Life Simulator

Overview

Many videogames can categorized as one kind of Simulation or another; a First Person Shooter game like Goldeneye could be seen as a simulation of a spy experience or a Driving Game like Grand Theft Auto could be a simulation of experiencing an urban environment from a car. Life Simulators (or Artificial Life Games), on the other hand, are a sub-genre of the more general title of Simulation Games and are games in which the player focuses on sustaining and maintaining life as an objective. While many games require not dying in order to win, Life Simulators differentiate themselves as the goal is generally not only to survive the game, but rather to thrive within it. To this point, Ernest Adams mentions in his book, Fundamentals of Game Design, that Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, has referred to his work as a “[s]oftware toy … entertainment software that you just play around with, without trying to defeat an opponent or achieve victory.” While a player can certainly experience a “victory” in an Artificial Life Game (in The Sims, gaining skill points or money or even working all the way up a career path), these goals are usually determined by the player rather than the game.

Adams also clarifies the definition of Life Simulators further, writing that “[ty]pically, [Artificial Life] games focus on maintaining and growing a manageable population of organisms, each of which is unique.” Within the vast genre of Simulation Games, Adams’ definition of Artificial Life Games helps set some boundaries: the player not only endeavors to keep some sort of organism alive, but these beings must be at least somewhat individualized. Thus, games like SimCity, SimTown, or SimEarth, though important in the history of Simulation Games, lack this element of individualization and are therefore better, and more specifically, classified as a Construction and Management Sim.

History

Though some disagree with the designation of John Conway’s game, Life (1970) as the first Life Simulator Game, the genre has gained great popularity and recognition in the wake of Will Wright’s creation, The Sims, in 2000.

Life

Life was quite simple a simple game in which a player sought to support cells in a two-dimensional world, following very basic rules in order to keep the cells alive, sustaining cell life by avoiding over or under crowding the cells. Conway himself took his inspiration from as early as the 1940s when mathematician John van Neumann expressed the desires to create a device that could show respawning in this way. Over different levels, the player creates increasingly difficult patterns with the cells, still within the rules of the conditions in which the cells can respawn or die. Though Greg Costikyan, in his article “I Have No Words & I Must Design,” disagrees with defining Life as a game, saying that, “despite the evocative name, it's merely an exploration of a mathematical space,” whether or not Costikyan is correct in his depiction of what is and is not a game, in Life, the player manages the maintenance of a life form, albeit a slightly less individualized one than Adams’ definition requires. In spite of this, Life inspired other Life Simulator games and therefore is a key part of the genre’s history.

Little Computer People

In 1985, David Crane came out with Little Computer People (essentially a Dollhouse Game), which allowed players to control the motions of a little man living his life in his house. The little man could interact with the player, informing him or her that his needs were not being fully met, or playing games with the user.This game was a success, despite the fact that some players felt that it lacked objective. As in the later, similar game, The Sims, the avatar is capable of performing tasks without prompting from the player, though successful maintenance of his life requires player intervention. Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, has cited Little Computer People as an importance influence on his own work.

Dating Sim

Around this time, the first Dating Sims, such as Tenshitachi no gogo. The player engages through the avatar of a teenage boy who must manage the affections of several women at once, including one he seems to have willed into being and two of his stepsisters), also started becoming popular, later developing even further into its own complex and robust sub-genre of Simulation Games.

Artificial Pets

In the mid to late- 1990s, the popularity of artificial pet games rose and games like Tamagatchi and Petz, in which the player raises and cares for a virtual pet, became a new representation of Artificial Life Games. Additionally, online games that were a bit larger in scale than a Tamagatchi, such as Neopets, enjoyed great popularity as users could navigate the sizable virtual Neopets world, play games, and care for their pet at the same time.

The Sims

In 2000, Will Wright’s company Maxis moved past the Construction and Management Sim like SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimTown (among others), that they had been creating from 1989 and throughout the 1990s. The 1990s were a popular time for the Construction and Management Sim and Maxis contributed greatly to that landscape, eventually creating games (SimCity 3000 (1999) and SimCity 4 (2003)) so advanced that players felt alienated. When they moved on to create The Sims, they already had a dedicated base of players who ingested their games as quickly as they could produce them and had time and resources to spend which they had been previously focusing on improving and deepening the Construction and Management Sim. The Sims was released in 2000 and sold over 16,000,000 copies around the world, far more than any game that had come before it. Since its initial release, Maxis (and later after they purchased Maxis, Electronic Arts Games) has produced numerous expansion packs for the original game, allowing Sims to go on vacation or have pets, as well as the further iterations of The Sims 2 (2004), and its expansion packs, and The Sims 3 (2009), and its expansion packs. Each iteration of The Sims expands on graphics and capabilities in design and gameplay for the users. The Sims 4 is forthcoming.

The Sims is often referred to as a Sandbox, or Open World game, due to the opportunities for design and customization.