A portion of a Wired interview with Will Wright...
Wired: In a Wired interview in January 1994 (issue 2.01), you mentioned a project you were working on in which players could guide simulated characters through their daily lives. You said it offered “tools to design what is basically a dollhouse,” but you feared that “a dollhouse for adults may not be very marketable.” That game ended up being The Sims.
Wright: The dollhouse concept is what The Sims started out as. You were designing architecture at a human scale, and the game was scoring the usefulness and efficiency of your design. I soon realized that to test the spaces, we had to have little people living in these structures, walking around and making decisions.
Full interview here
Wired: In a Wired interview in January 1994 (issue 2.01), you mentioned a project you were working on in which players could guide simulated characters through their daily lives. You said it offered “tools to design what is basically a dollhouse,” but you feared that “a dollhouse for adults may not be very marketable.” That game ended up being The Sims.
Wright: The dollhouse concept is what The Sims started out as. You were designing architecture at a human scale, and the game was scoring the usefulness and efficiency of your design. I soon realized that to test the spaces, we had to have little people living in these structures, walking around and making decisions.
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So at first, the main "The Sims" gameplay was actually the Architecture and Buying part of the game?
Interesting. No wonder those were so well polished in the final product.
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