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GameSpot's SIMply Divine: The Story of Maxis Software


	Part 1: It's a Playground • The Idea • Success Begets Success • The Inevitable Follow-Up Part 2: Raining on the Parade • Into the Abyss • But It's 3D! Part 3: The Saving Grace • A New Focus, A New Mission • Third Time's Still A Charm? Part 4: A New Dollhouse • And the New Dolls... • Into Outer Space • A Positive Prognosis

Into the Abyss
"We were forced into a lot of short-term decisions," says Wright. "The quarterly calls were what the company planned most of its decisions around." The predicament was especially troubling for Wright, who had finally decided on his next project: SimCopter, an innovative game that would let players a pilot Schwitzer 300 chopper through cities they had created in SimCity 2000, putting out fires and quelling riots. Though the concept was sound, there was an element of time pressure and lack of resources associated with the project that Wright didn't expect.

Will Wright's SimCopter was his next project, letting users fly through their SimCities in real-time 3D.

Things came to a head when Maxis developers were given a mandate by management: You must ship four games by the end of 1996. The goal seemed completely unrealistic, especially to Wright. "To start off with, I didn't [even] have the resources I needed to do SimCopter!" But the company spread those limited resources across the four "must-launch" games: SimTunes, SimCopter, SimPark, and Full Tilt Pinball.

Maxis' SimPark had to ship in 1996 according to management.

Somehow, Christmas 1996 came around, and Maxis did manage to ship all four games... or at least something resembling them. But no one was very happy about meeting the deadline, as corners were cut on all the projects. Wright was the most disappointed of all. "The low point for me was releasing SimCopter when we did," he says. "The gameplay was developing nicely, but we just had to ship it too soon."

"My random-number generator didn't work as I'd planned."

A Maxis programmer admitting that his hidden feature in SimCopter appeared far too frequently.

Indeed, SimCopter was shipped too soon, and as a result, it launched with one of the most controversial bugs in gaming history. A homosexual programmer at Maxis objected to the use of female characters as objects of affection in SimCopter. So, he decided to protest by putting what he termed "muscle boys in swim trunks" into the game. During the game, these characters would mysteriously appear and kiss each other, but only on very rare occasions. At least, that was the idea. Unfortunately, as the programmer told Wired magazine in 1996, "My random-number generator didn't work as I'd planned," and the characters appeared with startling regularity. Upon discovery of the errant code, the programmer was immediately fired, but the transgression spoke volumes about the frenetic and fragmented state of affairs at Maxis.

Morale was at an all-time low. And unfortunately, in 1997, things would only get worse.

Next: But It's 3D!