THE HISTORY OF: THE SIMS™

The Sims, a franchise that has sold over 100 million copies across its various releases, is one of those rare games that can only have been possible because of the developer it came from; The Sims would never have happened if not for Maxis. While the story of how the original Sims actually came to be is fairly well reported at this point, what isn’t so well known is how the mishmash of developers at Walnut Creek, California helped to shape the franchise into what it is today. “SimCity was really the engine that powered the independent Maxis studio,” recalls Charles London, who was hired very early on for the project as art director.

“And there were a constellation of games at that time that went along with it: SimSafari, SimAnt, SimTower, SimLife, SimEarth. They had various levels of success, but none of them even approached the magnitude of SimCity.” The success of the city-building game had propelled Maxis – and with it Will Wright – into the spotlight, and though efforts were made to bank on that success, Will was still working on projects and ideas that primarily interested him. In 1991, after the release of SimAnt and inspired by Christopher Alexander’s 1977 book on architecture and urban design, A Pattern Language, Will set about creating a game about architecture. The core purpose of the game was to build an effective house, a structure whose design and layout would facilitate the behaviour of the characters within. “Early on it just felt kind of peculiar, you know?” says Chris Trottier, assistant producer on The Sims, working closely with Will to help with the game’s creation. “Will’s goals for it was that it was about efficiency and architectural layout and that the people were just there as a byproduct, the people were almost what measured