The Sims Online Preview

The Sims has seen so much popularity since it first shipped two years ago that Maxis has released three different expansion packs for the game and is currently putting the finishing touches on a fourth. All of these add-ons let you and your sims perform functions that weren't possible in the original game, and most of these new features arose from feedback Maxis received from fans. Ask any Sims fan today what feature is still missing from the core game, and more often than not, he or she will tell you that it's the ability to interact with other sims online. With that in mind, Maxis set out to transform its popular single-player "life simulator" into a multiplayer social game--as if The Sims weren't popular enough--and the end result is (or will be) The Sims Online.

Unlike previous Sims games, The Sims Online isn't an expansion pack; it's an entirely separate game from The Sims, though you probably already knew that. In fact, you can probably take a good guess at a lot of the features that'll be found in the game, because the name "The Sims Online" is as self-explanatory as game titles get--it's The Sims, only online. But the game has many details that you're probably not aware of. How exactly does it play? What can sims do differently online that they couldn't do in the original game? Is the game massively multiplayer or is its online component a secondary feature? We recently dropped by the Maxis offices to get answers to these questions, and after a few hours with The Sims Online, we can say with certainty that fans of the series will be in for a big treat once this game ships.

It's obvious that the designers at Maxis are aiming to make The Sims Online a means by which people can meet and interact with each other within a chat room-like setting. As you'll see, everything in the game revolves around getting players together with other players, but to call The Sims Online a glorified chat room would be woefully inaccurate. The core gameplay elements of The Sims are all intact, and you'll still have to strike a balance between having fun with house decoration and maintaining your sims' many needs and skills, but Maxis is making several tweaks and including some new mechanics to make The Sims' formula play well online. Still, don't expect this to be EverQuest in SimCity. "The average EverQuest or Ultima Online player probably won't be very enthused with The Sims Online because, frankly, it isn't that deep," explains Gordon Walton, vice president of Maxis and the game's executive producer, who, having worked on Origin's Ultima Online and Kesmai's Air Warrior, has intimate knowledge of massively multiplayer games. "This won't be a game that needs to be played 20 hours per week, although players certainly can if they want to." Maxis is keen on allowing players to circumvent the endless treadmill trudge that's associated with leveling up or questing in typical massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Ultimately, The Sims Online will be driven by social mechanics, not gameplay mechanics--the game will be what you make it.

Like most online games, the first thing you'll do when you start The Sims Online is choose your avatar, which, naturally, will be a sim. Every sim that you'll run into in the game will be an actual human player--there are no nonplayer characters in The Sims Online. After that's done, you'll need to decide on a city to live in. Maxis hopes to have about 20 different cities in the game, each of which will have unique geographical features--some might be mountainous, while others will stretch across a sandy coastline. Once you've made your choice, you'll need to decide where to build your house. You can build your lot anywhere...well, almost anywhere. Player-owned homes will appear as white dots on the overhead map of the city, and you obviously won't be able to build your home on those lots.

You'll be able to place your house anywhere on this map, though as you'll see on the next page, you're better off placing it near areas that are highly trafficked.

It's all About the Simoleons

At the beginning of the game, every player will start off with enough money to build a small house, although choosing to be homeless will actually be an option. Over time, you'll be able to save up enough money to upgrade to a larger house, but if you want the quick and easy route to riches, you can partner up with several other players, become roommates, and buy a large house together. Interestingly enough, the primary way to generate income in The Sims Online is by holding an open house. How does that work in practice? Well, as mentioned earlier, your sim will have the same set of skills and needs as in The Sims, but some of the skills that involve interaction with others will generate income as they increase. So having visiting hours for other players to drop by your home and check out your interior-decoration skills will automatically add money to your simoleon coffers. You can also supplement your income by imposing a cover charge if you feel that your house is worth it, though this could conversely hurt your wallet by alienating your would-be visitors.

If you don't feel comfortable letting strangers be witness to all aspects of your private life, you can set private areas within your house that outsiders can't pass through. You can also set combinations or passwords on doors for your roommates and close friends, and you can even set a filter on your house that will limit who can and can't enter--think of this like the invite/ignore functionality of ICQ. But you have to be online to hold an open house, since your home will be inaccessible to others while you're logged off. That means the longer you're online, the longer you can keep your house open, and the longer you can entertain your guests and generate more money, which doesn't keep with Maxis' desire to make The Sims Online the type of game that you can play for five minutes at a time. With that in mind, the game will have other means for your sim to make money, one of which is to appear on one of the many top-10 and top-100 lists in The Sims Online.

