And every now and then people find the bugs, and they interpret those as cool failures in the Sims terms. For them it's like a treasure hunt, you know.Collection: Cool
In an online community, there's this kind of social economy between the community members. Some people have status because they make cool skins or that's a good website that's visited a lot, but there's no real gameplay there.Collection: Cool
A lot of the interesting issues and dynamics within a city occur over things such as socio-economic issues or ethnic issues. But they require a much more elaborate model of human behavior.
Also, after people play these Sim games, it tends to change their perception of the world around them, so they see their city, house or family in a slightly different way after playing.
The Sims is kind of an interesting case because we had all these expansion packs. We were able to incrementally add on and explore without invading the core dynamic or the core game play.
And so from that, I've always been fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity.
I find it refreshing to unplug from it for a while. You kind of forget how deeply you get embedded in it.
For me, what's a more important question is how we get at least the option of more diverse experiences in this media.
There are a lot of issues that I hope we deal with at some point that we haven't up to now, for various reasons. Some technical, and some more political.
We have spent quite a bit of time considering a good space game, and I can't really say anything at this point, but we are definitely still interested in that area.
The console games, as they come out with this new generation, will have a temporary advantage in price performance, but there are still many things you can do on a PC, more conveniently than you can do on a console machine.
Players like to know that they've discovered things that even the designers didn't know were in the game.
I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.
Well, I think the camera freedom is something that we've resisted for a long time and feels like probably the biggest stretch. But it has some huge benefits.
The second thing for me, probably a few clicks down, is the idea that The Sims smoothly age and have different concerns and motivations and needs at different age ranges.
It used to be that you knew your neighbors and maybe your coworkers - the people in your physical vicinity.
I think the idea of having a game based on reality is compelling right off the bat because everyone has some experience with the subject of the game.Collection: Reality
It's rewarding to be able to change people's perceptions of reality, ... They just see their environment in a different way. They have a kind of different-colored glasses that they can see their world in. To me, that's really cool - when games can change you.Collection: Reality
Computer and video games represent one of the most important new media developments of this generation. Unlike many other forms of entertainment they offer players the opportunity to explore, be creative, learn through interaction and express themselves to others. It is vitally important that we protect and nurture this new art form so that it can reach its full potential. Like most new forms of artistic expression that have come before (music, novels, movies), the primary critics of video games are the people that do not play them.Collection: Art
No game designer ever went wrong by overestimating the narcissism of their players.Collection: Player
The big thing is that we have five percent or less of the hardcore players actively entertaining the other ninety-five percent.Collection: Player
Somebody asked me what I thought next generation meant and what about the PlayStation 3 was next generation. The only next gen system I've seen is the Wii - the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement.Collection: Xbox
Television is a very different thing from video games. It's kind of hard for me to compare.Collection: Games