June 11, 2019 • 46 mins
Shine your green diamond and prepare to build a family because this week we're talking about The Sims! Dani is joined by Chris Bryant and Claire Max to discuss the game with the Guiness Record for Most Expansions of a Single Franchise! The three discuss how they got into The Sims and why it was more important to their personal growth than you might think! Whether you started with Sim City or just found Sims 4, this episode of Nerdificent is for you!
FOOTNOTES:
The Best and Worst The Sims expansions
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerve Assent. I'm
one half of your host Danny Fernandez. If he is
actually out today, Uh, he is working on a TV show. Um,
I guess that's what happens. Now that we are successful
huts down, we are trying to work with our schedules. Um,
and we will figure that out. We will figure that
(00:32):
out so that we're not tiktoking and taking turns. Wait
tiktoking was the wrong vert. That voice is Claire Max,
who is joining me today, Hello to talk about the Sims.
So excited what was your Yeah, So we're just gonna
hop right in. We're also going to be joined by
Christopher Smith Bryant, who was on our lgbt Q Gamer episode.
(00:56):
But um, the Sims, the Sims. This was my This
was like fan fiction come to life. Yeah, people live
out their fantasies a thousand percent. What like, when was
your first memory of when you got your hands on
a game? So I definitely I've played every single iteration
(01:20):
of this game since the first one. So I played one,
two or three and now four. I was literally playing
it last night. Um, so I it came out and
I think the first one came out in two thousands,
so I would have been like, I guess, yeah, um,
But before that, I played sim City, and I played
like other simulation kind of games like Roller Coaster, Tycoon
and totally rollers Freaking And I still play Planet Coaster,
(01:44):
which is like the big brother of Roller Coaster. Um.
But I really like those kind of games because I'm
terrible at anything that involves like combat or any kind
of like oh yeah, totally, I'm so bad at those.
So I always really liked the kind of like simulation
games that are chill and you can just like hang out.
So I definitely remember playing the first one and spending
way too much time just building my house and then
(02:06):
not even really playing, just just building houses like most
of so, I mean it is fascinating because like you know,
Minecraft is so big, but like that was the starting
point you know for people wanting to build, for like
building games really takes off. Yeah. Before that, I just
built houses with legos, so like a virtual it's the
virtual version of that. Um. For me, I was largely
(02:27):
into like animated cartoon games like Aladdin on Second Genesis
and like the Lion King game. I had that like
a CD ram of the Lion King game. Yeah, the
Disney games, and then of course I was super into
Mario and later Mario sixty four. Um mine were like,
I guess we don't like the cute seer games, the
(02:50):
animated ones I definitely played this year. I played a
lot of the girly, girly type of games. I had
one that was it was a Barbie game, but it
was just literally just Barbie makeovers and you just put yes, yes,
I remember. And so SIMS is also like a grown
up version of that totally. You just sit there and
make your sim for like hours. Yes, And and speaking
(03:10):
of making SIMS, we now have my lovely friend Christopher
Smith Bryant joining us. I'm sorry for being like, no,
it's it's chaotic here. We are all very busy. Yes,
we're all we're all well. And it's right before it's
weird because this is right before Pride and it's right
before E three. So for me, it's like the worst
(03:31):
week of my love. Oh no, I hear you. I
like have a book signing after this that I just
found out about today. I was like, oh, I, oh,
it's today. It's today, So we're all coming together to
talk about the SIMS. So, my name's Christopher Bryant. I
don't know if you need an intro, but yeah, I
worked for l A Gamers, which is a nonprofit. We
held like PlayStation's first E three after party. So when
(03:53):
Danny was talking about talking about the SIMS, is like,
this is perfect of my alley. Yeah, when was your
We're just talking about like your first introduction. When do
you first remember getting your hands on this game? Oh?
I got it when it first came out. I was like,
I was immediately. My dad I remember saw the poster
for it, and I've played sim City like I was
a huge will Right fan. I think I even played
(04:15):
like he had like an ant simulator game. Remember that
you do remember that? So I was like, really, I
remember my dad saw the box and I got it
and I was just obsessed immediately. Yeah, so I guess
we should tell people that have never played the SIMS
essentially what it was. Who are um, Well, yeah, so
(04:36):
it did come from William Wright, who is a video
game designer and co founder of the former game development
company Maxis and uh they created sim City, which is
kind of what brought him to prominence. And then after
and sim City had many different iterations, later renamed sim
City Classic. That was a city building simulation video game
(04:58):
and that actually released in nine Yes, that was way
before all of this. Oh my god. So the game
focuses on players operating as a mayor whose task is
to build up the city, um, providing basic transit links, power,
simplistic services for for residents. And then yeah yeah, yeah
(05:20):
yeah and sam along the lines if we were talking
about roller Coaster Tycoon, um, But like roller Coaster Tycoon
was easy, sim City was like it was hard. I
was like, this is stressed. I should just have a job,
like I just work. It really was stressful. But then
we had the SIMS, which was the first game in
the series. So it was developed by Maxis and published
by Electronic Arts. So did e A did they publish
(05:42):
it from the beginning? Do you know that it was
released for Microsoft Windows in February of two thousand, um
and essentially, so now you're playing as the virtual people
of this city. So why do you think people gravitated
towards SIMS that it is still so prevalent. I read
a thing online that equated it to like playing house,
(06:05):
Like when you're a little kid, you play house, You
know what I mean, And it's that kind of thing.
I guess. It's like a pretend life what you can
kind of do whatever you want. It's sort of open ended.
It's funny that you say that because the original name,
like the project name for the SIMS was called doll
House originally, and uh so the creation of the SIMS
happened when will Write went through a house fire and
(06:26):
he was having to like save things, redesign things, and
he was like, really, I don't know if you have
is that okay to talk about this? Okay? So he
I'm a huge fan of him, So he created, uh
this idea of like how he had this primal need
to figure out which furniture he needed how to redesign
a house, and that became kind of the basis behind
the SIMS was was this need, so he was like
(06:49):
creating this. Originally the game was called Doll House, and
everyone hated it, like they were like this is so stupid,
like who would like this? And when they showed it
at E three years ago, there was like a line
because they had this Max had a small little booth
and there was a line like that was so crazy.
It was going around to other booths. Like people were like,
this is unreal, So no one really believed in it
(07:11):
until it was first shown, and I think that you're right.
It became like almost like a like the game's Second Life,
which I also play. I have had an account for
seventeen years and second really yes, what can you tell
me the difference between the two. The biggest difference is
that the Second Life has absolutely no there's no there's
nothing that you ever have to do in second line,
(07:32):
So you don't have to eat, you don't have to
deal with like any kind of life needs. You can
literally just do whatever you want. And there are ways
to like play it so that you can create, you know,
role playing scenarios are like objects a lot of people
you role playing in in um, second Life its second
life online where you're talking to other people. So it's
it's kind of like, um, if you've heard of IMVU,
(07:54):
what second Life is better? Okay, So it's like, so
Second Life is more of like a role playing game,
where like an online role playing game, and the SIMS
is more like a simulation that it's. Second Life is
weird because it's it's really hard to describe. It's not
even necessarily a game. It can be a chat room,
it can be a role playing game, it can be yeah,
(08:14):
any kind of really whatever you want. Like I used
to be a vampire in second life, So I was
part of a vampire plan and you like actually had
to find other people to like feed on or else
you would wait, does that mean that you're ruining somebody
else's second life? No, so they had to be a
willing participant. You had to have to feed on them, Like, um, yeah,
but it was like that kind of thing. You could
(08:36):
choose to be a vampire. You could choose like there
are people who are furries or like it's and you
you have so much more freedom over creating your avatar,
even more so than you do in the SIMS because
you don't have to be human. You could be anything
or anyone that you want. Um. Has the SIMS ever
gone off of humans or is it always? Do you
have aliens and they have vampires. Now they've added expansions
(08:56):
where you can do that, and yeah, it is. It
is cool to see the progression of the make of
SIMS from like the SIMS one to now because now,
I mean, as as someone that's LGBT, like you can
now have transgender characters in the SIMS four, which is fantastic.
They remember they made an option where they're like, actually,
any clothes option is available for any Yeah, they didn't.
(09:17):
They used to filter them by like masculine or feminine clothes,
and now they give you that option, but it doesn't matter.
You can wear whatever you want. And they also do
the thing where, um, you can choose like a male
or female for your sim, but is an option in
the Creator sim to choose whether your sim can get pregnant,
whether they can get other sims pregnant, and even like
their voice and the way that they walk, you're not
limited by their gender. So if you like, you can
(09:39):
have a female sim with a deep voice, or a
male sim with a high voice, or like any combination
that you want, which is really cool, just like how
people are in real life. Totally, I wanted to go
back to will write because, like you all said, he
so he lost his home during the Oakland fire storm.
Of this is really fascinating because in our Lego episode,
(10:00):
um Ok Christiansen, who created Lego, also lost his home
and a fire. This is bizarre because I'm obsessed, you know, mean, Danny,
I'm obsessed Lego. I'm obsessed with the SIMS. I also
had a house fire. I don't know. I'm just saying
I am a prodigy necessary for Oh my gosh, this
(10:20):
is like all of y'all superhero backstories, like both on
the Spectrum and went through a house fire. So then
just become obsessed. So now I can say I knew
you before you created like the next big game. But
you are obsessed with building, Like your place is covered
in legos. Danny has been in my house. It's it's disturbing,
like there you can't there legos everywhere and giant buildings
(10:42):
and stuff. I'm obsessed with. That was my Another huge
part of the SIMS was like it's weird because it
is simulation. It's like you're you're kind of almost like
a little bit of second like where you're living vicariously
through these people a little bit. But also it's just
a building app it's a great he One of the
biggest inspirations for the SIMS were just at the time,
architecture tools. Yeah, I mean that's what it seems like.
