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TS3 Creator's Camp: Day 5, 10:30
Before I ran off a little early yesterday to welcome Tug to the campus and prepare for the TSR dinner at the hotel, I spent some time with Ben Bell, Senior Producer of The Sims 3. A couple of us reporters at the event also got some time to throw some questions at him so rather than quote him word for word I figured I'd summarise some of the things I learned from him yesterday. I didn't grab a picture of Ben (you've all seen him from the videos anyway), so for this post you get to see the Atrium on campus (taken from EA's own Starbucks).
I asked Ben about his favourite features of the game. His top two would be the trait system which he personally spent a great deal of time on, researching behavioural stuff and building the stereotypical and exaggerated facial animations for each which you see when assigning the trait in CAS and during game play when that trait rears its head in the characters behaviour. He also loves the introduction of bicycles to the game, being a cyclist himself he loves to see Sims ditch the driveway and cars for a bicycle rack by the house!
I then went on to features that they talked about in game development but didn't make it into the final version. He said there were many but focussed on the video capture features. He's happy with the video tools as they are in the base game but is aware that there is much more they can do to improve on that aspect of storytelling and the use of the game for Machinima. Maybe that will get picked up on in an upcoming pack.
I was then keen to know about any feature of the game that caused much debate or controversy in the team. Apparently the layout of the town, Sunset Valley, went through a dozen or so designs before everyone eventually agreed or agreed to disagree on it. Also heavily debated was the needs system which replaces the old style of eating, sleeping, peeing and washing etc., even down to how it should affect the way Sims will get along on their own without human interaction. Then there was the User Interface, which Ben estimates is on something like version 30!
Lastly, to put Ben on the spot a bit by bringing up a rather contentious issue from the users, I asked him where he thinks the level of facial detail sits in the scale between game and too real for comfort, given that they have moved away from caricature and more towards portrait. His facial expression said it all, it was clearly a big discussion point among the team and one of the hardest things to balance in game design. They wanted users to be able to make Sims look as close to their intended model or their imagination desires but without going too close to photorealistic.
The technology is clearly available to make Sims photorealistic but Sims 3 intentionally falls short to avoid what Ben called "total detail distraction", while managing to maintain extreme expressions and realistic movement. Sims 3 Sims, as detailed as they are, try to maintain the look of the Sims that came before them. If you look closely at the eyes for example, you see the "old simminess" as Ben calls it, in an attempt to preserve generations before them!
Hope you find some of that interesting. I'm off to hunt for coffee.
/Steve
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