The Sims 2 Designer Diary #2

The Sims took the world by storm when it was first released in 2000. The unusual strategy game, which lets you control the lives of autonomous little computer people called sims, went on to become the best-selling computer game ever, and it also gave rise to a series of successful expansion packs that expanded upon the original game with lots of new household items for your sims' houses, as well as new gameplay options, such as having pets or going on vacation. The Sims 2 will attempt to expand on the original game by letting you build bigger houses, create more-detailed sims, and, most importantly, have sims that grow and change over time--sims that start out as children, mature into adults, get married and have kids of their own, and eventually become senior citizens of SimCity. We caught up with Maxis creative director Charles London for more insight into the development of the upcoming sequel.

Up Close and Personal with The Sims 2

By Charles London
Creative Director

One of the many creative ways to make a memorable character in The Sims 2.

When we set out to make The Sims 2 the greatest game of all time, we knew we had our work cut out for us. After all, we were our own competition. We knew we had to bring every aspect of the game forward to give our players the richest possible experience. The sims had to simply be the most believable, engaging, and truly living characters anyone had ever seen.

Making little people that we big people really believe in is hard. We all instinctively know when something is alive and when it's mechanical, when it's real and when it's fake. The sims had to be as real as possible. To make sure we delivered on the necessary level of realism, we went back to the drawing board. We spent time identifying what it takes at the core to convince players that the little characters they see on the screen have real wants, needs, fears, and tastes. Only then could we count on our players caring about them and wanting to affect their lives for better or worse.

We started by giving the graphics of the sims a complete overhaul. When we made the decision to push The Sims 2 forward into a fully 3D environment, we knew we'd be judged against the other top-flight real-time games out there. Bringing the sims themselves to that level of richness meant driving their complexity beyond the bar set by our competition. In The Sims 2, sims will have a much more-complex skeleton that permits a new level of realistic motion. The old paddle hands have been replaced with articulated fingers, and the rigidity of their faces has been replaced with a capability for animated and communicative expression. Their hair now moves as a result of their motion or the wind, and even their clothing can move independently of their bodies.

Different clothing is just one of the many ways you can create a distinctive-looking sim.

The sims' skin tones have been improved with regard to color richness and material feel, and the clothing they wear has been enhanced with reflection, shininess, and bump maps. Little details are the key to delivering on a goal of richness. We looked for every opportunity to incorporate these details, including actual teeth, variable eye colors, blinking eyelids, and accessories such as jewelry and eyeglasses.

One of the most important goals when shooting for believability in human form is to develop a balance between recognition and uniqueness. When we look at characters in games, we often respond most strongly to those faces that resemble people we know or have seen elsewhere in the world. At the same time, getting someone to truly care about a sim requires the belief that the character is a unique individual. The variety of facial features needed to achieve this went far beyond hand-sculpting each face, as is the norm in the industry. Instead, we delved into the power that real genetics provides by developing a genome for the sims.