#103
7th Aug 2022 at 4:56 AM
Last edited by LUCPIX : 8th Aug 2022 at
4:43 PM.
MAXIS was bought by Electronic Arts in 25th of July, 1997, precisely 25 years ago.
Swallowed by the highly stressful endeavor of pursuing the development of a big title that could somehow keep up with the good reputation that
SimCity 2000 brought to the company, not without its fair share of trials and errors, EA's former big "LBs", Lucy Bradshaw and Luc Barthelet, were particularly thrilled when they heard the ideas that the people at Maxis had in mind — however, still short of some extra spiritual/financial support in order to put those in practice; that, including, oddly enough, a certain
Dollhouse/X/Jefferson/TDS/you-name-it project (later renamed to a more Domestic Comedy-fashioned
"The Sims"), the one that none of Will Wright's co-workers gave two shits about until that moment! On the other hand, EA's top authorities did not see the charm behind life Sims at first. By very little, their traditionalist roots made them to decline for good a game "where you have to clean toilets". Of course, one of the secret ingredients that made "The Sims'" pitch palatable was the developers' desire to make the game as customizable as possible, preparing the terrain for the spontaneous formation of a big creativity-based community, entirely accommodated for the infinite activity of sharing with pure win-win benefits. The community has made
The Sims a winner at the time it was needed in order to prove its own publisher that it wasn't that far-fetched that a game of Sims' caliber should be shipped, after all, plus the own The Sims team's endeavor in programming licensed custom content tools whose subsequent artifacts originated the very first Sims fan sites, many months prior to the game's de-facto launch, catalyzing a marketing boom that has put the game in the mainstream radar faster than you can say "sul, sul", and no-one has never again questioned MAXIS importance! You'd probably guess the sound of the emerging coins was what convinced EA to prioritize
The Sims and invest their commercial faith in it like hell ever since it's received the attention it deserved from the world. And the saga continues.
But, along with that, shit obviously hits the fan, every now and then: The creativity autonomy that was the fabric of
The Sims' player education worked so magnificently well and blossomed so many different fun user-made creations that, in a way, one could say that it went all against EA in no time. Comparable to the Greek figure of Daedalus (who, though one of the most acclaimed architects around, still felt extremely uncomfortable at the sight of his innocent nephew's natural talent, ultimately causing Daedalus to murder him), it's almost as though EA feels constantly threatened at the idea of Simmers achieving a state of modding virtuosity to the point it can minimally eclipse the "official" productions. Which, perhaps, justifies their old deliberate resistance in applying custom-content facilities for The Sims Online (by the way, making the playing experience extremely null as consequence) and most recently, refraining you from transforming your useful modding talents into an extra fund supplier so you can deposit your valid capabilities as a coder/artist into something that can potentially save one's life, and/or pay those damn debts, leading to audience alienating cycles back-to-back. Provided, of course, you are doing something that it's worthy being paid for!
We want to believe that we should now experience a silent turning point when it comes to how the community is bound to perceive their value as creators, more than we ever did in all these twenty-three years of creating (if we properly start counting from 1999), be you a 3D modeler, a programmer or "regular" consumer of anything Sim. Only God can explain this weird star alignment here, but now, the 25th anniversary of EA's Maxis acquisition, funnily enough, coincides with the day this solo HI-SIM project, intrinsically dedicated to the understanding of the super interesting roller-coaster that The Sims' development adventure is (that this whole thread is a sorta Head-Quarter of), is surprisingly considered eligible to raise onto an academy-leveled "fair use" condition, enough for us to be one of the people in this planet to be handed Edith: the original neurons behind the original game, the resource editor of the visual programming language SimAntics that orchestrates the intelligence behind The Sims 1, its interface and its world (Wait, what? Did you really think your SIMS were the ones who knew what to do at all given circumstances?), in the context of suiting our The Sims History lifelong studies the best it can. Most notoriously, it's in fact such a big deal that Electronic Arts has been overprotecting Edith under several nasty legal conditional branches against anyone who happens to provide or download this program publicly, so in the most sincere respect and safety for those at Maxis who were there since the franchise's baby steps + the whole community (including, of course, they who gifted us the tool: you know who you are!!) , we won't do anything but deliberately document its most noteworthy aspects until otherwise allowed to get the collectivity involved with this brilliant artifact that we are still figuring out how to master.
