New interview

We recently had a chance to chat about The Sims 3 with MJ Chun, associate producer at The Sims Division. Here she tells us how the development team took risks to push PC's bestselling franchise in a fresh direction, explains what's being worked on following the game's three month delay, and lets us in on its new community features.

There are so many Sims expansions and releases that, for non-dedicated followers, it can be a little hard to keep up. What's distinctly new about The Sims 3 and how does it push the franchise in a fresh direction?

Chun: I think it pushes the franchise along. One of the core things about it is that the Sims are smarter and have more depth to them. The personality traits are really powerful because for me it's where the gameplay, the storytelling and the customisation all come together.

So you can make a neurotic vegetarian who happens to be a perfectionist and is a computer whiz, or is childish. The other day I made an evil kleptomaniac who is a genius, ambitious and a hopeless romantic.

One of the criticisms levelled at The Sims 2 is that it focuses more on time management than character development. Is that something you've directly tried to address?

Chun: Absolutely yeah, and I think it came about in many ways indirectly when we considered what's fun about games, and Sims games in particular. It's less about managing needs as much, like I have to get my Sim to work on time or I have to feed my Sim because it's that time and hungry is at 20 percent or something, or I have to queue up six interactions perfectly or whatever, it was more like I should feed my Sim because they're cranky and they're not going to do as well at work if they're hungry. But the flip is, you know what, I'm going to have them do this other thing and be cranky, it's fine, that's a decision I want to make.

The Sims is designed as a family-friendly franchise, but if I wanted to go down an evil path when creating my Sim, how nasty could I be?

Chun: One of the Lifetime Wishes is gold digger and that Sim has a desire to see the ghost of a wealthy spouse. I was playing the gold digger and one of the wealthier Sims in town happened to be married so I became friends with his wife and invited her to my place. I kept my cooking skill low so I set a fire on the lot and she burnt to death, and therefore I got to move in on her [widow]. It's really as creative as you want to be.

There are other things you can do to torture your Sim. The classic drowning is still in effect.

The Sims boss Rod Humble has spoken of the studio's mission to make "games that innovate and take creative risks". What risks have you taken with The Sims 3?

Chun: One of the things that I think is risky is whether or not people will find that the town feels alive to them. I think it's a risk because you control your Sim and traditionally it has been about your home lot and now there's this open world.

I think some people are going to find that it's too much and that they want that level of control back, and that some people are going to be disappointed and want more. That's a little bit of a risk and I'm interested in seeing what the community thinks about it.
Can you elaborate on the geography of The Sims 3 and how it has been opened up?

Chun: Phillip [Chun's Sim] can just walk across the street now and that's actually a really powerful moment. You can peek in and see what you neighbours are doing and then walk over and hang out with them which you've never been able to do before. For me this is like, 'Oh my god, it's the town and it's all connected.' It has impact to whether or not he's friends with his neighbour.

How important are graphics to the franchise?

Chun: It's one of those things that we grapple with on any Sims product, but especially The Sims 3. What does the Sim look like takes the team several iterations. You don't want to cross the uncanny valley, you don't want something that looks creepy and at the same time you don't want too cartoony either so stylisation is, I think, something really important to The Sims.

Also, ultimately, as much as the artists on the team and maybe even producers and designers want everything to look pretty, it's a Sims game and it's really important for people to be able to make ugly Sims.

Why was the decision made not to allow users to bring their old Sims creations to the new game?

Chun: One of the core reasons is that the art is built completely differently. We actually looked at porting over assets from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3, especially because we had such a wealth of content, but then we realised that it was taking as much time or longer to change it to a new pipeline and I think for most people building something from scratch means you think it through, so you're familiar with it.

Trying to take something that somebody else made, or even if you made it but in a different paradigm, and trying to convert it over is a mess. We did bring some of the animations over and it was really interesting because some of them we just ended up remaking and some of them worked and so it was a real trial and error [process].