(11:03):
I know people who use it to literally like plan
how they're going to decorate their their house. In real life,
you know, you build your house in the SIMS and like, oh,
what would look nice in this room? And you like
plan it out? So yes, so right said. He stated
that SIMS was actually meant as a satire of us
consumer culture, which is funny because you can buy things, yeah, right,
you can. I mean they use this what it's called
(11:24):
Similan similar and you you listen to even the music
and it's very like would you say, like nineteen fifties housewife. Yeah,
it has that feeling of like old timey elevator music,
but like happy peppy, like Homemaker is a very marvelous
Mrs masil Hinda kind of a very American consumer like
(11:47):
and it does kind of parody the thing of like
you want new things, you have these people that their
needs and their happiness determine, Like it's very nineteen fifties Americans,
it is. Yeah, it's very like even like your similar
be happier if they're in a room that's nicely decorated
it or like you buy them a new item or something. Well,
this is fascinating because he said that he took um
a couple of things. One was ideas from the nineteen
(12:08):
seventies seven architecture and Urban Design Book a pattern language,
but also American psychologist Abraham Maslow's nineteen forty three paper
A Theory of Human Motivation and his Hierarchy of Needs
and Charles Hampton Turner's Maps of the Mind to develop
a model for the game's artificial intelligence. So kind of
(12:30):
like what you were saying, like they might be happier
in a room full of people, they might be happier
if it's decorated nicely. They're like going off of what
would actually motivate people, and that's what they put into
the game. Yeah, and you do have like your basic needs,
like you have um, hunger, bladder, energy, social, and fun,
and you have to like before you can do anything else,
(12:51):
you have to make sure that you know you're which
is the mass of hierarch comm needs things like you
basic needs first and then like you build up to
other types of needs. So the SIMS is one of
the actually the most progressive games and the sinse that
I remember, it was like one of the first things
where you could have a dude woo who with another dude?
You know, but can you explain to people woo who
(13:14):
is don't um woo who is intercourse um? And uh.
I remember that was my introduction to gay sex. Really,
it was one of the first things where I was like, wait, wait, wait,
there's a dude who can do woo who with another dude?
And I remember when because it was a thing, no
one knew the rules of it. It's not like they
(13:35):
had clearly defined rules at first. Like I remember people
playing the game and realizing, oh, you can lock this
person in a room and burn them on fire and mysterious.
It was a sandbox. I don't think even the developers
knew everything that you could do in the game. Maybe,
but yeah, woo who I mean, it was a huge
deal because that's why I had a teenage rating, is
that there were some sexual things about it. To be clear,
(13:57):
you never see it. It's a blurred but the fact
that there's even implications, and there's the like almost a
real world type blurring, like it remember when you get naked,
like when you take a shower, you're just you're naked
in the shower, but it's like just pixel over like
you know. But at the at the two thousand's early
two thousands, people were like, yeah, well escape of course.
(14:20):
I also remember it was like Big Brother was really
in was like coming in and that like SIMS and
Big Brother was like paired for me. I guess it
was kind of also like the dawn of the reality
TV show kind of era, like watch other people live
their lives. Here's you know. It makes it came out
in a perfect time because it was right during Big Brother.
It also makes sense because it had such a long
development period why it took it came out the perfect time,
(14:43):
you know, and it took that long for people to
get on board. So you were talking about sandbox games,
and just to clarify for people what that is, it's
where the player has ability to create, modify, or destroy
their environment. And also there's no like they lack any
defined goals. Typically like Second Life would definitely be like
a pure sandbox game, right where you don't have to
(15:04):
do anything if you don't want to, you just have
the option to um. SIMS definitely has the sandbox element
in terms of like the building and the creating kind
of thing, but then there's also like the gameplay. Yeah,
I would say the earlier versions of the SIMS were
almost more sand boxing boxing in the sense that was
just a simulation. You would see people literally destroy the
environment almost but yeah, that's that's it. I definitely call
(15:26):
it like a sandbox simulation. Now it's turning a little
bit more into a role playing game, would you say
that a little bit actually? So the newest expansion that
just came out that I literally playing last night, UM,
it's called Strangerville, and it's really unique for the sims
because it's the first one that actually has UM, like
a role play storyline that you can play, So the
(15:47):
game has UM. In this expansion, there's like a mystery
in the town that you need to solve, Like townsfold
were acting really weird and there's like all these strange
plants around, and you can you have the option you
can just play normally if you want to, but you
have the option to give your sims like the aspiration
that they want to solve the stranger vill mystery, and
you can like get different like basically quests. They're not
(16:08):
they don't call them quests or anything. And at no
point do you have to do anything. You can go
as far in it as you want or not. But
you have the option to like talk to townsfolk and
learn things and go find items, and like you know,
you'll you'll talk to one guy who's like, well, I
can you know, give you a key card to the
Secret Lab if you'll bring me x y z amount
of things, like very much like a role playing kind
(16:28):
of game. Yeah. With the expansions, they've kind of gone
off from just being a simulator to just doing like
and there's also all of these other things and vampires
and yeah, and aliens and go. So the SIMS, the
original game that came out in two thousand, by March
two thousand and two had sold more than six point
three million copies worldwide, surpassing Missed as the best selling
(16:51):
PC game in history at the time, and it came
with many expansion packs. So we have to take a
really quick break and then we're gonna hop back into
The SIMS right after this, and we're back. I did
(17:12):
want to say another stat about this. So the success
of The SIMS has resulted in Guinness World Records awarding
the series numerous world records, including as most expansion packs
for a video game series and best selling PC game series,
with the sales estimate ranging from thirty six to fifty
million units, which I'm sure is only climbing at all times.
(17:32):
Oh yeah, So while we were on break Claire, you
were telling me about some of the compilation videos that
you can watch on YouTube. I guess it kind of
revealed a little bit of like a statistic side of humanity,
because people are obsessed with finding creative ways to kill
their sims, like different different kinds of things that you
can do. One yeah, I mean, I what's the worst
(17:54):
way that you've killed your sim? So I personally don't
like to kill my SIPs. I get to attach to them.
But one of the ones that I watched on YouTube,
which I thought was like crazy, is you have to
go to a fish shop, like out in the out
in the world. Have to go to a fish shop
and you have to have zero cooking skill and you
have to buy a recipe for puffer fishna geary, and
(18:16):
then you have to make the pupper fish nagarie. And
you have zero cooking skill and you make puppfer fish nageary,
it will be deadly to anyone who eats it. So
I watched a girl who threw a dinner party. She
made the pupper fish in geary and killed every one
of her guests like the Red wedding basically, and then
she just had like a line of because when you
when you die in the SIMS, the groom rep literally
shows up and like takes your soul away and then
(18:36):
you get an urn of like the dead sim. So
she literally had just like a line of urns of
all the people who were at her dinner party. Oh
my gosh, what about you, Chris. I mean my I
accidentally killed a SIM once and I remember like in
a house fire and for some reason they couldn't escape,
But it's because someone was doing something weird around the door,
Like there's like a weird really stupid Yeah, they're really stupid,
(18:59):
I mean, but basically I remember this is before YouTube
is out. I remember putting someone in a pool and
then there's like no ladder to get out, and I
was like, wait what wait, They're just gonna They're just
gonna drown. There's okay, they're gonna drown, Like I was like,
and then I like I lost them, and I remember
just being like what. So they actually people were so
obsessed with like putting people in pools and taking out
(19:20):
the ladders that they made it in the newest version
of the game that they can now climb out of
the pool without a ladder. So if you want to
kill your sim in a pool, you have to build
a fence around the pool. That's so weird. There was
another video I saw of a girl. She was annoyed
that her like teenage daughter Sim was ordering pizza too much,
so she trapped her in a room that was like
literally just a pool with a single square in the
(19:43):
middle of the floor with a long table on it,
and at the very end of the long table she
put a pizza. And the only place that the Sim
could stand to get out of the water was on
the far end of the table, away from the pizza,
so she could like look at the pizza. She could
smell the pizza, but she could not reach the pizza.
It was tortuous. Ever, such like I can imagine that
(20:04):
psychology professors like study what people do with their sims.
This is so this reminds me of that like college
experiment or whatever, where they like Stamford. Yes, yeah, yeah,
literally exactly that like once you're in power, how quickly
you try. It's a little bit frightening, it is, But
I've always tried to keep my sims and my tomagotchis alive.
(20:25):
I just want to put it out there. I don't
think the developers really intended it to be that sadistic.
I don't think so, no. I I guess that's just
do you think that it's fascinating they give you the
ability to kill them at all. I guess if they
wanted to make like a life simulator, right, they have
to have that kind of elements of like you gotta
keep them alive or there's consequences kind of thing. But
(20:46):
I don't know if they intended for people to exploit
it well. In the very first game was very much
like it's such a role playing game now. But I
feel at the at the very first and the sims
to which were the ones that were mainly developed by
Will write Um, they were much like like you would
just like develop things and just watch things happen, you
know what I mean? A little bit more and I
(21:08):
don't I think they didn't really know exactly like now
it's the game is informed by what people do, but
at the time they had no idea how people would
just react to this sandbox, right, And it was similar
to what you were talking about before, is it didn't
really come with instructions, so you didn't know until you
started playing, like how necessarily like they your sim might
die and you'd be like, well, why they die? They
(21:30):
had food, they had you know whatever, and you may
not know. I remember one time I was playing the
SIMS too, and there was an expansion for it called
Strange Town, which is kind of like the Strangerville that
they have now. And I had a mail sim and
he got abducted by aliens, which I did not know
could happen. He got abducted by aliens and he came
back and he was pregnant with an alien baby, and
he gave breath to an alien baby. And I was like, well,
(21:50):
I didn't know you could do that. But they had
to put real life stuff in there, so that really happens.
Let's talk about simlish their language. Yeah, so god, I
can't remember. It was developed actually in another game first.
But it's a mixture, like Will writes a genius like
he actually I don't remember SimCopter actually and sim coasters
(22:17):
he like he did. It wasn't like they're just like
like he wasn't. He actually listened to multiple languages and
try to develop some sort of like mixture between them,
and that's how he came up with with Similish at
least originally, which is crazy to me, Like, this is
crazy that his mind would think that there is I mean,
there is a pattern to the things they say, Like
(22:38):
I know, dag dag is hello, they say dag dag
for Hellou. But there is like a pattern, so it's
not just like random gibberish, Like you'll notice repeated phrases,
but no one really knows what those phrases mean. My
favorite thing is when they have a tie in with
a SIMS game and a pop star. I don't know
if you like, they did one for Lily Allen. I
think they did one for Katie Perry or something like that.
