Episode 61: The Sims

So excited what was your Yeah, So we're just gonna hop right in. We're also going to be joined by Christopher Smith Bryant, who was on our lgbt Q Gamer episode. But um, the Sims, the Sims. This was my This was like fan fiction come to life. Yeah, people live out their fantasies a thousand percent. What like, when was your first memory of when you got your hands on a game? So I definitely I've played every single iteration of this game since the first one. So I played one,

two or three and now four. I was literally playing it last night. Um, so I it came out and I think the first one came out in two thousands, so I would have been like, I guess, yeah, um, But before that, I played sim City, and I played like other simulation kind of games like Roller Coaster, Tycoon and totally rollers Freaking And I still play Planet Coaster,

which is like the big brother of Roller Coaster. Um. But I really like those kind of games because I'm terrible at anything that involves like combat or any kind of like oh yeah, totally, I'm so bad at those. So I always really liked the kind of like simulation games that are chill and you can just like hang out.

So I definitely remember playing the first one and spending way too much time just building my house and then not even really playing, just just building houses like most of so, I mean it is fascinating because like you know, Minecraft is so big, but like that was the starting point you know for people wanting to build, for like building games really takes off. Yeah. Before that, I just built houses with legos, so like a virtual it's the

virtual version of that. Um. For me, I was largely into like animated cartoon games like Aladdin on Second Genesis and like the Lion King game. I had that like a CD ram of the Lion King game. Yeah, the Disney games, and then of course I was super into Mario and later Mario sixty four. Um mine were like, I guess we don't like the cute seer games, the animated ones I definitely played this year. I played a

lot of the girly, girly type of games. I had one that was it was a Barbie game, but it was just literally just Barbie makeovers and you just put yes, yes, I remember. And so SIMS is also like a grown up version of that totally. You just sit there and make your sim for like hours. Yes, And and speaking of making SIMS, we now have my lovely friend Christopher Smith Bryant joining us. I'm sorry for being like, no, it's it's chaotic here. We are all very busy. Yes,

we're all we're all well. And it's right before it's weird because this is right before Pride and it's right before E three. So for me, it's like the worst week of my love. Oh no, I hear you. I like have a book signing after this that I just found out about today. I was like, oh, I, oh, it's today. It's today, So we're all coming together to talk about the SIMS. So, my name's Christopher Bryant. I don't know if you need an intro, but yeah, I worked for l A Gamers, which is a nonprofit. We

held like PlayStation's first E three after party. So when Danny was talking about talking about the SIMS, is like, this is perfect of my alley. Yeah, when was your We're just talking about like your first introduction. When do you first remember getting your hands on this game? Oh? I got it when it first came out. I was like, I was immediately. My dad I remember saw the poster for it, and I've played sim City like I was a huge will Right fan. I think I even played

like he had like an ant simulator game. Remember that you do remember that? So I was like, really, I remember my dad saw the box and I got it and I was just obsessed immediately. Yeah, so I guess we should tell people that have never played the SIMS essentially what it was. Who are um, Well, yeah, so it did come from William Wright, who is a video game designer and co founder of the former game development company Maxis and uh they created sim City, which is

kind of what brought him to prominence. And then after and sim City had many different iterations, later renamed sim City Classic. That was a city building simulation video game and that actually released in nine Yes, that was way before all of this. Oh my god. So the game focuses on players operating as a mayor whose task is to build up the city, um, providing basic transit links, power,

simplistic services for for residents. And then yeah yeah, yeah yeah and sam along the lines if we were talking about roller Coaster Tycoon, um, But like roller Coaster Tycoon was easy, sim City was like it was hard. I was like, this is stressed. I should just have a job, like I just work. It really was stressful. But then we had the SIMS, which was the first game in the series. So it was developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. So did e A did they publish

it from the beginning? Do you know that it was released for Microsoft Windows in February of two thousand, um and essentially, so now you're playing as the virtual people of this city. So why do you think people gravitated towards SIMS that it is still so prevalent. I read a thing online that equated it to like playing house, Like when you're a little kid, you play house, You know what I mean, And it's that kind of thing. I guess. It's like a pretend life what you can

kind of do whatever you want. It's sort of open ended. It's funny that you say that because the original name, like the project name for the SIMS was called doll House originally, and uh so the creation of the SIMS happened when will Write went through a house fire and he was having to like save things, redesign things, and he was like, really, I don't know if you have

is that okay to talk about this? Okay? So he I'm a huge fan of him, So he created, uh this idea of like how he had this primal need to figure out which furniture he needed how to redesign a house, and that became kind of the basis behind the SIMS was was this need, so he was like creating this. Originally the game was called Doll House, and everyone hated it, like they were like this is so stupid,

