Gamespot recently interviewed Ben Bell, The Sims 3 executive producer.
GS: We understand that the game features a continuous neighborhood and no loading times, but there won’t be multiple neighborhoods as in The Sims 2. Tell us a bit about this decision. How will it change what different players do with the game once they get it in their hands?
BB: There is one neighborhood, and it is pretty amazing. We’ve been working exclusively on this one neighborhood, Sunset Valley, for the last few years. There have been many versions of it. Some ideas were scrapped, while others survived for a while until we had a better idea. This town is bigger and richer than anything we’ve made before. We really wanted to make something that would blow people away, and we wanted to do more with the town than we have in the past.
No two towns will ever be the same after one generation in The Sims 3. As I mentioned, every sim has complete AI throughout their life. You’ll see people grow up, go to school, fall in love, get married, get jobs, move out, have families, grow old, and pass away. It’s also possible to change all of the sims in your town, so you can fill the town with whoever you like…celebrities, yourself, your friends, characters from your favorite show, favorite band or sports team, or anyone you can imagine!
GS: As players create their sims, they will now be able to select five personality traits that will help define their dispositions. How will this new system let players create characters with more-defined personalities…and more importantly, how will it do a better job of letting players re-create the personalities of themselves, their friends, or their favorite celebrities? What are some extreme personalities we’ll see in The Sims 3?
BB: There are over 70 personality traits that players can choose from. When you choose traits, they are represented as a simple word that you might use to describe someone you know, so it’s easy to understand what they will do in the game. What makes traits so powerful is that they can change the game in profound ways. You’ll see different behaviors, interactions, advantages, and goals depending on the traits that your sims have. Just to name a few examples of more extreme traits, you can let your sims be insane, evil, kleptomaniac, paranoid, brave, hates kids, genius, and more…
GS: How much dedication does it take to reach the pinnacle of your respective career ladder? Are there any shortcuts to the top?
BB: If you play your cards right, you might be able to get to the top of more than one career in a lifetime, but it would take a lot of hard work, and your sim would need the right traits. Workaholic sims will be happy if they live at the office, so that might be a good way to go. There are definitely some shortcuts, and your sims will get opportunities from time to time that give them a boost.
GS: What can you tell us about the community features and sharing options players can use to build and share with their friends and with the larger Sims fan base?
BB: The Sims 3 players will have unprecedented freedom to customize the look of their game. A player with creative aspirations and no technical training or knowledge can make changes to the look of just about everything in their sim’s life, right in the game. We call the technology Create a Style. In the past, fans made their creations outside of the game and then shared them on the exchange. We wanted to give the power that our artists have to the players.
The process of getting creations online is easier than ever. The Sims 3 launcher helps you install and manage custom content so that you don’t have to hunt around for directories or anything like that. Finally, The Sims 3 community is completely new and there are some incredible tools, including a Web-based video-editing tool so that players can make movies from the videos they capture in the game.