Photo courtesy EA Games
Introduction to The Sims 2 Preview
Within a few months of releasing "The Sims" in early 2000, EA Games had shipped more than a million copies, making the game a whopping success. And while most popular games sell well for the first several months and then start to peter out, "The Sims" just kept going -- for years. By early 2002, the game had sold more than 6.3 million copies, making it the best-selling PC game of all time. Every new expansion pack was also a hit, as were two console spin-off games.
But as impressive as these numbers are, the really remarkable thing about "The Sims" is what types of people bought the game. Most successful games, even blockbusters like "Halo," sell to a fairly limited demographic: mainly male gamers under 40. In contrast, around half of all Sims players are female, the game attracts all ages, and a sizable chunk of players didn't play many computer games before they got the Sims. In other words, this game hit a nerve like very few creations do.
So, what do you do for a follow-up? Maxis, the game developer behind the Sims games, is getting ready to unleash "The Sims 2," the first true Sims sequel. By all accounts, the new game is bigger, badder, and even more addictive than the original. In this article, we'll take a peek at the new additions
Like in the original Sims game, "The Sims 2" will see sims form their own "emotions," such as love.
Photo courtesy EA Games
What is "The Sims"?
You've undoubtedly heard of the original Sims game, but unless you've actually played it, the whole concept is probably fairly mystifying. So, before we take a look at the sequel, let's stop a moment for the uninitiated. Just what is "The Sims" anyway?
Simply put, "The Sims" is a computer-based dollhouse, filled with dolls that pay attention to what you want, but also do things of their own accord. To play the game, first you create a sim (or several sims), by picking out a body, dressing it, and assigning it personality traits. You start off with a certain amount of money, which you use to build a house for your sim(s) and buy assorted things (furniture, TVs, etc.). You plop your sim down in the house, and start telling it what to do. You tell it when to eat, when to bathe, when to clean, when to go to the bathroom, who to talk to, etc. Your sim will also do what it wants to do, however, and it may not get around to your requests right away. It has a mind of its own.
There is no essential goal, and there is no way to "win." If you want your sim to be happy, you might try to keep a good balance of TV-watching, socializing, reading, and you make sure it gets to work on time every day and lives in a clean house. If you want your sim to be rich, you might focus on developing new job skills (by making it read books, for example). If you want your sim to be miserable, you don't build a bathroom in its house -- or a TV, or a bed -- and you never have it clean up.
The secret behind all this is an innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI). The term artificial intelligence can mean a lot of different things, but in this case, it means complex computer code that makes sims do certain things based on their assigned personality characteristics and what things have happened to them in the game. In other words, the code makes sure various actions have logical reactions: If a sim doesn't eat, it dies. If a Sim doesn't talk to other sims, it gets unhappy and won't do much of anything.
By building in tons of these pre-wired connections and giving the player hundreds of chances to create new situations for the sims, the game developers created a world that seems to carry on as if it was alive. At the conceptual level, "The Sims" is an elaborate machine built to react in expected and unexpected ways every time you give it new input.
To make "The Sims 2" bigger than "The Sims," Maxis, logically enough, created more types of input for the player and expanded the range of things that might happen in response to that input. In the next section, we'll take a look at the major new additions.
In "The Sims 2," improved graphics make the environments and characters much more realistic.
Photo courtesy EA Games
The Big Additions
There are tons of new additions that set "The Sims 2" apart from the original game. Let's take a look at the most significant upgrades.
Graphics Makeover
The original Sims world has a functional 3-D type look, but, by today's standards, is fairly limited graphically. Maxis built the sequel around a top-shelf 3-D game engine, which allowed them to make more detailed environments, more detailed sims and more detailed motion. Among other things, sims wear textured clothes, that flow around the body, they have complex skeletons with separate articulated fingers, rather than hand "paddles," they exhibit a range of facial expressions, they blink, and they have shadows and reflections.
The world is fully 3-D which means the camera can move around to show the action from many different angles, just as in most action games. The Maxis team put in tens of thousands of animator hours to give the sims a wide range of movement.
Improved Sim Builder
Taking advantage of the advanced graphics capabilities, the Maxis team built one of the best character creation systems to date. Players can create their own sims in detail -- not just by picking from available clothes and facial types, but by actually manipulating every aspect of a sim's face to sculpt an original character. By mixing and matching features from pre-loaded sims and then making your own tweaks, you could recreate your own family's faces, or even celebrity faces. Or pick two different faces and mix them together, using a slider control.