like who would like this? And when they showed it at E three years ago, there was like a line because they had this Max had a small little booth and there was a line like that was so crazy. It was going around to other booths. Like people were like, this is unreal, So no one really believed in it until it was first shown, and I think that you're right. It became like almost like a like the game's Second Life,

which I also play. I have had an account for seventeen years and second really yes, what can you tell me the difference between the two. The biggest difference is that the Second Life has absolutely no there's no there's nothing that you ever have to do in second line, So you don't have to eat, you don't have to deal with like any kind of life needs. You can

literally just do whatever you want. And there are ways to like play it so that you can create, you know, role playing scenarios are like objects a lot of people you role playing in in um, second Life its second life online where you're talking to other people. So it's it's kind of like, um, if you've heard of IMVU, what second Life is better? Okay, So it's like, so Second Life is more of like a role playing game, where like an online role playing game, and the SIMS

is more like a simulation that it's. Second Life is weird because it's it's really hard to describe. It's not even necessarily a game. It can be a chat room, it can be a role playing game, it can be yeah, any kind of really whatever you want. Like I used to be a vampire in second life, So I was part of a vampire plan and you like actually had to find other people to like feed on or else you would wait, does that mean that you're ruining somebody else's second life? No, so they had to be a

willing participant. You had to have to feed on them, Like, um, yeah, but it was like that kind of thing. You could choose to be a vampire. You could choose like there are people who are furries or like it's and you you have so much more freedom over creating your avatar, even more so than you do in the SIMS because you don't have to be human. You could be anything or anyone that you want. Um. Has the SIMS ever gone off of humans or is it always? Do you

have aliens and they have vampires. Now they've added expansions where you can do that, and yeah, it is. It is cool to see the progression of the make of SIMS from like the SIMS one to now because now, I mean, as as someone that's LGBT, like you can now have transgender characters in the SIMS four, which is fantastic. They remember they made an option where they're like, actually, any clothes option is available for any Yeah, they didn't.

They used to filter them by like masculine or feminine clothes, and now they give you that option, but it doesn't matter. You can wear whatever you want. And they also do the thing where, um, you can choose like a male or female for your sim, but is an option in the Creator sim to choose whether your sim can get pregnant, whether they can get other sims pregnant, and even like their voice and the way that they walk, you're not

limited by their gender. So if you like, you can have a female sim with a deep voice, or a male sim with a high voice, or like any combination that you want, which is really cool, just like how people are in real life. Totally, I wanted to go back to will write because, like you all said, he so he lost his home during the Oakland fire storm. Of this is really fascinating because in our Lego episode, um Ok Christiansen, who created Lego, also lost his home

and a fire. This is bizarre because I'm obsessed, you know, mean, Danny, I'm obsessed Lego. I'm obsessed with the SIMS. I also had a house fire. I don't know. I'm just saying I am a prodigy necessary for Oh my gosh, this is like all of y'all superhero backstories, like both on the Spectrum and went through a house fire. So then just become obsessed. So now I can say I knew you before you created like the next big game. But you are obsessed with building, Like your place is covered

in legos. Danny has been in my house. It's it's disturbing, like there you can't there legos everywhere and giant buildings and stuff. I'm obsessed with. That was my Another huge part of the SIMS was like it's weird because it is simulation. It's like you're you're kind of almost like a little bit of second like where you're living vicariously through these people a little bit. But also it's just a building app it's a great he One of the biggest inspirations for the SIMS were just at the time,

architecture tools. Yeah, I mean that's what it seems like. I know people who use it to literally like plan how they're going to decorate their their house. In real life, you know, you build your house in the SIMS and like, oh, what would look nice in this room? And you like plan it out? So yes, so right said. He stated that SIMS was actually meant as a satire of us consumer culture, which is funny because you can buy things, yeah, right,

you can. I mean they use this what it's called Similan similar and you you listen to even the music

and it's very like would you say, like nineteen fifties housewife. Yeah, it has that feeling of like old timey elevator music, but like happy peppy, like Homemaker is a very marvelous Mrs masil Hinda kind of a very American consumer like and it does kind of parody the thing of like you want new things, you have these people that their needs and their happiness determine, Like it's very nineteen fifties Americans,

it is. Yeah, it's very like even like your similar be happier if they're in a room that's nicely decorated it or like you buy them a new item or something. Well, this is fascinating because he said that he took um