(22:58):
But they do tie in and then they'll have the
pop singer have to sing their song Oh my gosh.
And those are really enjoyable to randomly watch. I love that. So.
One of Wright's biggest concerns while developing the SIMS was
that giving the characters actual dialogue would have gotten extremely repetitive,
(23:20):
because even if Right were able to fit five CDs
worth of voice clips in the game, players would eventually
start hearing the same voice clips over and over again.
So he found that this problem persisted even if he
was using Navajo or Estonian. But because the gibberish of
Simlish was so far removed from any existing human language,
it was very difficult for players to find repeats in it.
(23:40):
So the team went out to record hundreds of voice
clips in Simlish, each with their own unique cadence. That's
something interesting because we the way that we talk, has
a certain cadence that's different than them um and emotional nuance.
Right wanted the player to be able to tell whether
sim is feeling flirtatious or upset, or laid back or tired,
based entirely on their tone and tempo. Yeah, and they
(24:02):
he was really smart in the sense that he developed
this game to be shipped to every country. Like I
remember they're saying there was someone saying that it was
a parody of American and he's like, well, it's more
like American TV culture than American nineteen fifties culture. Because
he's like, I wanted when people were going through that
they would get this whatever culture or from. So it's
cool that he even made like you said, it's like
(24:23):
the yeah, it's universal every I mean it is kind
of americanized TV culture or Western TV culture, but every
culture that play the game would get it. Another cool
thing is that you can actually talk to Alexa in
Similish and she answer, yes, I hope, I'm blowing you
all sims people mind you are? I knew you could
talk to her and um speak to her in Pikachu,
(24:44):
but I did not know you could speak to her,
And well you can. You can speak to her and
Similish and she'll translate it for you. That's amazing. That
makes me uncomfortable. Why I don't. I don't like speaking
to normal people, let alone, but I know I unpluged
her so much. I don't like when she goes off
(25:05):
when I'm when I'm not talking to her. Yeah, you're like,
actually press the button. It's like you're speaking in Similish
or whatever and you're like, I'm just trying to get
through my day. Oh okay. So it looks like the
Black Eyed Peas also provided music translated into Similish. Now, okay,
I'm not a singer, be a pop star. Didn't make
a sim of you? You did? Oh my gosh, I don't. Well,
(25:28):
we'll upload it. We'll upload it when this is really yeah,
we'll upload it this week. Um, you did make a
sim of me, so Claire. One of her specialties is
that she's really good at, like dead on making people.
I try, I try, my vest. It's actually really hard
to make a sim of someone, you know, especially because
you're like, oh no, what if they what if they
hate it? What if they're like that's what you think?
(25:49):
I look like? Like? You know what I mean this?
Remember like the Dove commercial, like where they're like, I'm
so ugly and then Dove's like, no, but here's an
artist strong. You you're beautiful. You know what that's like?
Like like I'm go, I remember you gave me like
your highlight h me like solid highlight on my cheeks,
(26:09):
which is the thing that I always tell my makeup
artists like I want glow. I want the glow. Um. So, Chris,
you were saying that YouTube kind of brought back I
brought more popularity with the sims. Yeah, just I mean
it's it's weird how now gaming is not like now
gaming not just with YouTube but Twitch and everything. Twitch
you have to watch it, but YouTube especially because that
(26:30):
was the YouTube era. It was like whoa, whoa, what
you're doing this with your sim? I didn't even know you, Like,
people were seeing things that they didn't even know where
possible through YouTube videos and then I mean even became
like there's a huge, huge market. I'm guilty of this.
I am at the point now in my life where
I don't have the time to play the SIMS as much,
but I would love sometimes to just get high and
(26:51):
watch people build house speed builds and just so relaxing
my o c D. Like I'm just like, oh my god,
this house is absolutely perfect. I love watching speed builds. Yeah,
and it's like that people are you can be. So
there's an unending amount of creativity to like what people
can make, even just using the stuff that comes with
the game, like not even including you know, custom items
(27:13):
and stuff. Just like people blow in my mind all
the time with what they can make. So let's talk
about SIMS three. So this is really fascinating. The game
is set twenty five years prior to the original game.
That to me is just interesting that they were like
and now we're in the future. There's also an expansion
for SIMS to recalled into the future where you can
literally like travel further in time into the future and
(27:35):
it's it's like Jetsons and I have actually questioned, what
is your favorite SIMS. Sorry, it's a little that it's
gonna get back on topic. What is your favorite SIMS game? Um,
I honestly think four is my favorite, just because I
really liked um too as well, and two is like
the one I played the most when I was a kid.
But I think what I like about for is that
everything I ever wished you could do in a SIMS
(27:57):
game you can kind of do now, And so it's
sort of like, Wow, I have I have everything I want.
The fourth one, wait, it says the second one is
also aged five years after the original game. That doesn't
make I think that the second one was aged after
the original game, like as far as like the people,
like as the actual Sims in the neighborhood and everything.
(28:18):
And is the third one a prequel to the first game?
Or this is the fourth one? The no, the fourth
one is the fourth one takes place in the present
day as far as I know, because they do have
like cell phones. And the third one is a prequel
to Simson Yeah, yeah, because they have the technology that
even they have in the game is like a little older.
So I'm weird in the sense that the Sims I
don't know the Sims three was one of my favorites
(28:40):
because you can just like the like now in the
SIMS four you click on a new lot, you have
to load, you have to click on whatever. And the
SIMS three, I feel like, was kind of the perfect
balance from the original development team to the new development
team where it was. But then the SIMS to the
SIMS Too was like will Write's baby, like I think
that was his last game before Spore and had all
(29:00):
that like charming. I loved Support too, but how all
that like charming weirdness that you can get without Will Write.
There's just something about him where it's like his involvement,
Like the SIMS Too is just like you can't get
that without him. Yeah, that's the quirkiness. That's like very specific.
So that described the SIMS to included things game features
such as like clear days of the week with weekends
(29:22):
when children would stay home from school in vacation days
when adults could take time off from work. Like we said,
it was set twenty five years after the first game,
so for instance, the Goth family has aged significantly with
bella Goth. Do you remember mysteriously vanishing dying at some
point in the twenty five year period, she's back now
she's a vampire. That makes sense. That actually trajectory makes
(29:46):
perfect sense. That's why she disappeared and now she's alive again.
And then so moving on to SIMS, I actually have
a quite qua. No please, who's your favorite nonplayable or
since the NSPC, But who's your favorite like sim that's
in developed? There are so many of them now. I
always love to hate Nancy land Grab. Everybody hates Nancy.
She's like the landowner of the SIMS. And she's like
(30:08):
the one who will evict you if you don't pay
your rent on time or don't pay you'll turn off
your power. Yeah, but she's just like she's a staple.
Do you remember the robot Butler? I do think I
think that was my favorite, the robot butler. My gosh,
because I always wanted ever since I watched the Gensens
or the people who take away your baby if you're
a bad Yeah, yeah, where did your baby go? In
(30:31):
one of them? There was also there were men in
black as well, and yes I remember that that like
they would come to your door if you something. Oh
my gosh, yes, this is like taking me back. I'm
sorry for taking over podcast. Let's talk about the SIMS.
Moving on the SIMS three, they had the Late Night
Expansion pack. Yeah, that was the person I think where
(30:53):
you could go out ahead town. Yeah, like if you
can experience the nightlife on a date, like a hot date.
Because in all the previous games, you were just stuck
in your house. You couldn't like if you want to work,
you just kind of disappeared and you didn't know where
you were going. But now you can go out into
the town and there's even different towns and you'll see
like other people's sims come into your town and like
(31:14):
come visit you, which is cool. I'm watching a series
on YouTube right now, um called the hundred Baby Challenge,
and it's you have the challenge I guess is you
have to create a sim like a matriarch, and she
has to have a hundred babies with a hundred different pints.
So it's basically just like getting your sim pregnant by
as many people as you can. But it's interesting because
(31:36):
when your kids grow up and move out, then you'll
like run into them in the town and they like
meet partners and they get married and they like grow
up and it's really crazy because sim's age so much
faster than normal people, Like you think you're meeting a
cute guy and it's at that's some southern town like
(32:00):
sun walks in while you're trying to flirt with some
new guy in a bar or something like. This is
a lot um. I love people's ambition. We have we
have to dick another quick break and then we're gonna
hop back into the city right after we are back
(32:24):
and clear. You were talking about how there are now
mods like people that have been able to update the
game and then you can play their additions. Yeah, so
it's been around, I think since the SIMS too. They've
had the Opportunity Forum. They call it custom content, and
so people can create their own items, their own clothing,
their own but even things like animations or like career
(32:45):
paths or like they can modify and create these things
that you can then download and pretty much all of
them are completely free and you can I have three
and a half gigabytes of just custom content that I've downloaded. Well,
I'm actually a big question and because e A is
an interesting company, how have they responded, because I know
(33:07):
they're also there's a lot of like pay to download
for these furnitures or whatever. How have they responded now
because the mudding thing has been such a huge part
of the SIMS history. Do you know, like has it
changed during the SIMS four because they're trying to sell packs,
furniture packs and stuff. I feel like they've just kind
of embraced it at this point because it's such a
huge part of the culture and it would be so
(33:28):
upset if they couldn't like do this anymore. Um that
there's they even have run like contests for custom content
and stuff. Oh, that's amazing. They do have the opportunity,
like in this game for you to upload things, you know,
your SIMS, your houses, whatever. You can upload them to
the gallery within the game, and within the game itself
people can download them from the Yeah, that's how you
(33:48):
feel about like totally different. But we did an episode
on fan films and sometimes the company will like block them,
take them down from YouTube. This is so weird because
they're fans, Like they're not on your level and endos
like that a lot, like any content with a Nintendo
they're like and off YouTube. But even an issue with
like fan art at cons in the past, people try
to like claim stuff and it's like, these are people
(34:10):
who love what you've made so much that they want
to be a part of it. But it only adds
more because in the fandom gets even bigger, like they
get you know, obsessive, and then they're they're the ones
that are backing you. They're the ones that are watching
your TV show, going to your movie, they're they're the
people that you don't. I would say it's actually more
so Japanese companies that I feel like are a little
bit like learning how to how to navigate that. Yeah,
(34:32):
I've seen that. I've seen that with toy that they're
trying to like okay American fluting. They're inviting like cause
players and fan film people to the like funamation even
the premiers and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, it's but
it's a really cool thing and it's an interesting, like
creative outlet for a lot of people. I guess that
(34:53):
you know you can take you can even download like
the existing items in the game and just make them
a different color or like put a different fabric on
them or whatever and change it up and make it
what you want. What are some of the cheats that
you all like doing? Motherload that gives you Yeah, gives
you all the money. That's what I always have to have.