Aging
In the original game, your sims might die eventually (in a cooking catastrophe, for example), but they never got older. Create a school kid, and it will stay in school forever. In "The Sims 2," your Sims age through six stages: infants, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults and elderly adults. And just as in real life, things that happen to a sim at one age, affect who they are at another age.
This progression is built around the "Life Score" system. Basically, what your sim does and how it feels are largely determined by how it fares in "Life's Big Moments" -- a first kiss, getting married, having a child, etc. Sims with a lot of experience with important events (both good and bad), will have more "depth" than sims who haven't experienced as much.
Sims of all ages in "The Sims 2"
Photo courtesy EA Games
Memories play a much bigger role in the sequel than the original. If a Sim lives with a nurturing, happy family when it is a child, it's more likely to be a happy adult Sim, while a Sim with bad parents has a greater chance of being a relatively unhappy adult. If a sim hurts itself on the patio as a kid, it may have a strong aversion to the patio as an adult.
Aging adds significant levels to the game, but Maxis isn't forcing it on players. If don't want a bunch of dead sims on your hands, you can switch off the aging feature.
Makin' Babies
In the original game, you could give your sims children by simply creating kids that live in the same house, or your sims might even have their own child. But the new character would never grow up, and wouldn't necessarily have much in common with its parents. In "The Sims 2," adult sims have and raise kids the old fashioned way: Two sims "play" in bed or a hot tub (this isn't shown explicitly), and soon after, they may end up having a baby.
The game has a virtual DNA system that decides what the child will look like and act like, based on the parents' physical characteristics and personality traits. The system is designed to mimic the way heredity actually works. For example, features are designated dominant and recessive, just as in real genetics.
In this way, you can have many generations of sims, who are actually linked to each other, rather than a bunch of separately created Sims living in the same house. Over time, you'll see the traits of a family evolve, through many generations. According to the sims designers, you could create billions of unique sims with the game.
Smarts
One of the most important new additions is improved AI. The new sims are much more aware of what's going on around them than the original sims. They notice when other sims are fighting, they recognize and remember when one sim is mistreating (or even cheating on) another sim, and they pay attention to each other's mental and emotional states. One overriding mission for the developers was to make the AI multifaceted enough to boost the realism of the sims' behavior.
When sims fight, the other sims stop to check out the action.
Photo courtesy EA Games
Those are the biggest of the big ideas in "The Sims 2," but there are plenty more interesting additions. In the next section, we'll look at some particularly cool features.
Photo courtesy EA Games
More New Features
Undoubtedly, the Sims team has been flooded with player suggestions for four years now, and it shows in all the added elements in the new game. Here's a collection of intriguing new features:
- Mix-and-match outfits: You're not limited to a particular set of outfits -- weekend fashion designers can get creative mixing tops and bottoms to create original ensembles. The developers said they spent many days perusing catalogs to create a range of suitably hip clothes.
- Make up: Finish off the outfit with the right make-up.
- Advances in architecture: Thanks to the improved graphics, the construction toolbox has expanded significantly in the new game. You can build a four-story tower, sitting on an incline, with curved walls, if you want.
- Love and marriage: In "The Sims 2," sims can have weddings, extramarital affairs, and, if their relationship score is low enough, divorces. The game AI is designed to make logical matches -- attraction and successful relationships largely hinge on personal compatibility.
- Aging objects: It's not just the sims in the house that get old and gray. Keep the same furniture around generation after generation, and the heirloom will start to show some wear and tear.
- Inheritance: If a sim is good to its elders, its elders will be good to it.
- Short Missions: The game will have a number of short missions. For example, a sim may need to invite its boss over for dinner, and make a good impression to advance in its career.
- Visible fitness: If your sim sits around all day playing video games and eating pizza, you'll see him put on a gut. You'll have to get him on the exercise machine to make him fit again.
Photo courtesy EA Games
- Body language: The graphics engine allowed the developers to give the sims very expressive body language. For example, they hunch when they're sad or shy and they strut when they're feeling confident.
- Cameraman mode: The game camera lets you look at the 3-D world from just about every angle. The cameraman mode even lets you look around your world from the perspective of a sim.
- Movie recorder: This feature lets you record the game to create short movies of your sims in action.
- Painting: Sims can paint what they see around them, then sell their masterpieces.
- Spying telescope: Sims can get a telescope to help them spy on their neighbors.
- Days of the week: Unlike the original game, "The Sims 2" will have distinct weekdays and weekends.
- Weather: This sims world will now deal with thunderstorms and the like.
- Joys of parenthood: Sims with kids will have to change diapers and help with potty training.
- Juggling: A fun-loving sim may start juggling various objects, including drinking glasses.