From a development standpoint, if we'd said, 'You can have your old content,' we'd have loved that because there's only like your nth pair of jeans or nth dining room chair and we were like, 'Do we really need to make that dining room chair again?' but for a base game yes, you need the cheap one, you need the expensive one, you need the frilly one...

How much did community feedback impact the game's development?

Chun: So much. The dev team is actually made up of a lot of gamers and a lot of Sims players and we read the boards and listen to the community.

We brought the custom content community people from The Sims 2 in for a week and showed them The Sims 3 and said play with it. It was an early build so we were like, 'Break it, tell us what you love, what you hate and what you'd like to see' and we got the thrill of watching them use the game to create some amazing stuff that we didn't think was possible.

It was inspirational and aspirational and it's always been that kind of relationship because it's like, 'Wow, that's what the content community can make, they've just raised the bar,' so ours had to be as good if not better.

What can you tell us about the game's community features?

Chun: The core of the community functions is that we made it super easy for people to share. Whether it's just a particular texture... or an entire Sim you can upload it to [the game's] website for everyone to see and download.

One of the coolest features is the Movie Mashup Tool. Your Sims can throw a little performance, you can take video capture of it and upload it to the web. You have your own page, so you have your avatars and friends and everything that you've uploaded on one website.

You can share objects, Sims, lots, clothing, accessories and materials, and the store, the community and the forums are all in one place. The idea with all of that is that we want it to be really easy for everyone to get all their stuff.

The game was initially meant to release at the end of February before being pushed back to June. What will you be able to achieve in that extra time?

Chun: The extra time has been amazing. It's the polish bugs, like it takes too long to reach the top of a particular career or little things like the hint that comes up telling you where to find a particular fish is completely wrong.

[Also] last minute changes to how you edit your town, and that came from custom content creation feedback, so we were like, 'Ok, this flow doesn't really work, well we could do this hacky thing but why don't we just do it right,' so it's been really good.

The game is so huge that you don't get to hit all of it until all of your systems are in, so we've been doing testing challenges that we wouldn't have been able to do any sooner, like seeing how long you can keep your elder alive using life fruit, or the 28 Days Later challenge where you basically evict or kill everybody in town and see what happens to the town



Bice zabave, viim ja.

ovo je super, ali ako bi ti se dalo ukratko prevesti, jer je ovo na engleskom, pa mi se ne da sve citati, vec sam samo povrsinski procitala, mislim da ako prevedes da nece samo meni biti lakse vec i svim ostalim clanovima da bi svi znali vise i detaljnije o simsu 3

Mozes otici do http://translate.google.com/translate_t# i tamo prevesti sve od jednom, posto je postepeno jako zamorno.

Evo prevod za one koji ne razumiju na engleskom:
Nedavno smo imali priliku razgovarati o The Sims 3 sa MJ Chun, suradnik producent na Sims Zavoda. Ovdje se govori nam kako je razvojni tim rizicima gurnuti PC bestselling franšize u smjeru svježa, objašnjava se što je radio na sljedećim igri tri mjeseca zakašnjenja, a omogućava nam u zajednici na svoj novi značajke.

Postoji toliko mnogo Sims proširenja i javnost da je za ne-pridijeljeni sljedbenike, može biti malo teško pratiti. Što je novo upečatljivo o Sims 3 i kako ga gurnuti franšize u smjeru svježa?

Chun: Mislim da gura franšizni zajedno. Jedna od glavnih stvari o njemu je da su pametnije Sims i imaju više dubine na njih. Na crte ličnosti su zaista moćna, jer za mene to gdje igra, na storytelling i customisation sve zbližiti.

Tako možete napraviti neurotičan vegetarijanac, koji će se dogoditi da bude perfekcionist i računalni ekspert, ili je djetinjast. Neki dan sam napravio jedan zao kleptoman koji je genije, ambiciozan i beznadan romantičan.

Jedna od kritika levelled at The Sims 2 je da se više fokusira na vrijeme nego karakter upravljanja razvojem. Je li to nešto što se izravno pokušali adresu?