There was a cheat and I can't remember the name
of it, but it like I think it's in the
(35:15):
simps to it it took down the nudity. They took
it down, everyone freaked out, and then they took it
down in the expansion afterward. Of course there are moths
now you can download their like, but it was just
nice to download. I would love if you took it
down and it was just like a Barbie doll, like
(35:37):
nothing right, there's anything there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a
cheat in there. I think it was in the simestery too,
called move objects, where you're not limited by like the
grid that's on the ground, which was always really annoying
because you're like, you can't fit a thing in where
you want it to go because you're stuck on this grid.
And then with the move objects you can literally just
put stuff wherever you want. So, speaking of the future
(35:59):
of the SIMS, because there's so many SIM games, we
could talk about all the different you know, two, three, four,
there are also sim Stories, SIM Carnival, sim Simba. Yeah, sims.
Do you remember my SIMS on the GameCube? Like Animal crossing. Yeah,
it was like should be like characters, so like cute
(36:19):
little How is the popular simscn like? Because I feel
like the SIMS for is a little less popular than
the SIMS three. It's more of its niche group rather
than being this global thing. Do you think is there?
Do you know anything about what's going because I haven't
really heard anything about, Like it seems like the SIMS
for brand is still pretty strong, it is. I know
they've been trying to do a lot of stuff with
(36:40):
like influencers now, so they run like social events where
they invite influencers in too, like play the new expansion
pack before it gets released and that kind of thing.
So they're i think really trying to lean into the
like social media act. Yeah, and meme culture, especially to
like if the SIMS leans into meme culture, I think
that will change things. There are so many SIMS memes.
I'm kind of worried about the future of the SIMS
because I'm gonna be honest with you, Like the SIMS four,
(37:01):
even though I like some of its changes, like, I
felt like it also lost me a little bit compared
to the SIMS three, where I feel like it's now
a little bit more of a role playing the game
than a simulation. It feels less of like the pure
SIMS game. Yeah, which I like, but it's not also
it's it's also not my favorite. So I am a
little bit more, especially with love e A. But they,
(37:22):
you know, there's sometimes you know, I I do wish
I miss will write, like I really wish that his
his humor and everything came back, because I do worry
that the next SIMS game will be more like micro transaction.
E like more worried about that. They they for the
most part avoided that, like having to buy expansion packs
(37:45):
or like that kind of thing. But I am a
little worried about, you know, implementing something or like oh
to you know, well, you can level up in your career,
or you can pay to to get to the top
of it. I could I could honestly see because of
e A's track or herd, I could see them going
into a just all free to play market, Like I
could see that. Um So I'm kind of a little
(38:06):
bit worried. But then I also think of like what's
going on with have you played Star Do Valley? No?
But I know of it. You know that's going to
be like your new crack, right, I haven't played it yet,
Like you play that and you're like and I'm done. Um, yeah,
I think there will be an indie developer that makes
the new the real you know what I mean, replacement
(38:28):
in our hearts, Yeah, recement. There's a level of nostalgia
though around it, especially for our generation. Um, that will
always probably exist. It is kind of crazy because they
announced way back in two thousand seven that they want
to do a live action film of the Sims, which
to me is so it's like it's yeah, yeah, well,
(38:51):
I mean it could be like like we're trapped in No,
I don't know, like the whole time the true was
it the Truman what's the show? Where the there's ways
to do that? I would watch a Sims movie if
it was so. The rights were bought by twentieth Century Fox,
which means that now Disney would be that making. Okay,
give us sims Land at Disneyland, Oh my gosh, everybody
(39:15):
who walks in gets like one of the little plumbob
little oh yeah, and so are they could have to
so would be like their version of Mouse. So it
was written by Brian Lynch, the man responsible for writing
the Scary Scary movie three interesting, and the film was
to be produced by John Davis, who did Norbit an Aragon.
But it looks like, according to everything else on here,
(39:36):
that it never went through. How just based on how
many games and nostalgia that they're trying to capitalize on,
I would bet someone out here in this town is
currently trying to pitch a SIMS game. No doubt that
someone is currently. I mean, as long as it's on
the level of this new Sonic The Hedgehog movie, I'll
be very happy. I wanted sim to look like weirdly human. Well,
(40:01):
it's live action, but I wonder if it would be
like what Disney is doing where it's like Lion King,
where it's like it's live action, but it's still all animated,
so like all the people are still all oh yeah, yeah,
so all of the Sims are still like highly c
g ied. But I also would feel bad because I
don't want to hear SIMS talk. Yeah, I don't want
to hear Sims speak English. But you know, people wouldn't
(40:22):
sit through an entire movie where they had to read
subtitles for someone, which is fascinating because they'll sit through
literal hours of gameplay, but I guess because they're well
and then people on Twitch will watch people playing game.
But I think it's that The cool thing about Similish
is you can imagine what they're saying. Yeah, you don't
have to understand it. But if it was the entire
dialogue of a film, you would kind of be missing something.
(40:44):
If I think there would be a part where they'll
be talking what we think is English, and then someone
else would be watching them from a far and being
like you know what I mean? Yeah right, well, yeah,
maybe it's one of those things where it's like a
Pokemon situation where somebody can understand them, and then eventually
the sim is I don't know, spoiler's no film, Chris,
(41:05):
you can give a spoiler. Okay, never mind, because I
know that they're going to do this. Um yeah, I
feel like they don't know. There's so many, honest together,
there's so many other video games to tackle before this one.
The idea of like someone from our world being trapped
(41:27):
as a sim is an interesting yeah. Yeah, and maybe
they can't get out someone controlling their life, yeah, someone,
and they're stuck and they have to live with these
boundaries and I think the thing that's interesting about the
SIMS is like the boundaries and the sims, like how
that world works is just like people know now even
if they've never played the game, they've seen enough meat
understand intuitively, how is the world functions? I did like
(41:51):
what you were saying that they need like consent in
order to take to bite somebody. Is that in most scenarios?
I don't. I don't know, but yeahs as far as
I know, like you need to ask, you need to
be like, hey, um do you want to like and
I also if you want to turn them into a vampire,
like either they have to ask you or you need
(42:12):
to ask them, and like, well you can be rejected
from a wu who Yeah that's true. Yeah, I was
telling Danny this. This is a fun SIMS fact is
the development team is female, which is the highest I
believe out of any video game development team as far
as the SIMS for lately interest which is still sad
that the highest is of women. I thought, like the
highest as likes me, like seventy or sixty is like no,
(42:34):
still forty. Yeah, it is a very fim like there's
a female empowered group behind the SIMS, which is why
it's very progressive. An interesting thing I know to speaking
of like the sort of feminist aspect when watching the
hundred Baby Challenge. It actually, Um, when you get pregnant,
like your SIMS, body actually changes if you've had multiple kids.
(42:54):
They don't just stay the same like you know, you
don't if you're like a skinny sim you don't just
stay skinny sm Your body actually changes permanently from having
children in the game the way that it doesn't realize,
which is really interesting. That's not something I've seen in
any sim iteration before. I feel like we could talk
about the SIMS for saying that, like we have so much,
we don't have enough time, and we have so many facts,
(43:15):
and so many people are going to be upset because
there's too many SIMS facts. No, there's so many SIMS
games and all the sim City games, and we're just
tackling the SIMS. Um, we'll have to have you guys,
will have to have you both back on the SIMS more.
We should just do like a whole like SimCity Spore.
We could have a whole conversation Spore the whole, like
(43:35):
will write podcast behind it. Yeah, Spore is amazing. If
you're not familiar. Spot is the most fascinating game development thing.
Like I'm wet thinking about it because it went so
wrong and it could have been like the best, most
amazing game ever. We will bring you both on. This
was just an intro for people to the Sims. They're
both heavily involved in this gameplay of this, and thank
(43:57):
you both for coming on. I know it was hectic
week for all of us, but we did it. And
happy E three everyone. Yeah, oh yeah, So Chris, did
you want to plug? Oh yeah, I want to plug.
So you can follow us at l A Gamers g
A y M E R M E r S And
we're having a Pride uh Slash E three party on
(44:18):
Tuesday of E three, which is the day that this
is going out, So go buy precinct. We we have
some free swag from a lot of different companies, and
we're gonna be raising money for Project Q, which is
a transgender wellness center in Los Angeles that helps teens
and kids transition. Yeah, I'll be there and you can
come and hang out with us and some stuff when
(44:41):
we're I think we're rappling a switch into PS four. Yeah, Claire,
where can everyone find you. You can find me on
the Internet in a variety of places. I am at
Maximum Claire on Instagram, at Clairemax on Twitter. You can
add Max Claire on the Origin Store if you want
to be my friend in play u sims and download
my sims crazy. Yeah, can we download you? So? The
(45:03):
funny thing is I was working on this like creation
of my best friend Molly and I to like play
the Strangervill game together, and I built us a gorgeous
you have a pink Victorian mansion. It's perfect, And I
made like the most perfect sim of her, and I
spent hours and I just could not make a sim
of myself that I liked. And I think it's some
of like some kind of thing of like not having
a clear vision of how I look in my head.
(45:25):
You have to go on fiber Yeah, somebody else. I
have to have somebody else. You should. I was just
like I have to just ask Molly, just like make
my sim. I made your sim. You make my sim
just like you can't. I can't be happy with the
sim of myself. Yeah, I am at Miss Danny Fernandez.
