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The history of The Sims reveals a revolutionary game that was doubted time and again. People called it "the toilet game," and it might not have taken off so quickly without a pivotal kiss.
The Sims took the mundane activities of life and turned them into an addictive experience that changed gaming forever.
Erin breaks down the history of The Sims in this episode of Throwback, from SimAnt to SimCity and everything in between.
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0:00
In the year 2000, kids could do chores and frustrate their parents at the same time
0:04
An addictive video game called The Sims made it possible. Washing digital dishes and mowing pixelated lawns might not seem like the way to create
0:11
a pop culture sensation, but creator Will Wright didn't do things in a conventional way
0:16
This is a man who once won a cross-country car race by donning night vision goggles and
0:20
turning his headlights off so no cops would notice he was driving over 100 miles an hour
0:23
The Sims is one of the most successful video game franchises ever made, but its road to
0:28
PC popularity was as unconventional as its creator. It includes digital ant farms, a brief
0:33
period when it was known as the toilet game, and a real-world house fire that would prove
0:37
pivotal in The Sims' quest to redefine what gaming could be. It's all next on this installment
0:42
of Throwback. Growing up in Atlanta, Will Wright dreamed of becoming an astronaut. He didn't just want
0:52
to suit up for NASA, though. He wanted to colonize outer space to relieve overpopulation
0:57
problems on Earth. He was also fascinated by architecture and engineering. Wright started
1:02
attending Louisiana State University at the age of 16, transferred to Louisiana Tech, dropped out
1:07
and eventually studied robotics at the New School in Manhattan. He entered robot fighting tournaments
1:11
and won by having his robot wrap the other combatants in gauze, rendering them immobile
1:16
A clever strategy, but one also quickly banned in the competition. Coupled with his knowledge of
1:20
economics and military history, Wright's eclectic background was laying the groundwork for a singular
1:24
career in gaming. After getting married and moving to Oakland, California, Wright decided to try his
1:29
hand at programming a game on his Commodore 64. The result was Raid on Bungling Bay
1:34
a helicopter simulation that tasked players with destroying enemy strongholds on an island
1:38
It was a big hit, selling well in the PC gaming market and even moving over 1 million Nintendo
1:43
Entertainment System cartridges, mostly in Japan. It was while programming all this mayhem that
1:47
Wright discovered something about himself. While the airborne attacks were fun, he was much more
1:52
interested in writing the code for the buildings that players would destroy. That got him thinking about a simulator that would allow users to erect buildings and then
2:00
entire cities, acting as a kind of virtual urban planner. Wright was inspired by works like Urban
2:04
Dynamics, a 1969 book by MIT professor Jay Wright Forrester, that argued urban development would be
2:10
better suited for artificial intelligence than humans, so it wouldn't be compromised by intuitive
2:14
biases. The game, which Wright called SimCity, allowed players to build roads, erect schools
2:19
and fret over crime rates. They could adjust over 100 variables, but those adjustments would each
2:24
have a consequence. If you had a rise in crime, for example, your population would go down
2:29
Occasionally, an unforeseen occurrence like an earthquake or meteorite shower disrupted things
2:34
Wright took the idea to Broderbind, the company that had released Raid on Bungling Bay
2:38
but they weren't interested. They wanted to market games that people could win, games that featured helicopters launching missiles. Fortunately, Wright had a chance
2:45
encounter in 1987 with Jeff Braun, an entrepreneur who made font software and wanted to get into
2:51
the video game industry. While at a pizza party thrown by a mutual friend, Wright and Braun hit it off, and later
2:56
co-founded the Maxis Software Company, which released SimCity in 1989. The game was a slow seller at first
3:03
For months, Wright was reportedly doing all the tech support out of Braun's apartment
3:07
but the game started picking up steam, thanks to word of mouth, and in June of that year
3:10
it was featured in the New York Times, with professors of urban planning praising the game and pledging to introduce it to their classrooms
3:16
By 1992 it had sold an estimated 1 million copies, and was the vanguard of an entirely
3:21
new genre of computer game, designed around building something rather than destruction
3:25
or battle. As successful as SimCity was though it was Wright next project that would make him a gaming celebrity But in order for that to happen his house apparently had to burn down
3:39
SimCity resulted in a number of spin-off titles for Maxis, including SimAnt, which allowed
3:43
players to oversee a prospering ant colony in a residential backyard. I played SimAnt at my friend Melissa's house when we were like eight, along with another
3:50
game called Life and Death 2 The Brain, where you would diagnose brain injuries and simulate
3:55
brain surgery. I was obviously a cool kid. Life and Death 2 taught me that you should never put someone with a pacemaker in an MRI
4:02
which is an important lesson for preteens. Today you can play both SimMan and Life and Death 2 the brain in an internet browser
4:09
And through hours of what I'm gonna call research, I've discovered that I'm not any better at being an ant or a brain surgeon now than I was when I was 8
4:15
