Sims 2: Nightlife Interview Rod Humble and Tim LeTourneau give us the scoop. by _Tom McNamara_ (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
April 6, 2005 - Although there is a vocal group of gamers who turn their noses at the idea of yet another Sims expansion pack, there's no denying that this is popular stuff. And as we learned below, the Sims appeal is even more broad than you might expect. Don't be surprised if your neighbor or roommate, who was just poo-pooing The Sims the day before, sneaks home with a copy. In light of the recent announcement of Nightlife we were able to sit down with Rod Humble, new to Maxis but not to gaming, and Tim LeTourneau, who's working on Nightlife and also did Hot Date for the original The Sims. So read on for the scoop, with a topping of hot nuggets. IGNPC: So, tell me about yourself. What were you doing before you went over to Maxis? Rod Humble: Well, before here, I was running Studio One, Sony Online, which is the EverQuest studio, which did EverQuest Online Adventures, EverQuest II, and we incorporated PlanetSide towards the tail-end, as well. IGNPC: And how long had you been over there? Rod Humble: I was there for--let me see--five years. And before then, I was at Virgin, where I made Subspace. And before that at Game Tech, where I worked on lots of Wheel of Fortune games. IGNPC: So what made you decide to go over to Maxis? Besides a fat paycheck or something like that. Rod Humble: [Laughs] Actually--I figured out that about half of my career, ever since Subspace, working exclusively on online games…I wanted to get back to games that were more about a single-user experience. IGNPC: What was your reasoning behind that? Just in terms of spreading creative wings, and not wanting to lose touch with--without sounding too wanky--the full repertoire of creative thought processes. You know, there's a big difference between making a game for one person on the other side of the keyboard who maybe wants to play and have fun for twenty minutes, versus an online world where you have to support the population of a city, constantly. And, you know, nothing wrong with that sort of game--I'm really glad to see Sony still doing really, really well, I love those guys…For me, it was just a chance to do something different. (http://media.pc.ign.com/media/739/739565/img_2702445.html) IGNPC: But it was an amicable departure? Rod Humble: Oh, gosh yes. IGNPC: So, what attracted you to the Sims 2 franchise in particular? Rod Humble: To me, it's because it's such an exciting user creativity tool. I think one of the exceptional things about the Sims product it's a game where you play 50% of it in your head, and 50% of it on the monitor, so you can tell your own stories. I find that to be a really interesting vein that we can explore. So, for example, the Sims I'm playing at the moment: A secret agent has come to spy on the servant, who lives in a shack at the end of town, and he joined the police department to get an inside track to work his way up inside the organization to spy on them. And in my head, I have a secret radio in the bookshelf. Then he meets a girl at the police department who's in the SWAT team, marries her, falls in love, and wants to do paintings of her, and maybe is changing his mind--that's really not the sort of gameplay you get in other products. Some of it, of course, is not part of the game--that's stuff that's going on in my head. What I'd like to do is, going ahead, for each expansion pack to have extra signposts and stakes in the ground that allow users to have more of those stories going on in their heads, and encourage it. IGNPC: That's one of the things I noticed about Sims 2, when Dan [Adams] did that series on the family--he created the IGN editors as a family--and he was just able to go off, explaining all these things that were going on. It was absolutely hilarious. Rod Humble: And 90% of it, like I say, is just the user telling stories, but that's kind of the point. ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