Thank you everyone for hanging out. If you and I
(45:46):
will figure out our schedules will be back together and uh,
I don't know. It's still good thing though, to be busy.
Being busy is good and as we always say, stay nerdy.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerve Assent. I'm
one half of your host Danny Fernandez. If he is
actually out today, Uh, he is working on a TV show. Um,
I guess that's what happens. Now that we are successful
huts down, we are trying to work with our schedules. Um,
and we will figure that out. We will figure that
(00:32):
out so that we're not tiktoking and taking turns. Wait
tiktoking was the wrong vert. That voice is Claire Max,
who is joining me today, Hello to talk about the Sims.
So excited what was your Yeah, So we're just gonna
hop right in. We're also going to be joined by
Christopher Smith Bryant, who was on our lgbt Q Gamer episode.
(00:56):
But um, the Sims, the Sims. This was my This
was like fan fiction come to life. Yeah, people live
out their fantasies a thousand percent. What like, when was
your first memory of when you got your hands on
a game? So I definitely I've played every single iteration
(01:20):
of this game since the first one. So I played one,
two or three and now four. I was literally playing
it last night. Um, so I it came out and
I think the first one came out in two thousands,
so I would have been like, I guess, yeah, um,
But before that, I played sim City, and I played
like other simulation kind of games like Roller Coaster, Tycoon
and totally rollers Freaking And I still play Planet Coaster,
(01:44):
which is like the big brother of Roller Coaster. Um.
But I really like those kind of games because I'm
terrible at anything that involves like combat or any kind
of like oh yeah, totally, I'm so bad at those.
So I always really liked the kind of like simulation
games that are chill and you can just like hang out.
So I definitely remember playing the first one and spending
way too much time just building my house and then
(02:06):
not even really playing, just just building houses like most
of so, I mean it is fascinating because like you know,
Minecraft is so big, but like that was the starting
point you know for people wanting to build, for like
building games really takes off. Yeah. Before that, I just
built houses with legos, so like a virtual it's the
virtual version of that. Um. For me, I was largely
(02:27):
into like animated cartoon games like Aladdin on Second Genesis
and like the Lion King game. I had that like
a CD ram of the Lion King game. Yeah, the
Disney games, and then of course I was super into
Mario and later Mario sixty four. Um mine were like,
I guess we don't like the cute seer games, the
(02:50):
animated ones I definitely played this year. I played a
lot of the girly, girly type of games. I had
one that was it was a Barbie game, but it
was just literally just Barbie makeovers and you just put yes, yes,
I remember. And so SIMS is also like a grown
up version of that totally. You just sit there and
make your sim for like hours. Yes, And and speaking
(03:10):
of making SIMS, we now have my lovely friend Christopher
Smith Bryant joining us. I'm sorry for being like, no,
it's it's chaotic here. We are all very busy. Yes,
we're all we're all well. And it's right before it's
weird because this is right before Pride and it's right
before E three. So for me, it's like the worst
(03:31):
week of my love. Oh no, I hear you. I
like have a book signing after this that I just
found out about today. I was like, oh, I, oh,
it's today. It's today, So we're all coming together to
talk about the SIMS. So, my name's Christopher Bryant. I
don't know if you need an intro, but yeah, I
worked for l A Gamers, which is a nonprofit. We
held like PlayStation's first E three after party. So when
(03:53):
Danny was talking about talking about the SIMS, is like,
this is perfect of my alley. Yeah, when was your
We're just talking about like your first introduction. When do
you first remember getting your hands on this game? Oh?
I got it when it first came out. I was like,
I was immediately. My dad I remember saw the poster
for it, and I've played sim City like I was
a huge will Right fan. I think I even played
(04:15):
like he had like an ant simulator game. Remember that
you do remember that? So I was like, really, I
remember my dad saw the box and I got it
and I was just obsessed immediately. Yeah, so I guess
we should tell people that have never played the SIMS
essentially what it was. Who are um, Well, yeah, so
(04:36):
it did come from William Wright, who is a video
game designer and co founder of the former game development
company Maxis and uh they created sim City, which is
kind of what brought him to prominence. And then after
and sim City had many different iterations, later renamed sim
City Classic. That was a city building simulation video game
(04:58):
and that actually released in nine Yes, that was way
before all of this. Oh my god. So the game
focuses on players operating as a mayor whose task is
to build up the city, um, providing basic transit links, power,
simplistic services for for residents. And then yeah yeah, yeah
(05:20):
yeah and sam along the lines if we were talking
about roller Coaster Tycoon, um, But like roller Coaster Tycoon
was easy, sim City was like it was hard. I
was like, this is stressed. I should just have a job,
like I just work. It really was stressful. But then
we had the SIMS, which was the first game in
the series. So it was developed by Maxis and published
by Electronic Arts. So did e A did they publish
(05:42):
it from the beginning? Do you know that it was
released for Microsoft Windows in February of two thousand, um
and essentially, so now you're playing as the virtual people
of this city. So why do you think people gravitated
towards SIMS that it is still so prevalent. I read
a thing online that equated it to like playing house,
(06:05):
Like when you're a little kid, you play house, You
know what I mean, And it's that kind of thing.
I guess. It's like a pretend life what you can
kind of do whatever you want. It's sort of open ended.
It's funny that you say that because the original name,
like the project name for the SIMS was called doll
House originally, and uh so the creation of the SIMS
happened when will Write went through a house fire and
(06:26):
he was having to like save things, redesign things, and
he was like, really, I don't know if you have
is that okay to talk about this? Okay? So he
I'm a huge fan of him, So he created, uh
this idea of like how he had this primal need
to figure out which furniture he needed how to redesign
a house, and that became kind of the basis behind
the SIMS was was this need, so he was like
(06:49):
creating this. Originally the game was called Doll House, and
everyone hated it, like they were like this is so stupid,
like who would like this? And when they showed it
at E three years ago, there was like a line
because they had this Max had a small little booth
and there was a line like that was so crazy.
It was going around to other booths. Like people were like,
this is unreal, So no one really believed in it
(07:11):
until it was first shown, and I think that you're right.
It became like almost like a like the game's Second Life,
which I also play. I have had an account for
seventeen years and second really yes, what can you tell
me the difference between the two. The biggest difference is
that the Second Life has absolutely no there's no there's
nothing that you ever have to do in second line,
(07:32):
So you don't have to eat, you don't have to
deal with like any kind of life needs. You can
literally just do whatever you want. And there are ways
to like play it so that you can create, you know,
role playing scenarios are like objects a lot of people
you role playing in in um, second Life its second
life online where you're talking to other people. So it's
it's kind of like, um, if you've heard of IMVU,
(07:54):
what second Life is better? Okay, So it's like, so
Second Life is more of like a role playing game,
where like an online role playing game, and the SIMS
is more like a simulation that it's. Second Life is
weird because it's it's really hard to describe. It's not
even necessarily a game. It can be a chat room,
it can be a role playing game, it can be yeah,
(08:14):
any kind of really whatever you want. Like I used
to be a vampire in second life, So I was
part of a vampire plan and you like actually had
to find other people to like feed on or else
you would wait, does that mean that you're ruining somebody
else's second life? No, so they had to be a
willing participant. You had to have to feed on them, Like, um, yeah,
but it was like that kind of thing. You could
(08:36):
choose to be a vampire. You could choose like there
are people who are furries or like it's and you
you have so much more freedom over creating your avatar,
even more so than you do in the SIMS because
you don't have to be human. You could be anything
or anyone that you want. Um. Has the SIMS ever
gone off of humans or is it always? Do you
have aliens and they have vampires. Now they've added expansions
(08:56):
where you can do that, and yeah, it is. It
is cool to see the progression of the make of
SIMS from like the SIMS one to now because now,
I mean, as as someone that's LGBT, like you can
now have transgender characters in the SIMS four, which is fantastic.
They remember they made an option where they're like, actually,
any clothes option is available for any Yeah, they didn't.
(09:17):
They used to filter them by like masculine or feminine clothes,
and now they give you that option, but it doesn't matter.
You can wear whatever you want. And they also do
the thing where, um, you can choose like a male
or female for your sim, but is an option in
the Creator sim to choose whether your sim can get pregnant,
whether they can get other sims pregnant, and even like
their voice and the way that they walk, you're not
limited by their gender. So if you like, you can
(09:39):
have a female sim with a deep voice, or a
male sim with a high voice, or like any combination
that you want, which is really cool, just like how
people are in real life. Totally, I wanted to go
back to will write because, like you all said, he
so he lost his home during the Oakland fire storm.
Of this is really fascinating because in our Lego episode,
(10:00):
um Ok Christiansen, who created Lego, also lost his home
and a fire. This is bizarre because I'm obsessed, you know, mean, Danny,
I'm obsessed Lego. I'm obsessed with the SIMS. I also
had a house fire. I don't know. I'm just saying
I am a prodigy necessary for Oh my gosh, this
(10:20):
is like all of y'all superhero backstories, like both on
the Spectrum and went through a house fire. So then
just become obsessed. So now I can say I knew
you before you created like the next big game. But
you are obsessed with building, Like your place is covered
in legos. Danny has been in my house. It's it's disturbing,
like there you can't there legos everywhere and giant buildings
(10:42):
and stuff. I'm obsessed with. That was my Another huge
part of the SIMS was like it's weird because it
is simulation. It's like you're you're kind of almost like
a little bit of second like where you're living vicariously
through these people a little bit. But also it's just
a building app it's a great he One of the
biggest inspirations for the SIMS were just at the time,
architecture tools. Yeah, I mean that's what it seems like.