Anyway, while Wright was designing SimAnt, he was somewhat amused to realize that the
4:19
game's ants were seemingly smarter than the lumbering humans, who sometimes threatened
4:23
to step on them. got Wright thinking about artificial intelligence in games and how far it could really go
4:28
At the same time, Wright was also tinkering with a concept he named Dollhouse. As you might
4:32
expect, it revolved around building a domestic existence with virtual occupants. If SimCity
4:37
was about citywide planning, Dollhouse narrowed the scope even further, to a single residence
4:42
Then disaster struck. Wright woke up one morning in 1991 to the smell of smoke and an encroaching
4:48
wildfire near his home in Oakland. Gathering his wife and a few neighbors his daughter
4:52
was visiting a friend, Wright fled the scene, driving through the spreading flames. When he
4:57
returned a few days later, his house was destroyed. His other car was just a puddle of melted metal
5:03
There were two bright spots in this stressful event. For one thing, Wright had taken his code
5:07
for Saman out of his house and into his office two weeks earlier, saving that game from destruction
5:12
More importantly, as he began purchasing new household goods like dishes and furniture
5:16
he started thinking about the concept of material goods and property and how they related to a person's happiness. Losing so many possessions made him realize what he valued most
5:24
relationships. Maybe the dollhouse game could be made better if the people inside of it became the
5:29
focus, rather than the buildings themselves. How a player designed their environment and
5:33
nourished their social interactions would determine their satisfaction. These are principles Wright got from works like A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa
5:42
and Murray Silverstein, which argued that certain patterns can create satisfying living spaces
5:47
Wright also drew from psychological research that stated physiological needs were less important than things like safety, love, and self-esteem
5:54
He actually intended the game on one level to be a satirical take on consumerism
5:59
As time went on, Wright continued to build out his world. The virtual people dubbed Sims would be able to spend currency called simoleons
6:06
and their purchases would have a material effect on their happiness. If they got a cheap mattress, for example, they might not have much comfort or energy
6:13
But if they sprung for an expensive bed, their quality of life would improve
6:18
It sounded like another hit for both Wright and his Sim franchise. Even better, he co-owned a software company, so distribution wouldn't be a problem
6:26
But as we've learned, the genius of Will Wright is not always easy to communicate
6:30
Not long after he pitched the idea to the executives at Maxis, his dollhouse game got a new title, The Toilet Game
6:40
Wright may have been a co-founder of Maxis, but he still had to convince his colleagues that a game in which players bought spoons
6:46
and hung out in their homes was a good idea. It was a hard sell, even for a company whose
6:51
flagship title involved laying water pipe and dealing with zoning issues. The game quickly
6:55
became known as the One Max property where players would be expected to clean toilets Aside from that executives were afraid a virtual dollhouse wouldn appeal to what they perceived as a male video game audience Wright pressed on When focus groups arranged by Maxis also vetoed the idea he focused on projects like SimCity 2000 In 1996 however
7:13
Wright decided to enlist a programmer to work on the dollhouse game covertly. While he continued
7:18
his SimCity spinoffs like SimGolf and SimIsle, Wright never stopped pursuing what would soon
7:23
be referred to as The Sims. His big break came in 1997, when Maxis was purchased by video game giant
7:29
Electronic Arts. EA was a powerhouse, thanks to their sports titles, including the Madden NFL
7:34
franchise. Despite their reputation for action games, EA was more receptive to The Sims and gave
7:39
Wright permission to continue working on it. The Sims flourished at the developmental level. Wright
7:43
assigned a number of key traits like hunger, hygiene, and even bladder relief that would be
7:47
factored into how happy a Sim could be. While commerce was important and Sims should work for
7:51
their money, Wright also liked subverting the commerce-driven nature of the game by building
7:55
in cheat codes that granted the player thousands of free simoleons. Wright also wanted his sims to
8:00
converse with one another. Originally, they were going to speak a language that would be unfamiliar
8:04
to most players, like Navajo or Ukrainian. But when audio engineers recruited actors from the
8:09
Bay Area to record the dialogue, they had trouble getting through the unfamiliar words. Instead
8:14
the actors who had an improv background suggested an improv exercise where they
8:18
they used nonsensical words to tell a coherent story. The resulting babble became known as Simlish
8:24
It has a number of word-for-word translations. Sol Sol means hello, for example
8:28
but it's largely gibberish. Simlish later became so popular that musicians like Katy Perry and the Black Eyed Peas
8:34
re-recorded some of their hits in the language. Not all language in The Sims is total nonsense
8:44
Play the game long enough and you'll be able to pick up on a few recurring words. Nubu means baby
8:49
Badish or vadish means thanks. Blursh means get out of my way
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Dubizeshen means detonation. Awasapoa means I'm bored. Minicule means cat. Let's try it
9:02
Blursh, Awasapoa and I want to dubizeshen my minicule. See, it's easy
9:12