a couple of things. One was ideas from the nineteen seventies seven architecture and Urban Design Book a pattern language, but also American psychologist Abraham Maslow's nineteen forty three paper A Theory of Human Motivation and his Hierarchy of Needs and Charles Hampton Turner's Maps of the Mind to develop a model for the game's artificial intelligence. So kind of like what you were saying, like they might be happier in a room full of people, they might be happier

if it's decorated nicely. They're like going off of what would actually motivate people, and that's what they put into the game. Yeah, and you do have like your basic needs, like you have um, hunger, bladder, energy, social, and fun, and you have to like before you can do anything else, you have to make sure that you know you're which is the mass of hierarch comm needs things like you basic needs first and then like you build up to

other types of needs. So the SIMS is one of the actually the most progressive games and the sinse that I remember, it was like one of the first things where you could have a dude woo who with another dude? You know, but can you explain to people woo who is don't um woo who is intercourse um? And uh. I remember that was my introduction to gay sex. Really, it was one of the first things where I was like, wait, wait, wait, there's a dude who can do woo who with another dude?

And I remember when because it was a thing, no one knew the rules of it. It's not like they had clearly defined rules at first. Like I remember people playing the game and realizing, oh, you can lock this person in a room and burn them on fire and mysterious. It was a sandbox. I don't think even the developers knew everything that you could do in the game. Maybe, but yeah, woo who I mean, it was a huge deal because that's why I had a teenage rating, is

that there were some sexual things about it. To be clear, you never see it. It's a blurred but the fact that there's even implications, and there's the like almost a real world type blurring, like it remember when you get naked, like when you take a shower, you're just you're naked in the shower, but it's like just pixel over like you know. But at the at the two thousand's early two thousands, people were like, yeah, well escape of course.

I also remember it was like Big Brother was really in was like coming in and that like SIMS and Big Brother was like paired for me. I guess it was kind of also like the dawn of the reality TV show kind of era, like watch other people live their lives. Here's you know. It makes it came out in a perfect time because it was right during Big Brother.

It also makes sense because it had such a long development period why it took it came out the perfect time, you know, and it took that long for people to get on board. So you were talking about sandbox games, and just to clarify for people what that is, it's where the player has ability to create, modify, or destroy their environment. And also there's no like they lack any

defined goals. Typically like Second Life would definitely be like a pure sandbox game, right where you don't have to do anything if you don't want to, you just have the option to um. SIMS definitely has the sandbox element in terms of like the building and the creating kind of thing, but then there's also like the gameplay. Yeah, I would say the earlier versions of the SIMS were almost more sand boxing boxing in the sense that was just a simulation. You would see people literally destroy the

environment almost but yeah, that's that's it. I definitely call it like a sandbox simulation. Now it's turning a little bit more into a role playing game, would you say that a little bit actually? So the newest expansion that just came out that I literally playing last night, UM, it's called Strangerville, and it's really unique for the sims because it's the first one that actually has UM, like a role play storyline that you can play, So the

game has UM. In this expansion, there's like a mystery in the town that you need to solve, Like townsfold were acting really weird and there's like all these strange plants around, and you can you have the option you can just play normally if you want to, but you have the option to give your sims like the aspiration that they want to solve the stranger vill mystery, and you can like get different like basically quests. They're not they don't call them quests or anything. And at no

point do you have to do anything. You can go as far in it as you want or not. But you have the option to like talk to townsfolk and learn things and go find items, and like you know, you'll you'll talk to one guy who's like, well, I can you know, give you a key card to the Secret Lab if you'll bring me x y z amount of things, like very much like a role playing kind

of game. Yeah. With the expansions, they've kind of gone off from just being a simulator to just doing like and there's also all of these other things and vampires and yeah, and aliens and go. So the SIMS, the original game that came out in two thousand, by March two thousand and two had sold more than six point three million copies worldwide, surpassing Missed as the best selling PC game in history at the time, and it came

with many expansion packs. So we have to take a really quick break and then we're gonna hop back into The SIMS right after this, and we're back. I did

want to say another stat about this. So the success of The SIMS has resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the series numerous world records, including as most expansion packs for a video game series and best selling PC game series, with the sales estimate ranging from thirty six to fifty million units, which I'm sure is only climbing at all times. Oh yeah, So while we were on break Claire, you were telling me about some of the compilation videos that

you can watch on YouTube. I guess it kind of revealed a little bit of like a statistic side of humanity, because people are obsessed with finding creative ways to kill their sims, like different different kinds of things that you can do. One yeah, I mean, I what's the worst way that you've killed your sim? So I personally don't like to kill my SIPs. I get to attach to them.