(11:03):
I know people who use it to literally like plan
how they're going to decorate their their house. In real life,
you know, you build your house in the SIMS and like, oh,
what would look nice in this room? And you like
plan it out? So yes, so right said. He stated
that SIMS was actually meant as a satire of us
consumer culture, which is funny because you can buy things, yeah, right,
you can. I mean they use this what it's called
(11:24):
Similan similar and you you listen to even the music
and it's very like would you say, like nineteen fifties housewife. Yeah,
it has that feeling of like old timey elevator music,
but like happy peppy, like Homemaker is a very marvelous
Mrs masil Hinda kind of a very American consumer like
(11:47):
and it does kind of parody the thing of like
you want new things, you have these people that their
needs and their happiness determine, Like it's very nineteen fifties Americans,
it is. Yeah, it's very like even like your similar
be happier if they're in a room that's nicely decorated
it or like you buy them a new item or something. Well,
this is fascinating because he said that he took um
a couple of things. One was ideas from the nineteen
(12:08):
seventies seven architecture and Urban Design Book a pattern language,
but also American psychologist Abraham Maslow's nineteen forty three paper
A Theory of Human Motivation and his Hierarchy of Needs
and Charles Hampton Turner's Maps of the Mind to develop
a model for the game's artificial intelligence. So kind of
(12:30):
like what you were saying, like they might be happier
in a room full of people, they might be happier
if it's decorated nicely. They're like going off of what
would actually motivate people, and that's what they put into
the game. Yeah, and you do have like your basic needs,
like you have um, hunger, bladder, energy, social, and fun,
and you have to like before you can do anything else,
(12:51):
you have to make sure that you know you're which
is the mass of hierarch comm needs things like you
basic needs first and then like you build up to
other types of needs. So the SIMS is one of
the actually the most progressive games and the sinse that
I remember, it was like one of the first things
where you could have a dude woo who with another dude?
You know, but can you explain to people woo who
(13:14):
is don't um woo who is intercourse um? And uh.
I remember that was my introduction to gay sex. Really,
it was one of the first things where I was like, wait, wait, wait,
there's a dude who can do woo who with another dude?
And I remember when because it was a thing, no
one knew the rules of it. It's not like they
(13:35):
had clearly defined rules at first. Like I remember people
playing the game and realizing, oh, you can lock this
person in a room and burn them on fire and mysterious.
It was a sandbox. I don't think even the developers
knew everything that you could do in the game. Maybe,
but yeah, woo who I mean, it was a huge
deal because that's why I had a teenage rating, is
that there were some sexual things about it. To be clear,
(13:57):
you never see it. It's a blurred but the fact
that there's even implications, and there's the like almost a
real world type blurring, like it remember when you get naked,
like when you take a shower, you're just you're naked
in the shower, but it's like just pixel over like
you know. But at the at the two thousand's early
two thousands, people were like, yeah, well escape of course.
(14:20):
I also remember it was like Big Brother was really
in was like coming in and that like SIMS and
Big Brother was like paired for me. I guess it
was kind of also like the dawn of the reality
TV show kind of era, like watch other people live
their lives. Here's you know. It makes it came out
in a perfect time because it was right during Big Brother.
It also makes sense because it had such a long
development period why it took it came out the perfect time,
(14:43):
you know, and it took that long for people to
get on board. So you were talking about sandbox games,
and just to clarify for people what that is, it's
where the player has ability to create, modify, or destroy
their environment. And also there's no like they lack any
defined goals. Typically like Second Life would definitely be like
a pure sandbox game, right where you don't have to
(15:04):
do anything if you don't want to, you just have
the option to um. SIMS definitely has the sandbox element
in terms of like the building and the creating kind
of thing, but then there's also like the gameplay. Yeah,
I would say the earlier versions of the SIMS were
almost more sand boxing boxing in the sense that was
just a simulation. You would see people literally destroy the
environment almost but yeah, that's that's it. I definitely call
(15:26):
it like a sandbox simulation. Now it's turning a little
bit more into a role playing game, would you say
that a little bit actually? So the newest expansion that
just came out that I literally playing last night, UM,
it's called Strangerville, and it's really unique for the sims
because it's the first one that actually has UM, like
a role play storyline that you can play, So the
(15:47):
game has UM. In this expansion, there's like a mystery
in the town that you need to solve, Like townsfold
were acting really weird and there's like all these strange
plants around, and you can you have the option you
can just play normally if you want to, but you
have the option to give your sims like the aspiration
that they want to solve the stranger vill mystery, and
you can like get different like basically quests. They're not
(16:08):
they don't call them quests or anything. And at no
point do you have to do anything. You can go
as far in it as you want or not. But
you have the option to like talk to townsfolk and
learn things and go find items, and like you know,
you'll you'll talk to one guy who's like, well, I
can you know, give you a key card to the
Secret Lab if you'll bring me x y z amount
of things, like very much like a role playing kind
(16:28):
of game. Yeah. With the expansions, they've kind of gone
off from just being a simulator to just doing like
and there's also all of these other things and vampires
and yeah, and aliens and go. So the SIMS, the
original game that came out in two thousand, by March
two thousand and two had sold more than six point
three million copies worldwide, surpassing Missed as the best selling
(16:51):
PC game in history at the time, and it came
with many expansion packs. So we have to take a
really quick break and then we're gonna hop back into
The SIMS right after this, and we're back. I did
(17:12):
want to say another stat about this. So the success
of The SIMS has resulted in Guinness World Records awarding
the series numerous world records, including as most expansion packs
for a video game series and best selling PC game series,
with the sales estimate ranging from thirty six to fifty
million units, which I'm sure is only climbing at all times.
(17:32):
Oh yeah, So while we were on break Claire, you
were telling me about some of the compilation videos that
you can watch on YouTube. I guess it kind of
revealed a little bit of like a statistic side of humanity,
because people are obsessed with finding creative ways to kill
their sims, like different different kinds of things that you
can do. One yeah, I mean, I what's the worst
(17:54):
way that you've killed your sim? So I personally don't
like to kill my SIPs. I get to attach to them.
But one of the ones that I watched on YouTube,
which I thought was like crazy, is you have to
go to a fish shop, like out in the out
in the world. Have to go to a fish shop
and you have to have zero cooking skill and you
have to buy a recipe for puffer fishna geary, and
(18:16):
then you have to make the pupper fish nagarie. And
you have zero cooking skill and you make puppfer fish nageary,
it will be deadly to anyone who eats it. So
I watched a girl who threw a dinner party. She
made the pupper fish in geary and killed every one
of her guests like the Red wedding basically, and then
she just had like a line of because when you
when you die in the SIMS, the groom rep literally
shows up and like takes your soul away and then
(18:36):
you get an urn of like the dead sim. So
she literally had just like a line of urns of
all the people who were at her dinner party. Oh
my gosh, what about you, Chris. I mean my I
accidentally killed a SIM once and I remember like in
a house fire and for some reason they couldn't escape,
But it's because someone was doing something weird around the door,
Like there's like a weird really stupid Yeah, they're really stupid,
(18:59):
I mean, but basically I remember this is before YouTube
is out. I remember putting someone in a pool and
then there's like no ladder to get out, and I
was like, wait what wait, They're just gonna They're just
gonna drown. There's okay, they're gonna drown, Like I was like,
and then I like I lost them, and I remember
just being like what. So they actually people were so
obsessed with like putting people in pools and taking out
(19:20):
the ladders that they made it in the newest version
of the game that they can now climb out of
the pool without a ladder. So if you want to
kill your sim in a pool, you have to build
a fence around the pool. That's so weird. There was
another video I saw of a girl. She was annoyed
that her like teenage daughter Sim was ordering pizza too much,
so she trapped her in a room that was like
literally just a pool with a single square in the
(19:43):
middle of the floor with a long table on it,
and at the very end of the long table she
put a pizza. And the only place that the Sim
could stand to get out of the water was on
the far end of the table, away from the pizza,
so she could like look at the pizza. She could
smell the pizza, but she could not reach the pizza.
It was tortuous. Ever, such like I can imagine that
(20:04):
psychology professors like study what people do with their sims.
This is so this reminds me of that like college
experiment or whatever, where they like Stamford. Yes, yeah, yeah,
literally exactly that like once you're in power, how quickly
you try. It's a little bit frightening, it is, But
I've always tried to keep my sims and my tomagotchis alive.
(20:25):
I just want to put it out there. I don't
think the developers really intended it to be that sadistic.
I don't think so, no. I I guess that's just
do you think that it's fascinating they give you the
ability to kill them at all. I guess if they
wanted to make like a life simulator, right, they have
to have that kind of elements of like you gotta
keep them alive or there's consequences kind of thing. But
(20:46):
I don't know if they intended for people to exploit
it well. In the very first game was very much
like it's such a role playing game now. But I
feel at the at the very first and the sims
to which were the ones that were mainly developed by
Will write Um, they were much like like you would
just like develop things and just watch things happen, you
know what I mean? A little bit more and I
(21:08):
don't I think they didn't really know exactly like now
it's the game is informed by what people do, but
at the time they had no idea how people would
just react to this sandbox, right, And it was similar
to what you were talking about before, is it didn't
really come with instructions, so you didn't know until you
started playing, like how necessarily like they your sim might
die and you'd be like, well, why they die? They
(21:30):
had food, they had you know whatever, and you may
not know. I remember one time I was playing the
SIMS too, and there was an expansion for it called
Strange Town, which is kind of like the Strangerville that
they have now. And I had a mail sim and
he got abducted by aliens, which I did not know
could happen. He got abducted by aliens and he came
back and he was pregnant with an alien baby, and
he gave breath to an alien baby. And I was like, well,
(21:50):
I didn't know you could do that. But they had
to put real life stuff in there, so that really happens.
Let's talk about simlish their language. Yeah, so god, I
can't remember. It was developed actually in another game first.
But it's a mixture, like Will writes a genius like
he actually I don't remember SimCopter actually and sim coasters
(22:17):
he like he did. It wasn't like they're just like
like he wasn't. He actually listened to multiple languages and
try to develop some sort of like mixture between them,
and that's how he came up with with Similish at
least originally, which is crazy to me, Like, this is
crazy that his mind would think that there is I mean,
there is a pattern to the things they say, Like
(22:38):
I know, dag dag is hello, they say dag dag
for Hellou. But there is like a pattern, so it's
not just like random gibberish, Like you'll notice repeated phrases,
but no one really knows what those phrases mean. My
favorite thing is when they have a tie in with
a SIMS game and a pop star. I don't know
if you like, they did one for Lily Allen. I
think they did one for Katie Perry or something like that.
(22:58):
But they do tie in and then they'll have the
pop singer have to sing their song Oh my gosh.
