GI: Can you provide an estimate of how often players will be confronted with these wishes? Are they just a few times in the sim’s life, or is it more of a daily thing?
Bell: It’s really an everyday thing. Our ambition for the Sims 3 is to make the gameplay quick and rewarding, so every game session you feel like you’re getting something big done – like you’re moving the story of your character’s life forward. So, you’re going to get wishes pretty frequently. Probably a few times in every half-hour game session you’ll get new wishes. And they range in size. Some of them are really big ambitions and some are smaller things – like you have a new neighbor and you want to go meet them.

GI: It sounds like the main difference between Wishes and the Fears and Wants from Sims 2 is that you choose whether or not to participate in Wishes. Is that correct?
Bell: Yeah, you choose which ones you want to pursue, and there’s a big variety of them. And you can really guide your story by choosing different kinds of wishes.

GI: Can you talk a little more about jobs and how they function in Sims 3?
Bell: Sure. Let’s take the example of being a musician – let’s say that I want my sim to become a rock star, so I pursue the musician career. There are skills associated with that – obviously, playing guitar is going to be a big skill – so I’m going to go the theater and sign my sim up for a job as a roadie, and that’s the beginning of the career track. As I build skills and meet new people, I’ll have opportunities to get ahead in the career, but along the way, I’ll get small goals that give me a chance to move my career forward. An example would be, “go play in the park for an audience of people.” If I do that, it’s going to give me a boost to my career. Another thing would be “throw a party for your co-workers,” so your career actually starts to create new kinds of goals for you. It lets you get ahead in your career outside of the workplace. In the previous Sims games, each career progressed in a very similar fashion, and now we really have a lot of unique goals…and they also get you out in that neighborhood where you can meet the people around you. Really, I think that’s where a lot of the fun of the game comes from, is playing with the social system and seeing how all of the traits interact with each other.

GI: So the job system isn’t limited to your Sim just going to work for eight hours each day?
Bell: Exactly. When you go to work, you can sort of choose how you want to work and how you want to spend your day. We really want to make you feel like you can drive your career forward how you’d like. So, you can choose to spend your day – if you’re the musician, for instance – goofing off with your co-workers. You can choose to stay late – we call these “work tones,” and for every career there’s a kind of tone you can choose. So, your sim might come home really stressed out, but they’ve gotten a big boost in their career, and they’re going to get promoted faster. Or they will have made a lot of new friends at the office, so you have a bigger social network to lean into. So, you can control how they are when they are at work, and you have these career opportunities that you can pursue.

GI: Do these other options come up as prompts?
Bell: Yes. We decided not to do the whole “in the office” thing, just because it felt a little too much like Office Space or something. What we wanted to do with the career system was to think about what would be really cool if you were in these careers. As a musician, it would be fun to go rock out in the park. If I were a rock star, that’s the kind of thing I would want to do. We try to represent that in the careers.

GI: For someone who played the previous Sims, who is already familiar with the gameplay within the house, what sort of incentives are in the Sims 3 to get those players outdoors and exploring the new neighborhood?
Bell: For me, the biggest incentive is just seeing all of the activity going on in the neighborhood. It really adds a completely new dimension to the game. When you’re looking out of your sim’s house, you’re going to see people out and about in the town. You’re going to see people hanging out, going fishing, grilling in the park, playing catch, and hanging out in the café. There’s a whole living neighborhood for you to dive into and explore. From a gameplay mechanic standpoint, it’s the Sims Wishes that are bringing them out into the environment, because every sim does have a lifetime wish – one big thing they want to achieve in life. So, whatever that is, a lot of those smaller steps toward that wish involve them getting out there. If it’s a career wish, obviously, they need to get out there and get a job. To get ahead, they’re going to need to know people, have friends, and get skills. So, if you’re in the military career or an athlete, you can go to the gym and work out and get some bonuses for that. There are gameplay mechanics that draw you out there, but for me, it’s just the exploration. There’s so much out there to see in the environment.

GI: Will players have any control over the layout or visual style of their community?
Bell: For the community itself, you can edit every house. It’s a much bigger town than we’ve ever created before, and you can absolutely edit every house and every lot. To a certain extent, you can edit the layout of the buildings in the town, but in terms of custom town content and things like that, we just aren’t ready to talk about that strategy yet.

GI: Are there any changes to the way the conversation system will work?
Bell: What we wanted to do with the conversations is present you with fewer specific choices at any given point in time kind of let you guide the conversation by feeling. So we have this notion that conversations have different tones. You can have a conversation that has a romantic or flirty tone versus a conversation that is funny and joking. At the beginning of a conversation you choose which way you want it to go, and that will sort of cascade into options that fall into the direction you’re trying to push the conversation. There’s a lot more social feedback, too, so you can sort of see what a person is thinking about you in plain language. If you’re trying to be flirty with someone and you move too fast, you can see that they think you’re creepy. And then the social system lets you back out of those situations, too. It gives you kind of a do-over, so anytime you get into one of those awkward moments – say you’ve told a joke and they don’t think you’re funny at all – you can apologize for it. We think it’s a more powerful storytelling tool, and it helps you understand what’s happening more than before. For some people, the socializing gameplay felt a bit mysterious.

GI: It sounds like there’s a ton of content in The Sims 3. When developing a game like this, especially one in a series with such a tradition of expansion packs, how do you decide which features to include in the base games and which ones to hold off on?
Bell: Well, we’re definitely not talking about expansion packs or anything like that today, but in terms of what we’re including in The Sims 3, that’s a good question. We had some ambitions for the game that were based on experiences we wanted to have in The Sims and The Sims 2, but couldn’t have. At the time we developed those games, we didn’t have the same technology. expertise, and creative background that we do now. All of the things that we chose are in there because we played the games that came before and decided we wanted something new that was missing from the experience. The seamless neighborhood, in the Sims 2, that was the biggest thing missing. There’s this town around you, and people out there, but you can’t get to them. You can’t see their lives and what the community is like – it’s like this half of the sims lives is missing, and that’s what we wanted to add. We picked all of things that we’d need to make that complete – locations, public venues, places to work, cool things to see, everything you’d want to do on a weekend day – and then added a few things to spice that up and make things funny.

GI: With a more active and open world, do you think the Sims 3 will maintain the series traditionally modest system requirements?
Bell: Yeah, absolutely. We’re not talking specifically about our system specs, but The Sims is a mainstream game, so it’s really mission critical for us to have mainstream system requirements. I don’t know how they do it [laughs], but the engineers are making it work.


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Creds go to IggyJD03 on the SnootySims forums, 'cause that is where I found it.

yeah and IggyJD03 on the SnootySims forums is where I first read this from today.

A lot of good information...I enjoyed reading a good amount of it. But i do wish there were some other question ask?..but still gewd.

That was totally awesome!!!!
I like the way people will be fishing,grilling,being at the cafe ect.

Loved the article, it broke down a lot of things I wanted explanations for. Great find!

Thanks!

At last an article that takes time to read AND has a lot of info...and more new info than expected.

A great find I must agree. {yes}

Thanks, Cassie! Its got some new info. Its too big lol I just printed it out and read it infront of the TV

{clap} yea!!! and Oct will be here in a couple of days.. we also have new stuffto look forward to from Sims 3 website!!

Tomorrow is the first of Oct yay!

wait what happens in october?? and thanks cassie that was an awesome read =] im so excited.