What is supposed to be new, different in The Sims 3?
By popular demand (well, one request), I’m writing up my notes on Richard Evans’ talk from AIIDE. Richard Evans is currently working at EA/Maxis on the Sims 3. He talked about how the work they’re doing to make each Sim unique and distinct. They’re goal is to make them more individual and more social at the same time. They have a large pool of discrete traits. Each Sim gets a selection of about five from the pool of traits. Some traits are mutually exclusive, for example, a Sim can be modest or have a big ego. A Sim can hate TV or love TV. They’re doing their work on the game mechanics in a 2D prototype. It’s a simple sprite world with box graphics, but the simulation it’s running is complete. Richard showed us several demos of the topics he was discussing in action. He had a Sim that hated TV and one that loved TV. It resulted in a funny setup where one Sim would turn on the TV and the other would promptly turn it off. Besides individual traits, another big addition is that the Sims a