And those are really enjoyable to randomly watch. I love that. So.
One of Wright's biggest concerns while developing the SIMS was
that giving the characters actual dialogue would have gotten extremely repetitive,
(23:20):
because even if Right were able to fit five CDs
worth of voice clips in the game, players would eventually
start hearing the same voice clips over and over again.
So he found that this problem persisted even if he
was using Navajo or Estonian. But because the gibberish of
Simlish was so far removed from any existing human language,
it was very difficult for players to find repeats in it.
(23:40):
So the team went out to record hundreds of voice
clips in Simlish, each with their own unique cadence. That's
something interesting because we the way that we talk, has
a certain cadence that's different than them um and emotional nuance.
Right wanted the player to be able to tell whether
sim is feeling flirtatious or upset, or laid back or tired,
based entirely on their tone and tempo. Yeah, and they
(24:02):
he was really smart in the sense that he developed
this game to be shipped to every country. Like I
remember they're saying there was someone saying that it was
a parody of American and he's like, well, it's more
like American TV culture than American nineteen fifties culture. Because
he's like, I wanted when people were going through that
they would get this whatever culture or from. So it's
cool that he even made like you said, it's like
(24:23):
the yeah, it's universal every I mean it is kind
of americanized TV culture or Western TV culture, but every
culture that play the game would get it. Another cool
thing is that you can actually talk to Alexa in
Similish and she answer, yes, I hope, I'm blowing you
all sims people mind you are? I knew you could
talk to her and um speak to her in Pikachu,
(24:44):
but I did not know you could speak to her,
And well you can. You can speak to her and
Similish and she'll translate it for you. That's amazing. That
makes me uncomfortable. Why I don't. I don't like speaking
to normal people, let alone, but I know I unpluged
her so much. I don't like when she goes off
(25:05):
when I'm when I'm not talking to her. Yeah, you're like,
actually press the button. It's like you're speaking in Similish
or whatever and you're like, I'm just trying to get
through my day. Oh okay. So it looks like the
Black Eyed Peas also provided music translated into Similish. Now, okay,
I'm not a singer, be a pop star. Didn't make
a sim of you? You did? Oh my gosh, I don't. Well,
(25:28):
we'll upload it. We'll upload it when this is really yeah,
we'll upload it this week. Um, you did make a
sim of me, so Claire. One of her specialties is
that she's really good at, like dead on making people.
I try, I try, my vest. It's actually really hard
to make a sim of someone, you know, especially because
you're like, oh no, what if they what if they
hate it? What if they're like that's what you think?
(25:49):
I look like? Like? You know what I mean this?
Remember like the Dove commercial, like where they're like, I'm
so ugly and then Dove's like, no, but here's an
artist strong. You you're beautiful. You know what that's like?
Like like I'm go, I remember you gave me like
your highlight h me like solid highlight on my cheeks,
(26:09):
which is the thing that I always tell my makeup
artists like I want glow. I want the glow. Um. So, Chris,
you were saying that YouTube kind of brought back I
brought more popularity with the sims. Yeah, just I mean
it's it's weird how now gaming is not like now
gaming not just with YouTube but Twitch and everything. Twitch
you have to watch it, but YouTube especially because that
(26:30):
was the YouTube era. It was like whoa, whoa, what
you're doing this with your sim? I didn't even know you, Like,
people were seeing things that they didn't even know where
possible through YouTube videos and then I mean even became
like there's a huge, huge market. I'm guilty of this.
I am at the point now in my life where
I don't have the time to play the SIMS as much,
but I would love sometimes to just get high and
(26:51):
watch people build house speed builds and just so relaxing
my o c D. Like I'm just like, oh my god,
this house is absolutely perfect. I love watching speed builds. Yeah,
and it's like that people are you can be. So
there's an unending amount of creativity to like what people
can make, even just using the stuff that comes with
the game, like not even including you know, custom items
(27:13):
and stuff. Just like people blow in my mind all
the time with what they can make. So let's talk
about SIMS three. So this is really fascinating. The game
is set twenty five years prior to the original game.
That to me is just interesting that they were like
and now we're in the future. There's also an expansion
for SIMS to recalled into the future where you can
literally like travel further in time into the future and
(27:35):
it's it's like Jetsons and I have actually questioned, what
is your favorite SIMS. Sorry, it's a little that it's
gonna get back on topic. What is your favorite SIMS game? Um,
I honestly think four is my favorite, just because I
really liked um too as well, and two is like
the one I played the most when I was a kid.
But I think what I like about for is that
everything I ever wished you could do in a SIMS
(27:57):
game you can kind of do now, And so it's
sort of like, Wow, I have I have everything I want.
The fourth one, wait, it says the second one is
also aged five years after the original game. That doesn't
make I think that the second one was aged after
the original game, like as far as like the people,
like as the actual Sims in the neighborhood and everything.
(28:18):
And is the third one a prequel to the first game?
Or this is the fourth one? The no, the fourth
one is the fourth one takes place in the present
day as far as I know, because they do have
like cell phones. And the third one is a prequel
to Simson Yeah, yeah, because they have the technology that
even they have in the game is like a little older.
So I'm weird in the sense that the Sims I
don't know the Sims three was one of my favorites
(28:40):
because you can just like the like now in the
SIMS four you click on a new lot, you have
to load, you have to click on whatever. And the
SIMS three, I feel like, was kind of the perfect
balance from the original development team to the new development
team where it was. But then the SIMS to the
SIMS Too was like will Write's baby, like I think
that was his last game before Spore and had all
(29:00):
that like charming. I loved Support too, but how all
that like charming weirdness that you can get without Will Write.
There's just something about him where it's like his involvement,
Like the SIMS Too is just like you can't get
that without him. Yeah, that's the quirkiness. That's like very specific.
So that described the SIMS to included things game features
such as like clear days of the week with weekends
(29:22):
when children would stay home from school in vacation days
when adults could take time off from work. Like we said,
it was set twenty five years after the first game,
so for instance, the Goth family has aged significantly with
bella Goth. Do you remember mysteriously vanishing dying at some
point in the twenty five year period, she's back now
she's a vampire. That makes sense. That actually trajectory makes
(29:46):
perfect sense. That's why she disappeared and now she's alive again.
And then so moving on to SIMS, I actually have
a quite qua. No please, who's your favorite nonplayable or
since the NSPC, But who's your favorite like sim that's
in developed? There are so many of them now. I
always love to hate Nancy land Grab. Everybody hates Nancy.
She's like the landowner of the SIMS. And she's like
(30:08):
the one who will evict you if you don't pay
your rent on time or don't pay you'll turn off
your power. Yeah, but she's just like she's a staple.
Do you remember the robot Butler? I do think I
think that was my favorite, the robot butler. My gosh,
because I always wanted ever since I watched the Gensens
or the people who take away your baby if you're
a bad Yeah, yeah, where did your baby go? In
(30:31):
one of them? There was also there were men in
black as well, and yes I remember that that like
they would come to your door if you something. Oh
my gosh, yes, this is like taking me back. I'm
sorry for taking over podcast. Let's talk about the SIMS.
Moving on the SIMS three, they had the Late Night
Expansion pack. Yeah, that was the person I think where
(30:53):
you could go out ahead town. Yeah, like if you
can experience the nightlife on a date, like a hot date.
Because in all the previous games, you were just stuck
in your house. You couldn't like if you want to work,
you just kind of disappeared and you didn't know where
you were going. But now you can go out into
the town and there's even different towns and you'll see
like other people's sims come into your town and like
(31:14):
come visit you, which is cool. I'm watching a series
on YouTube right now, um called the hundred Baby Challenge,
and it's you have the challenge I guess is you
have to create a sim like a matriarch, and she
has to have a hundred babies with a hundred different pints.
So it's basically just like getting your sim pregnant by
as many people as you can. But it's interesting because
(31:36):
when your kids grow up and move out, then you'll
like run into them in the town and they like
meet partners and they get married and they like grow
up and it's really crazy because sim's age so much
faster than normal people, Like you think you're meeting a
cute guy and it's at that's some southern town like
(32:00):
sun walks in while you're trying to flirt with some
new guy in a bar or something like. This is
a lot um. I love people's ambition. We have we
have to dick another quick break and then we're gonna
hop back into the city right after we are back
(32:24):
and clear. You were talking about how there are now
mods like people that have been able to update the
game and then you can play their additions. Yeah, so
it's been around, I think since the SIMS too. They've
had the Opportunity Forum. They call it custom content, and
so people can create their own items, their own clothing,
their own but even things like animations or like career
(32:45):
paths or like they can modify and create these things
that you can then download and pretty much all of
them are completely free and you can I have three
and a half gigabytes of just custom content that I've downloaded. Well,
I'm actually a big question and because e A is
an interesting company, how have they responded, because I know
(33:07):
they're also there's a lot of like pay to download
for these furnitures or whatever. How have they responded now
because the mudding thing has been such a huge part
of the SIMS history. Do you know, like has it
changed during the SIMS four because they're trying to sell packs,
furniture packs and stuff. I feel like they've just kind
of embraced it at this point because it's such a
huge part of the culture and it would be so
(33:28):
upset if they couldn't like do this anymore. Um that
there's they even have run like contests for custom content
and stuff. Oh, that's amazing. They do have the opportunity,
like in this game for you to upload things, you know,
your SIMS, your houses, whatever. You can upload them to
the gallery within the game, and within the game itself
people can download them from the Yeah, that's how you
(33:48):
feel about like totally different. But we did an episode
on fan films and sometimes the company will like block them,
take them down from YouTube. This is so weird because
they're fans, Like they're not on your level and endos
like that a lot, like any content with a Nintendo
they're like and off YouTube. But even an issue with
like fan art at cons in the past, people try
to like claim stuff and it's like, these are people
(34:10):
who love what you've made so much that they want
to be a part of it. But it only adds
more because in the fandom gets even bigger, like they
get you know, obsessive, and then they're they're the ones
that are backing you. They're the ones that are watching
your TV show, going to your movie, they're they're the
people that you don't. I would say it's actually more
so Japanese companies that I feel like are a little
bit like learning how to how to navigate that. Yeah,
(34:32):
I've seen that. I've seen that with toy that they're
trying to like okay American fluting. They're inviting like cause
players and fan film people to the like funamation even
the premiers and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, it's but
it's a really cool thing and it's an interesting, like
creative outlet for a lot of people. I guess that
(34:53):
you know you can take you can even download like
the existing items in the game and just make them
a different color or like put a different fabric on
them or whatever and change it up and make it
what you want. What are some of the cheats that
you all like doing? Motherload that gives you Yeah, gives
you all the money. That's what I always have to have.