But one of the ones that I watched on YouTube, which I thought was like crazy, is you have to go to a fish shop, like out in the out in the world. Have to go to a fish shop and you have to have zero cooking skill and you have to buy a recipe for puffer fishna geary, and then you have to make the pupper fish nagarie. And you have zero cooking skill and you make puppfer fish nageary, it will be deadly to anyone who eats it. So

I watched a girl who threw a dinner party. She made the pupper fish in geary and killed every one of her guests like the Red wedding basically, and then she just had like a line of because when you when you die in the SIMS, the groom rep literally shows up and like takes your soul away and then you get an urn of like the dead sim. So she literally had just like a line of urns of all the people who were at her dinner party. Oh

my gosh, what about you, Chris. I mean my I accidentally killed a SIM once and I remember like in a house fire and for some reason they couldn't escape, But it's because someone was doing something weird around the door, Like there's like a weird really stupid Yeah, they're really stupid, I mean, but basically I remember this is before YouTube is out. I remember putting someone in a pool and then there's like no ladder to get out, and I was like, wait what wait, They're just gonna They're just

gonna drown. There's okay, they're gonna drown, Like I was like, and then I like I lost them, and I remember just being like what. So they actually people were so obsessed with like putting people in pools and taking out the ladders that they made it in the newest version of the game that they can now climb out of the pool without a ladder. So if you want to kill your sim in a pool, you have to build a fence around the pool. That's so weird. There was

another video I saw of a girl. She was annoyed that her like teenage daughter Sim was ordering pizza too much, so she trapped her in a room that was like literally just a pool with a single square in the middle of the floor with a long table on it, and at the very end of the long table she put a pizza. And the only place that the Sim could stand to get out of the water was on the far end of the table, away from the pizza,

so she could like look at the pizza. She could smell the pizza, but she could not reach the pizza. It was tortuous. Ever, such like I can imagine that psychology professors like study what people do with their sims. This is so this reminds me of that like college experiment or whatever, where they like Stamford. Yes, yeah, yeah, literally exactly that like once you're in power, how quickly

you try. It's a little bit frightening, it is, But I've always tried to keep my sims and my tomagotchis alive. I just want to put it out there. I don't think the developers really intended it to be that sadistic. I don't think so, no. I I guess that's just do you think that it's fascinating they give you the ability to kill them at all. I guess if they wanted to make like a life simulator, right, they have to have that kind of elements of like you gotta

keep them alive or there's consequences kind of thing. But I don't know if they intended for people to exploit it well. In the very first game was very much like it's such a role playing game now. But I feel at the at the very first and the sims to which were the ones that were mainly developed by Will write Um, they were much like like you would just like develop things and just watch things happen, you

know what I mean? A little bit more and I don't I think they didn't really know exactly like now it's the game is informed by what people do, but at the time they had no idea how people would just react to this sandbox, right, And it was similar to what you were talking about before, is it didn't really come with instructions, so you didn't know until you started playing, like how necessarily like they your sim might

die and you'd be like, well, why they die? They had food, they had you know whatever, and you may not know. I remember one time I was playing the SIMS too, and there was an expansion for it called Strange Town, which is kind of like the Strangerville that they have now. And I had a mail sim and he got abducted by aliens, which I did not know could happen. He got abducted by aliens and he came back and he was pregnant with an alien baby, and he gave breath to an alien baby. And I was like, well,

I didn't know you could do that. But they had to put real life stuff in there, so that really happens. Let's talk about simlish their language. Yeah, so god, I can't remember. It was developed actually in another game first. But it's a mixture, like Will writes a genius like he actually I don't remember SimCopter actually and sim coasters he like he did. It wasn't like they're just like

like he wasn't. He actually listened to multiple languages and try to develop some sort of like mixture between them, and that's how he came up with with Similish at least originally, which is crazy to me, Like, this is crazy that his mind would think that there is I mean, there is a pattern to the things they say, Like I know, dag dag is hello, they say dag dag for Hellou. But there is like a pattern, so it's not just like random gibberish, Like you'll notice repeated phrases,

but no one really knows what those phrases mean. My favorite thing is when they have a tie in with a SIMS game and a pop star. I don't know if you like, they did one for Lily Allen. I think they did one for Katie Perry or something like that. But they do tie in and then they'll have the pop singer have to sing their song Oh my gosh.