Wright spent years developing and refining The Sims to be as immersive as possible
9:16
with many of the activities available in real life available to his Sims. But the game's programmers were still hounded by rumors that Maxis and Electronic Arts could kill it at any time
9:25
The Sin City franchise was so successful that they worried the so-called toilet game could damage its reputation
9:31
It would take an unlikely expression of affection during an electronics convention to allow the Sims to move full speed ahead
9:38
When it came time to showcase the game during the 1999 Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Los Angeles, California
9:45
Electronic Arts didn't offer much support. Amid all the pageantry of the convention
9:50
The Sims was tucked into a small booth and hardly registered with those in attendance
9:54
That changed with The Kiss. Some background. When Wright was developing the game
9:59
there was a lot of internal discussion at Maxis over whether it should depict same-sex relationships
10:03
Sims could date and show affection, and even get married. But LGBTQ advocacy had not yet reached
10:08
the video game industry at large. In fact, Maxis had received some unwanted attention
10:13
after firing a gay programmer in 1996. The man had inserted some scantily clad, studly guys into SimCopter without authorization
10:21
leading to his termination and speculation in some corners that Maxis was an anti-gay company
10:26
When it came to The Sims the company didn want to provide fodder to its critics and there was concern that gay characters might draw criticism from politicians or other watchdog groups and so the decision was made to leave it out of the game code Then something unexpected happened A programmer named Patrick J Barrett III was asked to work on some coding related to
10:43
the game's social interactions, essentially the rules for its artificial intelligence. By this time, Maxis had decided not to pursue same-sex relationships in The Sims, but the
10:52
document Barrett was given was an old version. So he went to work, not realizing the guidelines he had been given were out of date
10:58
A short time later, Barrett was told to prepare three scenes from the game to display at E3
11:03
These sequences would be pre-planned, meaning the game would run them independently of any player
11:08
One scene consisted of a wedding between two straight sims. There were so many attendees at the wedding that programmers didn't have time to prescribe
11:15
every background character's actions, including two female sims seated next to one another
11:20
In front of a gathering crowd at E3, these digital women decided, via the game's artificial
11:24
intelligence, that they enjoyed each other's company enough to start sucking major face
11:28
Despite being showcased in a small booth, The Sims quickly became the talk of E3
11:33
The Kiss also dismissed any talk of electronic arts canceling the game. It was now on the radar of a video game industry that was developing a real curiosity over exactly what Will Wright was up to
11:47
Prior to The Sims being released in February 2000, Wright thought it might be popular enough to sell 1 million copies
11:53
On the other hand, he believed it might only sell 50 copies. copies
11:57
There wasn't much precedent to try and figure out how the PC gaming market would respond to a game that attempted to simulate a typical American life
12:03
The Sims quickly exceeded all expectations, going on to sell 16 million copies and becoming
12:08
the best-selling PC game in each of the four years following its release
12:13
It was eclipsed only by its sequel, The Sims 2, in 2004
12:16
Rather than damage an existing franchise in SimCity, The Sims built a brand new one
12:21
Expansion packs started being released at regular intervals, which opened the world of The Sims to include house parties, dates, vacations, and more. The Sims 3 followed in
12:30
2009, and The Sims 4 in 2014. Players started sharing custom houses and characters with
12:35
other players, building online communities on top of their virtual communities. So why did The Sims work? For Wright, it was a matter of people seeing reflections of themselves
12:45
It was captivating to watch this human ant farm unfold on computer screens, with behaviors dictated by how well players took care of their characters
12:52
There was pleasure to be had in the virtual pursuit of their happiness
12:56
And unlike a lot of first-person shooters popular at the time, The Sims was full of regular people
13:01
Being silly and spouting babble, they had charm. That E3 kiss may have foreshadowed another important aspect of the game
13:08
The Sims world was inclusive. The series introduced gay marriage with its third installment in 2009, a time when only
13:15
a handful of states in the US permitted same-sex unions. And in 2019, the first pre-made non-binary character was made available
13:22
The Sims franchise has now sold over 200 million copies worldwide. It also found itself as part of a Museum of Modern Art exhibition and regularly releases
13:30
expansion packs to broaden the scope of The Sims universe, which effectively began with Antz
13:36
As for Wright, he went on to develop a game titled Spore that was released in 2008 and
13:40
followed a single-celled organism to world domination. Wright once said if the entire game was explored to its fullest, it would take 79 years without
13:48
rest to complete. But his best known creation remains The Sims, which is interesting
13:53
The kid who once dreamed of solving overpopulation wound up contributing billions of virtual
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members to society. And again, they do take up less space
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