The Sims 2 Designer Diary #10 - Wrap-up and Outtakes

See what happens when children attack in The Sims 2. Click "Stream For Free" for higher resolution.

By now, Maxis' incredibly popular PC game The Sims has made a name for itself. Aside from being what is reportedly the most successful computer game of all time, it has also garnered legions of fans that have played through the game and its expansion packs, and are now eagerly awaiting the sequel. The Sims 2, by all indications, will take everything that was great about the original game--like creating an autonomous family of little computer people, building them an ornate house, and letting them run wild-- and crank it up a notch or two. The game's development is finally complete, and no one could be happier than the development team at Maxis, which has taken a bit of extra time to reflect on the final game and share some humorous outtakes that were cut at the last minute. PLEASE NOTE: None of the following outtakes will appear in, or are representative of, the final game.

Zany Outtakes from the Cutting Room Floor

By Lucy Bradshaw
VP, PC Development, Maxis

The Sims 2's development is finally complete, and we're glad we had the chance to use these developer diaries to share our thoughts on the features, gameplay, and technology in The Sims 2. Different team members and I have shared how we've gone about putting the game together, what our goals were, and how we realized them along with producing screenshots and movies to show you these features in the game. For this designer diary, I thought I'd have a little fun and expose some items that will NOT be features of The Sims 2, when it ships.

It's The Sims 2 blooper reel! Yup, I'm going to expose the ugly underbelly of game development. The daily process of finding the "Wait, this is broken? It was working yesterday, but now it's doing what? But I have to show this to the press!" bugs that we've encountered during development of the game--bugs that we, of course, entirely eradicate before we ship (because we have an awesome QA team that pounds away on the game and a fantastic team of artists, engineers, and producers who diligently take on every bug that dares to pop up).

OK, that's the set up, so you really, really, really need to understand that what you are about to see is NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SHIPPING PRODUCT (and that is my disclaimer). The screenshots and movies included in this diary are not all prettied up...they were taken by any individual on the team and collected over time. Truth be told, there has been some really funny bugs that we've seen in our game over time, and, while it is very possible that we are just too close to it all, or that we were up too late crunching on a demo, a milestone, or that The Urbz team and The Sims 2 team were in a senseless competition for whose bugs were the silliest, we found these to be worth sharing with you and poking a little fun at ourselves and our Sims. Here's our antidiary of the making of The Sims 2.

This first series shows what can happen when sims get a little confused about what object does what...

And sometimes our sims know no boundaries....

And there were some days that we would find things showing up where they were not expected.

Sometimes we even found the effects that we put over a sim's head, such as hearts and things like the swim bubbles when they swim, would get "misplaced." These screenshots were taken as we were preparing to show the game at E3. There we were, the night before we had people heading down to Los Angeles, and we were playing through what we would be showing off. Well, here's what happened, needless to say, we had to fix these before the show.

We've also had our share of issues with sims getting "tweaked." Some of these are things that have happened when we load a particular Sim and find a "surprise" waiting for us. But these blooper reel movies come from the mind of one of our object engineers, who decided that our sims needed to be a little bit taller and a little more "flexible" (you'll see what I mean in the movies).

Meditation requires incredible flexibility.

Tall, dark, and handsome.

And then there are some that just seemed funny in and of themselves...

Well, that should give you a little inside look at what life has been like for the individuals on The Sims 2 team over the past couple of years. We've had a blast making this game, and we hope you all have as much fun playing it. (In the meantime, check GameSpot's media page for The Sims 2 for more blooper reel outtakes!)