And those are really enjoyable to randomly watch. I love that. So. One of Wright's biggest concerns while developing the SIMS was that giving the characters actual dialogue would have gotten extremely repetitive, because even if Right were able to fit five CDs worth of voice clips in the game, players would eventually start hearing the same voice clips over and over again. So he found that this problem persisted even if he

was using Navajo or Estonian. But because the gibberish of Simlish was so far removed from any existing human language, it was very difficult for players to find repeats in it. So the team went out to record hundreds of voice clips in Simlish, each with their own unique cadence. That's something interesting because we the way that we talk, has a certain cadence that's different than them um and emotional nuance.

Right wanted the player to be able to tell whether sim is feeling flirtatious or upset, or laid back or tired, based entirely on their tone and tempo. Yeah, and they he was really smart in the sense that he developed this game to be shipped to every country. Like I remember they're saying there was someone saying that it was a parody of American and he's like, well, it's more

like American TV culture than American nineteen fifties culture. Because he's like, I wanted when people were going through that they would get this whatever culture or from. So it's cool that he even made like you said, it's like the yeah, it's universal every I mean it is kind of americanized TV culture or Western TV culture, but every culture that play the game would get it. Another cool thing is that you can actually talk to Alexa in Similish and she answer, yes, I hope, I'm blowing you

all sims people mind you are? I knew you could talk to her and um speak to her in Pikachu, but I did not know you could speak to her, And well you can. You can speak to her and Similish and she'll translate it for you. That's amazing. That makes me uncomfortable. Why I don't. I don't like speaking to normal people, let alone, but I know I unpluged her so much. I don't like when she goes off when I'm when I'm not talking to her. Yeah, you're like,

actually press the button. It's like you're speaking in Similish or whatever and you're like, I'm just trying to get through my day. Oh okay. So it looks like the Black Eyed Peas also provided music translated into Similish. Now, okay, I'm not a singer, be a pop star. Didn't make a sim of you? You did? Oh my gosh, I don't. Well, we'll upload it. We'll upload it when this is really yeah, we'll upload it this week. Um, you did make a

sim of me, so Claire. One of her specialties is that she's really good at, like dead on making people. I try, I try, my vest. It's actually really hard to make a sim of someone, you know, especially because you're like, oh no, what if they what if they hate it? What if they're like that's what you think? I look like? Like? You know what I mean this? Remember like the Dove commercial, like where they're like, I'm so ugly and then Dove's like, no, but here's an

artist strong. You you're beautiful. You know what that's like? Like like I'm go, I remember you gave me like your highlight h me like solid highlight on my cheeks, which is the thing that I always tell my makeup artists like I want glow. I want the glow. Um. So, Chris, you were saying that YouTube kind of brought back I brought more popularity with the sims. Yeah, just I mean it's it's weird how now gaming is not like now

gaming not just with YouTube but Twitch and everything. Twitch you have to watch it, but YouTube especially because that was the YouTube era. It was like whoa, whoa, what you're doing this with your sim? I didn't even know you, Like, people were seeing things that they didn't even know where possible through YouTube videos and then I mean even became like there's a huge, huge market. I'm guilty of this.

I am at the point now in my life where I don't have the time to play the SIMS as much, but I would love sometimes to just get high and watch people build house speed builds and just so relaxing my o c D. Like I'm just like, oh my god, this house is absolutely perfect. I love watching speed builds. Yeah,

and it's like that people are you can be. So there's an unending amount of creativity to like what people can make, even just using the stuff that comes with the game, like not even including you know, custom items and stuff. Just like people blow in my mind all the time with what they can make. So let's talk about SIMS three. So this is really fascinating. The game is set twenty five years prior to the original game. That to me is just interesting that they were like

and now we're in the future. There's also an expansion for SIMS to recalled into the future where you can literally like travel further in time into the future and it's it's like Jetsons and I have actually questioned, what is your favorite SIMS. Sorry, it's a little that it's gonna get back on topic. What is your favorite SIMS game? Um, I honestly think four is my favorite, just because I really liked um too as well, and two is like the one I played the most when I was a kid.

But I think what I like about for is that everything I ever wished you could do in a SIMS game you can kind of do now, And so it's sort of like, Wow, I have I have everything I want. The fourth one, wait, it says the second one is also aged five years after the original game. That doesn't make I think that the second one was aged after the original game, like as far as like the people, like as the actual Sims in the neighborhood and everything. And is the third one a prequel to the first game?

Or this is the fourth one? The no, the fourth one is the fourth one takes place in the present day as far as I know, because they do have like cell phones. And the third one is a prequel to Simson Yeah, yeah, because they have the technology that even they have in the game is like a little older. So I'm weird in the sense that the Sims I don't know the Sims three was one of my favorites because you can just like the like now in the SIMS four you click on a new lot, you have

to load, you have to click on whatever. And the SIMS three, I feel like, was kind of the perfect balance from the original development team to the new development team where it was. But then the SIMS to the SIMS Too was like will Write's baby, like I think that was his last game before Spore and had all that like charming. I loved Support too, but how all that like charming weirdness that you can get without Will Write.

