" The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 3: The Sims The Digital Antiquarian
The Digital Antiquarian
A history of computer entertainment and digital culture by Jimmy Maher
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The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 3: The Sims
07<br>Aug
This article tells part of the story of Maxis Software.
I don’t think people realize how much tactical and strategic forethought goes into their daily lives. There’s a whole subconscious time-efficiency layer in our lives. In essence, real-time strategy is our lives.
— Will Wright
On the morning of October 19, 1991, two weeks after writing his last bit of code for SimAnt, Will Wright climbed out of bed and smelled smoke. Looking out the window of his home in the Oakland Hills of California he saw a dense black cloud blowing in from the east. He called emergency services, who informed him that the culprit was a grass fire that was under control.
But after his morning shower, the smoke was worse than ever; great acrid plumes of the stuff were engulfing the house and seeping past the window frames, making it hard to breathe. The emergency-services number now yielded only a busy signal.
Wright gathered up his wife Joell and their five-year-old daughter Cassidy and bundled them into the family car along with a neighbor couple. They shot down the road under a rain of ashes and cinder, choking on smoke so thick that it was all Wright could do to keep the car’s tires on the pavement. Finally, they burst out of the maelstrom into blessedly clear air. Wright continued holding the accelerator down until they were well away. He guesses that, had they been five minutes slower getting away, their names would all have been added to the list of 25 victims of the Oakland Firestorm of 1991.
A week passed before the family could return to the charred remnants of their house, still smouldering there under a glowering autumn sky. There was virtually nothing left — except for the ants, that is. (Wright was rather primed to notice them…) "The interesting part was to find that I wasn’t really attached to much," Wright says. "I started assessing my material needs: a toothbrush, underwear, a car, a house… I was surprised how I didn’t miss stuff. The fact [that] we got out and none of our family was hurt seemed much more important."
Wright found himself asking,
What is life made of? Rarely do you do that in your real life. When something like this happens you get a big picture. Where do I want to live? What sort of things do I need to buy? You see your life almost as a project in process. When you’re embedded in your day-to-day life, you don’t get that perspective. I started to wonder about all the things we have and how we purchased them for a reason. Why do we need X or Y or Z? Why do we think something will make [us] happier? It almost comes down to Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs.
A period of reassessment like this might end for some people in a decision to climb a mountain, walk a camino, quit a job, write a novel, join a charity, or move into a monastery. But Will Wright wasn’t that sort of man; he was someone who thought in systems and algorithms. He wondered if there was a game — no, a simulation, or maybe just a software toy — lurking in the prospect he was now facing in the real world, that of assembling the material components of day-to-day life from scratch. Back at work at Maxis, he sat down in front of his computer to find out. His first three games since co-founding the company — SimCity, SimEarth, and SimAnt — had been simulations of complex systems with thousands of incidental living actors. Could you simulate the spaces and clutter of individual lives instead?
It would take him eight and a half years to answer that question affirmatively. The belated result of his close encounter with the Oakland Firestorm would be The Sims, the best-selling line of boxed computer games in history. Some would celebrate the series for offering a whole new vision of what games could do and the subject matter they could tackle, drawing in tens of millions of new players who would never have given SimCity — much less Diablo or Starcraft or any of the other hardcore standard bearers — a second glance. Some would condemn it for being just another empty monument to conspicuous consumption and shallow egotism, of a piece with the "reality" shows that were suddenly inescapable on American television screens. In the final reckoning, of course, it was a little of both.
Stories of how The Sims came to be have a tendency to fall into some well-worn patterns. We are told how Will Wright, the brave and pioneering creator, had to fight for his dream against the unimaginative suits who surrounded him for the better part of a decade, until he finally got to enjoy sweet validation as he watched it turn into the biggest game ever. There is something to this telling of the tale, but it’s missing a lot of nuance. First and foremost, it...