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I'm currently reading the book "Game On!" About video game history, and had to verify.

When initially designing The Sims, Wright spent a great deal of time researching the fan community of the hugely successful Quake and Quake 2. "I was amazed at the time people were pouring into making their own custom levels," he told Wired. "So with The Sims, we wanted to make it possible to modify everything. Players could use it as a storytelling platform."

https://www.shortlist.com/news/15-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-sims-4

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[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 14 points 21 hours ago

Me: I wonder what Will Wright is up to these days?

Wikipedia:

At GalaVerse on December 11, 2021, Wright announced a new project, in partnership with Gala Games, called VoxVerse. Wright said VoxVerse will be a blockchain game, where players will be able to create areas to explore and interact with and share these with other players of the game, incentivizing creators through the ability to trade or sell their works as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using cryptocurrency. Wright stated that the use of blockchain and NFTs are mechanisms needed to support the vision he has, but has no interest in selling NFTs directly to players as other blockchain games or NFT schemes have had done in the past.

Me: oh.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 6 points 18 hours ago

once got interviewed by a guy who used to be lead dev on the classic F1 games (pre EA) and nowadays he just runs a team that makes horse racing simulations for casinos.

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 5 points 19 hours ago

😭

If I had a nickel for every time a 90s-2000s developer is now into Blockchain...

Do I have two nickels or three?

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 5 points 18 hours ago

I searched "Peter Molyneux NFT" because my first thought was, if any of them are on the NFT grift it'll be him.

First result lol.

[-] SilverShark@beehaw.org 22 points 1 day ago

This is awesome. He said indeed also that he had himself a lot of fun designing levels and places for video games, so he though making a video game out of the very process of designing a level would be cool.

A project from Will Wright that always fascinated me is SimAnt, a game from 1991 where you build an ant colony.

[-] brsrklf@jlai.lu 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, apparently SimCity itself was the result of Will Wright working on an helicopter shoot'm up and realising he had fun making maps for it.

That's an interesting starting point for codifying a whole genre of games.

[-] INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone 6 points 1 day ago

Sim ant was so awesome at the time, holy shit.

[-] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I lost entire weeks of my childhood playing at being an ant.

Now that I've typed that out, ~~bug~~ big chunks of my childhood suddenly make more sense.

Edit: dammit. I'm leaving that typo because it's perfect.

[-] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

Building a world was quite novel back then.

[-] DdCno1@beehaw.org 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Subjectively at least - and this might be rose-tinted glasses influencing my judgment - it feels like it was more common, that certain genres were almost expected to come with an accessible level/map editor. I think I spent more time with the one from Age of Empires than the actual game.

[-] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 2 points 19 hours ago

Farcry and farcry 2 were my map editors of choice

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I remember finally getting my hands on the editor for the Build engine after a few years of making maps in Doom and Heretic and had thought 3D level design was only something super geniuses could do... Until Hammer showed it was just the garbage UI/UX of Build lol

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 3 points 19 hours ago

Oh man I remember how incredible Hammer was.

I built my college campus! (And never showed anybody because this was during the Columbine era)

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I'm glad that when I made my high school for Counter-Strike, it was back in 1.6 and not more recently. Heard about a kid who did the same for CSGO just a few years ago and he got expelled and I think he was arrested because they saw it like "terrorist planning" or some bullshit...

[-] threeduck@aussie.zone 7 points 1 day ago

Also I understand his house burnt down in the late 20th century, and the joy of rebuilding/furnishing was another motivation for the game.

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 1 points 19 hours ago

Yep! That was the story in the book. He grabbed his wife and neighbor, and when they returned, everything was burned to the ground!

He originally wanted it to be about a game where people interacted with furniture to feel things, and it was called Dollhouse. But play testers found watching their Sims more fun.

this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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