There's just something about him where it's like his involvement, Like the SIMS Too is just like you can't get that without him. Yeah, that's the quirkiness. That's like very specific. So that described the SIMS to included things game features such as like clear days of the week with weekends when children would stay home from school in vacation days

when adults could take time off from work. Like we said, it was set twenty five years after the first game, so for instance, the Goth family has aged significantly with bella Goth. Do you remember mysteriously vanishing dying at some point in the twenty five year period, she's back now she's a vampire. That makes sense. That actually trajectory makes perfect sense. That's why she disappeared and now she's alive again. And then so moving on to SIMS, I actually have

a quite qua. No please, who's your favorite nonplayable or since the NSPC, But who's your favorite like sim that's in developed? There are so many of them now. I always love to hate Nancy land Grab. Everybody hates Nancy. She's like the landowner of the SIMS. And she's like the one who will evict you if you don't pay your rent on time or don't pay you'll turn off your power. Yeah, but she's just like she's a staple. Do you remember the robot Butler? I do think I

think that was my favorite, the robot butler. My gosh, because I always wanted ever since I watched the Gensens or the people who take away your baby if you're a bad Yeah, yeah, where did your baby go? In one of them? There was also there were men in black as well, and yes I remember that that like they would come to your door if you something. Oh my gosh, yes, this is like taking me back. I'm sorry for taking over podcast. Let's talk about the SIMS.

Moving on the SIMS three, they had the Late Night Expansion pack. Yeah, that was the person I think where you could go out ahead town. Yeah, like if you can experience the nightlife on a date, like a hot date. Because in all the previous games, you were just stuck in your house. You couldn't like if you want to work, you just kind of disappeared and you didn't know where

you were going. But now you can go out into the town and there's even different towns and you'll see like other people's sims come into your town and like come visit you, which is cool. I'm watching a series on YouTube right now, um called the hundred Baby Challenge, and it's you have the challenge I guess is you have to create a sim like a matriarch, and she has to have a hundred babies with a hundred different pints. So it's basically just like getting your sim pregnant by

as many people as you can. But it's interesting because when your kids grow up and move out, then you'll like run into them in the town and they like meet partners and they get married and they like grow up and it's really crazy because sim's age so much faster than normal people, Like you think you're meeting a cute guy and it's at that's some southern town like sun walks in while you're trying to flirt with some new guy in a bar or something like. This is

a lot um. I love people's ambition. We have we have to dick another quick break and then we're gonna hop back into the city right after we are back and clear. You were talking about how there are now mods like people that have been able to update the game and then you can play their additions. Yeah, so it's been around, I think since the SIMS too. They've

had the Opportunity Forum. They call it custom content, and so people can create their own items, their own clothing, their own but even things like animations or like career paths or like they can modify and create these things that you can then download and pretty much all of them are completely free and you can I have three

and a half gigabytes of just custom content that I've downloaded. Well, I'm actually a big question and because e A is an interesting company, how have they responded, because I know they're also there's a lot of like pay to download for these furnitures or whatever. How have they responded now because the mudding thing has been such a huge part of the SIMS history. Do you know, like has it changed during the SIMS four because they're trying to sell packs,

furniture packs and stuff. I feel like they've just kind of embraced it at this point because it's such a huge part of the culture and it would be so upset if they couldn't like do this anymore. Um that there's they even have run like contests for custom content and stuff. Oh, that's amazing. They do have the opportunity, like in this game for you to upload things, you know,

your SIMS, your houses, whatever. You can upload them to the gallery within the game, and within the game itself people can download them from the Yeah, that's how you feel about like totally different. But we did an episode on fan films and sometimes the company will like block them, take them down from YouTube. This is so weird because they're fans, Like they're not on your level and endos like that a lot, like any content with a Nintendo

they're like and off YouTube. But even an issue with like fan art at cons in the past, people try to like claim stuff and it's like, these are people who love what you've made so much that they want to be a part of it. But it only adds more because in the fandom gets even bigger, like they get you know, obsessive, and then they're they're the ones that are backing you. They're the ones that are watching your TV show, going to your movie, they're they're the

people that you don't. I would say it's actually more so Japanese companies that I feel like are a little bit like learning how to how to navigate that. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen that with toy that they're trying to like okay American fluting. They're inviting like cause players and fan film people to the like funamation even the premiers and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, it's but it's a really cool thing and it's an interesting, like