Chun: Apsolutno da, i mislim da je bilo oko na mnoge načine posredno kada se smatra ono što je zabavna za igranje igara, a posebice Sims igre. To je manje o upravljanju koliko treba, kao što je sam da se moj Sim raditi na vrijeme ili moram pasti moj Sim jer je to vrijeme i gladna je na 20 posto ili nešto slično, ili moram napraviti red šest interakcija savršeno ili što god , bilo je više kao ja bi trebao pasti moj Sim jer oni raskliman i oni neće učiniti, ali na poslu ako su oni gladan. Ali flip je, znate šta, idem da ih to učiniti drugi stvar i biti raskliman, to je u redu, to je odluka želim.

The Sims je zamišljen kao obiteljski-friendly franšizu, ali ako sam želio otići dolje zao put kad radite Sim moj, kako sam mogla biti gadno?

Chun: Jedan od Lifetime želje je kopač zlata, a da Sim ima želju da vidi sablast od bogatog supruga. Sam bio igranje kopač zlata i jedno od bogatiji Sims u gradu se dogodilo da se u braku tako da sam postao prijatelj sa suprugom i pozvan je da moje mjesto. I čuvaju moje cooking skill nizak pa sam postaviti vatru na puno i ona spaljena do smrti, pa sam se premjestiti na nju [udovica]. To je stvarno kreativan kao što želite biti.

Postoje i druge stvari koje možete učiniti da mučenje SIM. Klasicna utapanje je još uvijek na snazi.

The Sims šef Rod Ponizite govorio o studiju misije da "igre koje inoviraju i kreativne rizike". Koji su rizici vam uzeti sa Sims 3?

Chun: Jedna od stvari koje mislim da je rizično je da li ili ne ljudi koji će naći mjesta osjeća živim za njih. Mislim da je to rizik, jer vi i vaš Sim tradicionalno je puno o svojoj kući, a sada ima otvoren ovaj svijet.

Mislim da neki ljudi će naći da je to previše i da žele da se razina kontrole leđa, i da su neki ljudi će biti razočarani i žele više. To je malo o riziku i Im 'zainteresirana za viđenje što zajednica misli o tome.
Možete li razraditi na geografija The Sims 3 i koliko je otvorio?

Chun: Phillip [Chun je Sim] može samo šetnja preko ulice sada i to je zapravo jako moćan trenutak. Možete zavirite i pogledajte što vam susjedi rade a onda šetnja preko i visiti s njima koje ste nikada nije bio u mogućnosti to učiniti i prije. Za mene je to kao, "Oh, moj bože, to je grad i to je sve spojeno. Ona ima utjecaj da li ili ne on je sa svojim prijateljima bližnjemu.

Koliko je važno da su grafike franšizni?

Chun: To je jedna od onih stvari koje mi rvati sa Sims na bilo koji proizvod, ali posebno Sims 3. Što vodi izgledaju Sim ekipe nekoliko ponavljanje. Vi ne želite prijeći jezovit doline, vi ne želite da se nešto što izgleda jeziv a istovremeno se ne žele previše cartoony bilo tako stylisation je, mislim, nešto stvarno važno za Sims.

Također, na kraju, koliko je umjetnika na tim i možda čak i proizvođača i dizajnera želim sve da lijepo izgledaju, to je Sims igri i to je jako važno za ljude koji će se moći napraviti ružan Sims.

Zašto je odluka da se ne dozvoljavaju korisnicima da donose svoje stare Sims kreacije na novi igra?

Chun: Jedan od glavnih razloga je to što umjetnosti gradi se potpuno drugacije. Mi zapravo Pogledamo porting preko sredstava iz The Sims 2 The Sims 3, pogotovo zato što smo imali takvog bogatstva sadržaja, ali onda smo shvatili da je to toliko uzimati duže vrijeme ili ga promijeniti u novi cjevovod i mislim za većinu ljudi nešto izgradnju od nule znači ti misliš da putem, tako da ste upoznati s njom.

