How do you know when you’ve hit that sweet spot? How do you know when you’ve hit that right amount of content for what players are paying?
The way we do this mechanically is sort of behind-the-scenes based on things that we’ve sold in the past and back when we had more individual sales items, we try to determine the individual rank and size or the heft of a feature that is not based on what it costs us to make, but it’s sort of based on the value to the player.
I think a lot of teams can really mistake ‘This was really hard to make’ for what our players will value it has. So we try to think about how much gameplay this provides, whether they’re going to be excited for this, whether they have this feature yet, and we sort of put a numeric dollar value against it, and then a couple of us will argue about it. And we try to be consistent. We try to refer to my evaluation as the Roderick Ruble. And my boss, Lyndsay Pearson, hers is the Pearson Peso. And Lyndsay tends to be way overvalued from what I do, so I tend to be a low-baller, so we argue about that. But effectively, over time we will say ‘We think this will be the value we’re going to get from this.’ Then we play it and see this is where the value is actually at. Should we go up or down? And then we have additional phases of development where we go back and reassess and look at features and try to really sharpen and refine.
And then we also bring in external reviewers, external Sims players. We take the game to different community events. And so we basically try to do as much as possible to put our own gut instincts into that, against it, look at the sort of economic stuff of the past and how our players react to it in the past, and then also look at bringing in new players and fresh people to bring in and tell us where we’re at. And hopefully somewhere in there we align pretty decently on how we’re doing.
You mentioned a little bit about the long-term progression of apartments, but can you talk about the moment-to-moment difference of living in an apartment as opposed to in a house?
This was one of the key areas we really wanted to differentiate ourselves from Late Night in Sims 3, because the Late Night apartments – in the words of our creative director – were basically more-restrictive housing. So sort of like, why would people want to move into a crappier house.
So we did things from the start and we did them simple. So we implemented a landlord, who is a character who can come help fix things when they break, and you can build a relationship with him, and we thought that was kind of a cool story, real-world moment. We put in physical objects that you cannot remove that are things like leaky pipes and rat holes and not-so-trusty electrical fuse boxes. But then also good things like romantic fireplaces that just make an apartment a little more romantic.
So we tried to do that to give the apartment a sense of character and style. And then from there we took it the next step where we implemented lot traits, which is a really cool feature that you can implement on any lot in the game, not just apartments. These are things. You can assign… and this is sort of our new cool build/creative feature. You can assign up to three traits to any house, and it’s sort of inspired by if you ever go to Craigslist looking for apartments or you’re looking for real estate listings and people will describe a house with a sort of ‘This has a great view and beautiful open space and great for creative types who want to sit on the balcony and paint.’ And we kind wanted to create that sort of story with the lot, so you can have a place that’s a great party place, and parties are great there. Or good internet connection that helps you build skills and learn things more quickly. Or it’s good for painters because it’s inspiring.
And then we have some silly ones and gremlins who break stuff, ghosts. And so some of our players like telling stories or challenging their sims or even just trolling their sims, so we give you some lot traits that are in no way positive, they just make things worse for you. So a really cool mix gameplay-wise. Some of these will challenge you gameplay-wise, and some of these are just great stories.
We have rent, and rent means there’s a little more back pressure financially, not just a one and done. Now you have rent as well. But the other cool thing is it’s not just about the physical. There’s a sense of community in the apartments, and that’s pretty much inspired by Seinfeld and Friends and How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory and basically every American sitcom that has ever been in an apartment. And we have the notion of neighbors coming over to hang out or bug you. You can give a neighbor a key, and they’ll just walk in whenever they want. You might come home and find them there.
Your neighbors could be having really loud woohoo late at night, which will wake you up and upset you. They can be playing rock music and partying. You can go yell at them and create a tense moment. Or you can wake them up and be annoying.
And so there’s just a sort of sense of there’s a community for them to be there, there’s a physicality to it, there’s more backpressures. It’s one of the things where we try to create a foundation of telling stories. And we try to push those stories to you. You don’t have to just create them yourself. The game will come and trigger them almost like a director in a movie.
You were saying there are moments where things get very goofy. What are some of those moments?
Goofy is our bread and butter, and something that we always try to put a little bit in there just because it’s funny. So we have the human statues that hang out in town, and if you tip them and help them out, you can unlock a costume yourself to go around and do it. We have the notion of a chopstick skill and fight skills, so sims who do not have the qualifications for that might be breathing fire or using chopsticks like an absolute idiot. We have a robot atop a toilet that is inspired by HAL 9000. One of my favorite playtesting moments ever in the history of The Sims was when one of our playtesters said, ‘You know, the talking toilet was my best friend.’
We have – your neighbors can be having really loud whoo in the middle of the night, which is kind of funny and gross and weird. We have created a new batch of very goof characters. We have a dude who walks around town in a full body raccoon outfit, and we call him Trash Panda, and he’s just a very strange person.
So we try to build a world with funny moments, weird moments. Moments that make you laugh. For some of you who remember this classic Simpsons episode, there is a new death where if somebody makes a low-quality puffer fish, it can kill you.
Yeah, we’re always looking for jokes that make sense and that we think our fans will appreciate. So little winks, little inside jokes.