creative outlet for a lot of people. I guess that you know you can take you can even download like the existing items in the game and just make them a different color or like put a different fabric on them or whatever and change it up and make it what you want. What are some of the cheats that you all like doing? Motherload that gives you Yeah, gives you all the money. That's what I always have to have. There was a cheat and I can't remember the name of it, but it like I think it's in the

simps to it it took down the nudity. They took it down, everyone freaked out, and then they took it down in the expansion afterward. Of course there are moths now you can download their like, but it was just nice to download. I would love if you took it down and it was just like a Barbie doll, like nothing right, there's anything there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a

cheat in there. I think it was in the simestery too, called move objects, where you're not limited by like the grid that's on the ground, which was always really annoying because you're like, you can't fit a thing in where you want it to go because you're stuck on this grid. And then with the move objects you can literally just put stuff wherever you want. So, speaking of the future of the SIMS, because there's so many SIM games, we could talk about all the different you know, two, three, four,

there are also sim Stories, SIM Carnival, sim Simba. Yeah, sims. Do you remember my SIMS on the GameCube? Like Animal crossing. Yeah, it was like should be like characters, so like cute little How is the popular simscn like? Because I feel like the SIMS for is a little less popular than the SIMS three. It's more of its niche group rather than being this global thing. Do you think is there?

Do you know anything about what's going because I haven't really heard anything about, Like it seems like the SIMS for brand is still pretty strong, it is. I know they've been trying to do a lot of stuff with like influencers now, so they run like social events where they invite influencers in too, like play the new expansion pack before it gets released and that kind of thing. So they're i think really trying to lean into the

like social media act. Yeah, and meme culture, especially to like if the SIMS leans into meme culture, I think that will change things. There are so many SIMS memes. I'm kind of worried about the future of the SIMS because I'm gonna be honest with you, Like the SIMS four, even though I like some of its changes, like, I felt like it also lost me a little bit compared to the SIMS three, where I feel like it's now a little bit more of a role playing the game

than a simulation. It feels less of like the pure SIMS game. Yeah, which I like, but it's not also it's it's also not my favorite. So I am a little bit more, especially with love e A. But they, you know, there's sometimes you know, I I do wish I miss will write, like I really wish that his his humor and everything came back, because I do worry that the next SIMS game will be more like micro transaction.

E like more worried about that. They they for the most part avoided that, like having to buy expansion packs or like that kind of thing. But I am a little worried about, you know, implementing something or like oh to you know, well, you can level up in your career, or you can pay to to get to the top of it. I could I could honestly see because of e A's track or herd, I could see them going into a just all free to play market, Like I could see that. Um So I'm kind of a little

bit worried. But then I also think of like what's going on with have you played Star Do Valley? No? But I know of it. You know that's going to be like your new crack, right, I haven't played it yet, Like you play that and you're like and I'm done. Um, yeah, I think there will be an indie developer that makes the new the real you know what I mean, replacement in our hearts, Yeah, recement. There's a level of nostalgia though around it, especially for our generation. Um, that will

always probably exist. It is kind of crazy because they announced way back in two thousand seven that they want to do a live action film of the Sims, which to me is so it's like it's yeah, yeah, well, I mean it could be like like we're trapped in No, I don't know, like the whole time the true was it the Truman what's the show? Where the there's ways to do that? I would watch a Sims movie if it was so. The rights were bought by twentieth Century Fox,

which means that now Disney would be that making. Okay, give us sims Land at Disneyland, Oh my gosh, everybody who walks in gets like one of the little plumbob little oh yeah, and so are they could have to so would be like their version of Mouse. So it was written by Brian Lynch, the man responsible for writing the Scary Scary movie three interesting, and the film was to be produced by John Davis, who did Norbit an Aragon. But it looks like, according to everything else on here,

that it never went through. How just based on how many games and nostalgia that they're trying to capitalize on, I would bet someone out here in this town is currently trying to pitch a SIMS game. No doubt that someone is currently. I mean, as long as it's on the level of this new Sonic The Hedgehog movie, I'll

be very happy. I wanted sim to look like weirdly human. Well, it's live action, but I wonder if it would be like what Disney is doing where it's like Lion King, where it's like it's live action, but it's still all animated, so like all the people are still all oh yeah, yeah, so all of the Sims are still like highly c g ied. But I also would feel bad because I don't want to hear SIMS talk. Yeah, I don't want