Until then, we reiterate how we feel that it's a brand new time for The Sims scene, though you perhaps are feeling unheard as a Simmer. You probably been suspecting as you grew up that EA has a love/fear relationship with you, and we're here to tell you that maybe they should! As a solo and embryonic project, should the knowledge that our little HI-SIM/"Sims 1 Beta Discussion" (though I
hate hate hate hate using the term "beta" as a generic synonym for "pre-release" nowadays, ha!) produces serve as a direct indication of where you can go to, and what can be achieved when you are unconditionally hustling for something you are passionate about. Most importantly, though, shall our current (and future) efforts, undoubtedly the most important and frightening ones this thread is covering since its #1 post, wholeheartedly sign to YOU and the "ones above" that the Simmer fan base is awesome by being (hopefully always) resilient, never short of creative stamina, and pretty good at this whole business of never keeping the mouth shut until they get what they want. Fuck knows who this thread is reached to, but I will try and be with you. Metaphorically speaking, they planted that Monolith out there at Maxis' day 1. No wonder its logo used to be the Moon's darker side. Damn!
The Sims is a beautiful wormhole and we celebrate o.g. MAXIS for this
...and for everything else, sure
Signed,
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Post dedicated to @ed95 and SuperLegal, as, like, always!
Today's Highlight: EDITH (C) 1997, MAXIS — by Will Wright, Jamie Doornbos, Eric Bowman, Jim Mackraz & Don Hopkins
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tle61NrBmyA - #01: Demonstration of a scrapped (but half-functional) Quick Meal preparing interaction for children Sims, with proper animations and all;
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueg-ujK19VE - #02: Demonstration of an earlier repairing interaction for Stereo objects, when they, in fact, are one of the few electronic items that never break;
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RplCCKOK7I&t=33s #03: Terrain Tweaker Demo;
Chances are that you, o High-Simulation-and-Everything-that-englobes-it rat, already read a little bit about Edith. In fact, as something that is remarked as some kind of humanity cliché when it comes to good things that made their way to reality, it all started with a girl.
Edith was the fourth and final iteration of something that had been developed for this virtual dollhouse ever since it was but a modest SimCity 2000 add-on, previously called in a myriad of generic ways, like ObjEdit, TDSEdit (TDS standing for Tactical Domestic Simulator) and ObjMaker! But, in the end, they fundamentally work in the same vein of, among other wacky things, orchestrating the brains of Sims and their four-quarter world (or, better, the smarts from objects, making the characters as dumb as possible) through a surprisingly fun visual language based on (deliberately or not) convenient family-tree-akin windows that make even the most coding-chicken kinda to see how the cause-and-effects game behind programming can be kewl. In fact, it's such a playground, goddamn it! These days, Edith is oftentimes credited as a reference material from the own masterminds behind the game and a few academic enthusiasts, and was upgraded several times in order to meet the needs from different The Sims builds and, later on, the neo-sim-sapiens of The Sims 2's AI...
"Edith"'s name came from Edith Bunker — the word-of-mouth (and, more realistically, articles plus the own SimAntics wiki) have it that she was the #1 Sim ever made for the game, sometime in 1997, in a not-so-shiny prototype for a pre-EA The Sims whimsically titled as "Jefferson", a minimalist shout-out to USA's former president. Along with her, a certain Archie Bunker, in all his unpolished and polygonal charm, rules the scene, and probably makes you wonder "oh, shit, aren't those also the names of the characters from that supercheesy All in the Family sitcom, notoriously revolutionary for touching upon 20th Century-unfriendly topics such as homosexuality, racism, politics and all???" well, in a way... so is our own The Sims, isn't it??
Turns out that Mrs. Bunker, designed by former SimCity artists Jenny Martin and Susan Green, made them Maxoids so melted in love that it was more than enough to repurpose the SimAntics editing tool after her, and become what it is today.
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Courtesy of
Kult Cover Disks,
Retromags and
Abandonware France.
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Ever wondered about the musical essence of
SimsVille, the unplayable Sim that everyone loves?
Some gems at Jerry Martin's vault will satisfy, in excerpts, your listening curiosity.
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