Pokušaj uzeti nešto što je netko drugi napravio, ili čak i ako je već u neku drugu paradigmu, te pokušava pretvoriti ga je preko nered. Smo donijeti neke od animacije preko i to je bio jako zanimljiv, jer neke od njih smo samo dospio preoblikovanje, a neke od njih je radio i tako je to pravi suđenja i pogreška [Proces].

Sa stanovišta razvoja, ako bih rekao: 'Možete imati svoj stari sadržaj, "mi bismo da su voljena, jer postoji samo kao što je vaša enti traperice ili enti blagovaonicom stolice i bili smo kao,' Da li mi zaista potrebna da da blagovaonicom stolice opet? " ali za osnovnu igru Da, potrebno vam je jeftini jedan, potrebno vam je skupo jedan, potrebno vam je ukrašen jedno ...

Koliko zajednice feedback utjecaj igre razvoju?

Chun: Toliko. The dev tima je zapravo sastoji od mnogo igračima i puno Sims igrač i mi pročitali zajednice i slušanje zajednice.

Mi doveo prilagođeni sadržaj zajednicu ljudi iz Sims 2 u za tjedan i pokazala im Sims 3 i rekao je igrati s njim. Bila je to rano graditi tako da smo bili mi, "Break on, recite nam što vole, ono što mrzim i što želite vidjeti i uzbuđenje koje smo dobili od promatrajući ih koristiti za izradu igra neke iznenađujuće stvari koje smo nije smatrao je to moguće.

To je bio inspirational i aspirational i to je uvijek bio takav odnos jer je kao, 'Wow, to je ono što je sadržaj zajednice mogu napraviti, oni' pravedan podigli bar ', tako da naši morali biti tako dobar ako ne i bolji.

Što nam možete reći o igri zajednice značajkama?

Chun: Jezgru zajednice funkcija je da mi je super jednostavan za ljude dijeliti. Bilo da je samo određene teksture ... ili cijeli Sim možete postaviti na [igre] web stranicu za sve da vide i preuzimanje.

Jedna od najboljih karakteristika je Movie Mashup alat. Your Sims možete baciti malo performanse, možete se video snimci od njega i postavite je na webu. Vi imate svoje vlastite stranice, tako da se vaše avatars i prijatelje i sve što ste učitali na jednoj web stranici.

Možete dijeliti predmete, Sims, puno, odjeće, pribora i materijala, kao i trgovina, zajednice i forumi su sve na jednom mjestu. Ideja sa svim što je u tome što želimo da se stvarno lako za sve da se sve njihove stvari.

Igra je u početku značila objaviti krajem veljače, prije nego se gura natrag u lipnju. Što će vam biti u stanju da postigne u tom extra time?

Chun: Dodatni vrijeme je nevjerojatna. It's the polish bugova, kao što to traje predugo do vrha određenu karijeru ili malim stvarima kao što je nagovještaj da dolazi do govorim gdje se nalazimo određenu ribu je potpuno krivo.

[I] last minute promjenama kako ste uredili vaš grad, kao i da je došao iz prilagođeni sadržaj stvaranje povratne informacije, tako da smo bili mi, "OK", ovaj protok ne radi, ali smo mogli učiniti hacky stvar ali zašto ne samo mi to učiniti pravu ', tako da je bio stvarno dobar.

Igra je ogromna, tako da ne dolazi do pogodile sve dok ga svi vaši sustavi su u, tako da smo radili testiranje izazova da mi ne bi bio u mogućnosti za napraviti bilo koji ranije, kao što vidite koliko dugo ste može držati tvoj stariji živ koristeći život voća, odnosno 28 dana kasnije izazov gdje ste ustvari iseliti ili ubiti svi u gradu i vide što se događa u grad

evo nadam se da ce onima kojima engleski ne ide bas biti lakse

Super sto si stavila. Ovo ce puno znaciti onima koji ne znaju engleski.