to hear Sims speak English. But you know, people wouldn't sit through an entire movie where they had to read subtitles for someone, which is fascinating because they'll sit through literal hours of gameplay, but I guess because they're well and then people on Twitch will watch people playing game. But I think it's that The cool thing about Similish is you can imagine what they're saying. Yeah, you don't

have to understand it. But if it was the entire dialogue of a film, you would kind of be missing something. If I think there would be a part where they'll be talking what we think is English, and then someone else would be watching them from a far and being like you know what I mean? Yeah right, well, yeah, maybe it's one of those things where it's like a Pokemon situation where somebody can understand them, and then eventually the sim is I don't know, spoiler's no film, Chris,

you can give a spoiler. Okay, never mind, because I know that they're going to do this. Um yeah, I feel like they don't know. There's so many, honest together, there's so many other video games to tackle before this one. The idea of like someone from our world being trapped

as a sim is an interesting yeah. Yeah, and maybe they can't get out someone controlling their life, yeah, someone, and they're stuck and they have to live with these boundaries and I think the thing that's interesting about the SIMS is like the boundaries and the sims, like how that world works is just like people know now even if they've never played the game, they've seen enough meat

understand intuitively, how is the world functions? I did like what you were saying that they need like consent in order to take to bite somebody. Is that in most scenarios? I don't. I don't know, but yeahs as far as I know, like you need to ask, you need to be like, hey, um do you want to like and I also if you want to turn them into a vampire, like either they have to ask you or you need to ask them, and like, well you can be rejected from a wu who Yeah that's true. Yeah, I was

telling Danny this. This is a fun SIMS fact is the development team is female, which is the highest I believe out of any video game development team as far as the SIMS for lately interest which is still sad that the highest is of women. I thought, like the highest as likes me, like seventy or sixty is like no, still forty. Yeah, it is a very fim like there's a female empowered group behind the SIMS, which is why

it's very progressive. An interesting thing I know to speaking of like the sort of feminist aspect when watching the hundred Baby Challenge. It actually, Um, when you get pregnant, like your SIMS, body actually changes if you've had multiple kids. They don't just stay the same like you know, you don't if you're like a skinny sim you don't just stay skinny sm Your body actually changes permanently from having children in the game the way that it doesn't realize,

which is really interesting. That's not something I've seen in any sim iteration before. I feel like we could talk about the SIMS for saying that, like we have so much, we don't have enough time, and we have so many facts, and so many people are going to be upset because there's too many SIMS facts. No, there's so many SIMS games and all the sim City games, and we're just tackling the SIMS. Um, we'll have to have you guys, will have to have you both back on the SIMS more.

We should just do like a whole like SimCity Spore. We could have a whole conversation Spore the whole, like will write podcast behind it. Yeah, Spore is amazing. If you're not familiar. Spot is the most fascinating game development thing. Like I'm wet thinking about it because it went so wrong and it could have been like the best, most amazing game ever. We will bring you both on. This was just an intro for people to the Sims. They're both heavily involved in this gameplay of this, and thank

you both for coming on. I know it was hectic week for all of us, but we did it. And happy E three everyone. Yeah, oh yeah, So Chris, did you want to plug? Oh yeah, I want to plug. So you can follow us at l A Gamers g A y M E R M E r S And we're having a Pride uh Slash E three party on Tuesday of E three, which is the day that this

is going out, So go buy precinct. We we have some free swag from a lot of different companies, and we're gonna be raising money for Project Q, which is a transgender wellness center in Los Angeles that helps teens and kids transition. Yeah, I'll be there and you can come and hang out with us and some stuff when we're I think we're rappling a switch into PS four. Yeah, Claire, where can everyone find you. You can find me on the Internet in a variety of places. I am at

Maximum Claire on Instagram, at Clairemax on Twitter. You can add Max Claire on the Origin Store if you want to be my friend in play u sims and download my sims crazy. Yeah, can we download you? So? The funny thing is I was working on this like creation of my best friend Molly and I to like play the Strangervill game together, and I built us a gorgeous you have a pink Victorian mansion. It's perfect, And I made like the most perfect sim of her, and I spent hours and I just could not make a sim

of myself that I liked. And I think it's some of like some kind of thing of like not having a clear vision of how I look in my head. You have to go on fiber Yeah, somebody else. I have to have somebody else. You should. I was just like I have to just ask Molly, just like make my sim. I made your sim. You make my sim just like you can't. I can't be happy with the sim of myself. Yeah, I am at Miss Danny Fernandez.

Thank you everyone for hanging out. If you and I will figure out our schedules will be back together and uh, I don't know. It's still good thing though, to be busy. Being busy is good and as we always say, stay nerdy.