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The in-game pizza machine became too popular during the play test. |
"A few weeks ago, we thought we'd have Disney World. But right now, everyone is just making pizza," laments Chris Trottier. It's late October, and while the play test has ballooned to 23,000 players, it seems the majority of the Sim citizens are spending every waking minute using the game's pizza machine. The main reason is that by making pizzas, players can quickly earn money to help build up their homes. But for the design team, the overabundance of pizza machines is problematic. After all, The Sims Online was never supposed to be about power gamers gunning to become billionaires in the world. Instead, the game was designed as a creative playground. "Too many people are chasing money in the game. I'm a bit worried we might start to lose the creative players," Wright says.
The focus on money over creativity is something Wright worried might happen. "We really have two groups in this game," he begins to explain. "There are the hard-core players who want more achievement ladders. Then there are the role-players who are imaginative." In Wright's eyes, the hard-core players are the ones camped out around the pizza machines all day. "The hard part is balancing the game so both kinds of players have a fun experience," he says.
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Programmers work on last-minute changes to The Sims Online. |
To keep the role-players interested in the game, Wright and Trottier decided on an 11th-hour change to the game. In the early play test versions, the "most popular places" list on the main menu displayed the properties that were generating the most money. Obviously, this encouraged players to make their houses into assembly-line-like pizza factories. The new idea was to change the "most popular" map to have 10 different categories of lots, such as the most romantic or the most offbeat. "Instead of valuing money, the 'most romantic' lot might be judged based on the houses that have the most dancing or the most kissing on the lot," says Trottier. By making that change, the team hopes that the pizza machines will stop being the centerpiece of the game.
Then again, even if players were turning the game into one big Domino's Pizza factory, it appeared they were enjoying the experience. Despite all the problems and bugs, 87 percent of the players who signed up for the play test were playing the game at least once every seven days. In other words, players were sticking around to see how the game evolved. The figure was an encouraging sign for the team. All the hard work was beginning to pay off.
As the play test grew, the team knew the game was getting closer and closer to release. Still, there were the inevitable hiccups along the way. On November 2, the team had to make the difficult decision to completely delete and restart Alphaville for technical reasons. All the Alphaville homes were destroyed, and the Sims Online message board was littered with posts from players desperately trying to reconnect with friends. In many ways, it felt like a tornado had passed through the virtual village. But as the project moved into mid-November, it became clear that The Sims Online would likely make its 2002 release date. In a matter of weeks, Will Wright would cut the ribbon on a virtual village that might live on for decades.
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