What top-10 lists? The Sims Online will have numerous lists that contain things like the largest 10 houses in any given city or a list of the top-100 richest players or the most visited homes within a neighborhood. These lists are dynamically generated, and they'll include a variety of categories diverse enough to put David Letterman to shame. Simply making it onto any one of these lists--or several at a time--will get you some money. Additionally, The Sims Online will also have what the designers are referring to as the "Maxis Recommends" list. "This list is custom-tailored to each individual player," says Walton. "The game will actually watch what you do on a day-by-day basis and then recommend things to do or places to visit based on your actions." It's akin to what Amazon.com does--look up a book by Clancy, and the site will recommend other works about the military.

These lists serve another purpose, and that's to facilitate your seeking out and making new friends within the game. Who doesn't want to be friends with the richest sim or the sim with the biggest home? The Sims Online will have a friends list, much like AOL's buddy list, that can hold up to 500 friends. This is displayed through a branching web that can be expanded to include friends of friends and so on. "We want everyone in the game to be interconnected somehow," Walton says jokingly. "You know, kind of like six degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon." Each friend in your web will have his or her own profile window that contains that person's interests, any lists that he or she appears on, where in the city that person currently is, where that person's house is located, as well as other vital information. From here, you'll be able to send that person a message as well.

But The Sims Online won't be all friends and sunshine, though.

Simz N the Hood

The friendship web functionality can also be used to keep track of your bitter enemies. Since The Sims Online is an online game, you can count on some people to act like, well, morons. To that end, you can list others as your enemies, and they'd be prohibited from pestering you anymore. Gordon Walton elaborates: "We're definitely not interested in introducing anti-social behavior into the game. People will find ways to be anti-social enough on their own." That means there will be no stealing, no break-ins, and no violence of any kind in the game. Realistically, you'll probably never run into problematic sims, especially considering that the game is meant to get likeminded people together--there's safety in numbers...not that there's any danger in the game. Still, you can group together with other players by forming clubs, which are based on affinity (like a Star Wars club) or neighborhoods, which are based on location. Maxis expects many themed neighborhoods to pop up in each city, as well as several exclusive suburbs. In fact, the better that your neighborhood is developed, the higher your house's value will climb.

As you'd expect, The Sims Online will have all of the objects from The Sims and its four expansion packs, as well as around 300 brand new objects, some of which can be used to build and initiate mini-games like human chess, croquet, soccer, and volleyball. Also included in the game will be several new design motifs like the Old West, European, and Moroccan. Additionally, a lot of the characteristics of several old objects are being changed in The Sims Online. When you pick up the telephone, for example, it will open up your friends (contact) list. Naturally, the game will have trading windows so that you can exchange objects with others securely. Interestingly, there will be a recurring tax in The Sims Online, and if you have any kind of holdings, you will be taxed. "We want players who acquire a lot of stuff to feel some kind of friction against buying mindlessly," explains Walton. "Taxes will be frequent, but we haven't decided on exactly how frequent just yet."

Speaking of recurring costs, The Sims Online will be a subscription-based game that'll be offered through Electronic Arts' EA.com program. And even though the specific monthly fee has yet to be announced, it's pretty safe to assume that it'll be comparable to other MMORPGs. Like other companies have done with their popular online games, Maxis will continue to support and introduce new content into The Sims Online well after launch. Currently, the company plans to allow user-created skins, walls, and other objects some time after the game's initial release, though the details of this feature still aren't finalized yet, and since it won't be available until after The Sims Online ships, the details probably won't be finalized for some time. How many servers should allow user-created objects? How do you filter out possible inappropriate content? These are the types of questions that face the designers. Other future plans include the ability for players to receive messages from friends who aren't currently in the game. To do this, Maxis plans on setting up a personal Web site that you can log onto from any computer terminal, check to see which of your friends are currently playing, and send them instant messages. The designers are also fiddling around with the idea of implementing an "eye in the sky" mode wherein players can keep track of anybody's day-to-day activities. The idea would be for users to create their own Big Brother shows or The Truman Show movies. "We anticipate players will create their own personal Survivor shows, where one sim will get voted off the house every week," explains Walton, who expects the audiences for these kinds of in-game events to reach a respectable size.

But first things first. Maxis is very aware of the technological hurdles that other online games have faced in the past, and before any of these features can be implemented, the developers have to ensure that The Sims Online has a successful launch. "We're ready for launch; we have to be. Our audience will not suffer for entertainment like the hard-core EverQuest gamers do," asserts Walton. That means that The Sims Online will have to be completely playable out of the box--no patches, no downloads, no downtime. To get to that point, the game will have to go through several stages of beta testing, and Walton foresees the tester base reaching 50,000 users before The Sims Online can be deemed ready for public consumption. The game is still months away from beta, but it's still very much on track for release in the second half of 2002. Beyond that, Maxis isn't specifying a release date because, according to Walton, The Sims Online "won't ship until we're ready."

"We fully believe that this could be a million-user game," concludes Walton. This would put the subscriber base of Ultima Online and EverQuest to shame. Judging from The Sims' already overwhelming popularity, and Maxis' commitment to ensuring a smooth launch, we don't doubt that statement in the least.