There was a cheat and I can't remember the name
of it, but it like I think it's in the
(35:15):
simps to it it took down the nudity. They took
it down, everyone freaked out, and then they took it
down in the expansion afterward. Of course there are moths
now you can download their like, but it was just
nice to download. I would love if you took it
down and it was just like a Barbie doll, like
(35:37):
nothing right, there's anything there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a
cheat in there. I think it was in the simestery too,
called move objects, where you're not limited by like the
grid that's on the ground, which was always really annoying
because you're like, you can't fit a thing in where
you want it to go because you're stuck on this grid.
And then with the move objects you can literally just
put stuff wherever you want. So, speaking of the future
(35:59):
of the SIMS, because there's so many SIM games, we
could talk about all the different you know, two, three, four,
there are also sim Stories, SIM Carnival, sim Simba. Yeah, sims.
Do you remember my SIMS on the GameCube? Like Animal crossing. Yeah,
it was like should be like characters, so like cute
(36:19):
little How is the popular simscn like? Because I feel
like the SIMS for is a little less popular than
the SIMS three. It's more of its niche group rather
than being this global thing. Do you think is there?
Do you know anything about what's going because I haven't
really heard anything about, Like it seems like the SIMS
for brand is still pretty strong, it is. I know
they've been trying to do a lot of stuff with
(36:40):
like influencers now, so they run like social events where
they invite influencers in too, like play the new expansion
pack before it gets released and that kind of thing.
So they're i think really trying to lean into the
like social media act. Yeah, and meme culture, especially to
like if the SIMS leans into meme culture, I think
that will change things. There are so many SIMS memes.
I'm kind of worried about the future of the SIMS
because I'm gonna be honest with you, Like the SIMS four,
(37:01):
even though I like some of its changes, like, I
felt like it also lost me a little bit compared
to the SIMS three, where I feel like it's now
a little bit more of a role playing the game
than a simulation. It feels less of like the pure
SIMS game. Yeah, which I like, but it's not also
it's it's also not my favorite. So I am a
little bit more, especially with love e A. But they,
(37:22):
you know, there's sometimes you know, I I do wish
I miss will write, like I really wish that his
his humor and everything came back, because I do worry
that the next SIMS game will be more like micro transaction.
E like more worried about that. They they for the
most part avoided that, like having to buy expansion packs
(37:45):
or like that kind of thing. But I am a
little worried about, you know, implementing something or like oh
to you know, well, you can level up in your career,
or you can pay to to get to the top
of it. I could I could honestly see because of
e A's track or herd, I could see them going
into a just all free to play market, Like I
could see that. Um So I'm kind of a little
(38:06):
bit worried. But then I also think of like what's
going on with have you played Star Do Valley? No?
But I know of it. You know that's going to
be like your new crack, right, I haven't played it yet,
Like you play that and you're like and I'm done. Um, yeah,
I think there will be an indie developer that makes
the new the real you know what I mean, replacement
(38:28):
in our hearts, Yeah, recement. There's a level of nostalgia
though around it, especially for our generation. Um, that will
always probably exist. It is kind of crazy because they
announced way back in two thousand seven that they want
to do a live action film of the Sims, which
to me is so it's like it's yeah, yeah, well,
(38:51):
I mean it could be like like we're trapped in No,
I don't know, like the whole time the true was
it the Truman what's the show? Where the there's ways
to do that? I would watch a Sims movie if
it was so. The rights were bought by twentieth Century Fox,
which means that now Disney would be that making. Okay,
give us sims Land at Disneyland, Oh my gosh, everybody
(39:15):
who walks in gets like one of the little plumbob
little oh yeah, and so are they could have to
so would be like their version of Mouse. So it
was written by Brian Lynch, the man responsible for writing
the Scary Scary movie three interesting, and the film was
to be produced by John Davis, who did Norbit an Aragon.
But it looks like, according to everything else on here,
(39:36):
that it never went through. How just based on how
many games and nostalgia that they're trying to capitalize on,
I would bet someone out here in this town is
currently trying to pitch a SIMS game. No doubt that
someone is currently. I mean, as long as it's on
the level of this new Sonic The Hedgehog movie, I'll
be very happy. I wanted sim to look like weirdly human. Well,
(40:01):
it's live action, but I wonder if it would be
like what Disney is doing where it's like Lion King,
where it's like it's live action, but it's still all animated,
so like all the people are still all oh yeah, yeah,
so all of the Sims are still like highly c
g ied. But I also would feel bad because I
don't want to hear SIMS talk. Yeah, I don't want
to hear Sims speak English. But you know, people wouldn't
(40:22):
sit through an entire movie where they had to read
subtitles for someone, which is fascinating because they'll sit through
literal hours of gameplay, but I guess because they're well
and then people on Twitch will watch people playing game.
But I think it's that The cool thing about Similish
is you can imagine what they're saying. Yeah, you don't
have to understand it. But if it was the entire
dialogue of a film, you would kind of be missing something.
(40:44):
If I think there would be a part where they'll
be talking what we think is English, and then someone
else would be watching them from a far and being
like you know what I mean? Yeah right, well, yeah,
maybe it's one of those things where it's like a
Pokemon situation where somebody can understand them, and then eventually
the sim is I don't know, spoiler's no film, Chris,
(41:05):
you can give a spoiler. Okay, never mind, because I
know that they're going to do this. Um yeah, I
feel like they don't know. There's so many, honest together,
there's so many other video games to tackle before this one.
The idea of like someone from our world being trapped
(41:27):
as a sim is an interesting yeah. Yeah, and maybe
they can't get out someone controlling their life, yeah, someone,
and they're stuck and they have to live with these
boundaries and I think the thing that's interesting about the
SIMS is like the boundaries and the sims, like how
that world works is just like people know now even
if they've never played the game, they've seen enough meat
understand intuitively, how is the world functions? I did like
(41:51):
what you were saying that they need like consent in
order to take to bite somebody. Is that in most scenarios?
I don't. I don't know, but yeahs as far as
I know, like you need to ask, you need to
be like, hey, um do you want to like and
I also if you want to turn them into a vampire,
like either they have to ask you or you need
(42:12):
to ask them, and like, well you can be rejected
from a wu who Yeah that's true. Yeah, I was
telling Danny this. This is a fun SIMS fact is
the development team is female, which is the highest I
believe out of any video game development team as far
as the SIMS for lately interest which is still sad
that the highest is of women. I thought, like the
highest as likes me, like seventy or sixty is like no,
(42:34):
still forty. Yeah, it is a very fim like there's
a female empowered group behind the SIMS, which is why
it's very progressive. An interesting thing I know to speaking
of like the sort of feminist aspect when watching the
hundred Baby Challenge. It actually, Um, when you get pregnant,
like your SIMS, body actually changes if you've had multiple kids.
(42:54):
They don't just stay the same like you know, you
don't if you're like a skinny sim you don't just
stay skinny sm Your body actually changes permanently from having
children in the game the way that it doesn't realize,
which is really interesting. That's not something I've seen in
any sim iteration before. I feel like we could talk
about the SIMS for saying that, like we have so much,
we don't have enough time, and we have so many facts,
(43:15):
and so many people are going to be upset because
there's too many SIMS facts. No, there's so many SIMS
games and all the sim City games, and we're just
tackling the SIMS. Um, we'll have to have you guys,
will have to have you both back on the SIMS more.
We should just do like a whole like SimCity Spore.
We could have a whole conversation Spore the whole, like
(43:35):
will write podcast behind it. Yeah, Spore is amazing. If
you're not familiar. Spot is the most fascinating game development thing.
Like I'm wet thinking about it because it went so
wrong and it could have been like the best, most
amazing game ever. We will bring you both on. This
was just an intro for people to the Sims. They're
both heavily involved in this gameplay of this, and thank
(43:57):
you both for coming on. I know it was hectic
week for all of us, but we did it. And
happy E three everyone. Yeah, oh yeah, So Chris, did
you want to plug? Oh yeah, I want to plug.
So you can follow us at l A Gamers g
A y M E R M E r S And
we're having a Pride uh Slash E three party on
(44:18):
Tuesday of E three, which is the day that this
is going out, So go buy precinct. We we have
some free swag from a lot of different companies, and
we're gonna be raising money for Project Q, which is
a transgender wellness center in Los Angeles that helps teens
and kids transition. Yeah, I'll be there and you can
come and hang out with us and some stuff when
(44:41):
we're I think we're rappling a switch into PS four. Yeah, Claire,
where can everyone find you. You can find me on
the Internet in a variety of places. I am at
Maximum Claire on Instagram, at Clairemax on Twitter. You can
add Max Claire on the Origin Store if you want
to be my friend in play u sims and download
my sims crazy. Yeah, can we download you? So? The
(45:03):
funny thing is I was working on this like creation
of my best friend Molly and I to like play
the Strangervill game together, and I built us a gorgeous
you have a pink Victorian mansion. It's perfect, And I
made like the most perfect sim of her, and I
spent hours and I just could not make a sim
of myself that I liked. And I think it's some
of like some kind of thing of like not having
a clear vision of how I look in my head.
(45:25):
You have to go on fiber Yeah, somebody else. I
have to have somebody else. You should. I was just
like I have to just ask Molly, just like make
my sim. I made your sim. You make my sim
just like you can't. I can't be happy with the
sim of myself. Yeah, I am at Miss Danny Fernandez.
Thank you everyone for hanging out. If you and I
(45:46):
will figure out our schedules will be back together and uh,
I don't know. It's still good thing though, to be busy.
Being busy is good and as we always say, stay nerdy.
Nerdificent News
Hosts And Creators
Dani Fernandez
Ify Nwadiwe
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