sadistic sandbox, ea, interview, news, the sims

EA's Rod Humble on The Sims, Death and Potty Humor

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a two part interview with EA's Rod Humble on The Sims, among other things — the first half of the interview covers a lot of (non-Sims related) gaming territory, while the second focuses on the Sims. On designing the death bits:

We have a lot of fun with it, so every expansion pack we come to the point where we're adding in some new death states. I remember in Seasons they were putting in the death state of being snowed to death. The person is in a snowstorm, and you see them trying to fight it and fight it, until the fighting slows down [laughs] and he just rolls over and gives up. It shouldn't be funny. But oh my goodness, it is. It's always about mean things happening in an amusing way. There's also a lot of potty humour in it, and we fully embrace that. I think that's a wonderful traditional mode of humour, and I still find it funny watching Sims pee themselves. I make no apologies for it. I think that's a classic genre and endlessly entertaining. [laughs] It makes chuckle just thinking about it!

It's a fun little two part interview, even if you're not a big Sims fan.

Dinner With Rod Humble: Sims Style Stuff [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

2:30 PM on Sat May 3 2008
By Maggie Greene
1,389 views
10 comments

Comments

man_in_gauze at 02:45 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

I think death animations are a big part of the realism of a game; pure ragdoll almost never works (unless a Tribes or UT game that's purposely over-the-top) and scripted ones get repetitive...especially in RTSs. The RTS death animation, IMO, is the hardest one to get right, because there're just so many ways that units can die. Starcraft had basically every unit explode on death, which I liked the best, but Starcraft II seems to have taken its death animations from Warcraft III, which are really, really, irritating when you nuke 50 marines and they all die in the same way as if they got shot.

Then again, Blizzard has said they've started to implement new death animations based on how the unit dies; splitting in half when killed by a Zealot, for example. I've not played many other RTSs, besides Age of Empires; how do other games do it?
Arkanius at 02:46 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

Company of Heroes uses Rag doll
And it's awesome
MizzDiva at 02:48 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

Hell, I only died one time on playin' Sims 2, I had my Sims cookin' in kitchen and..uh...the stove caught on fire. Needless to say, I had just move my Sims up in there and kinda let slip to buy a phone...or a smoke alarm....oops XD.

On a equally funny side note: I gotta say I do always laugh my off when I see a Sim piss on themselves (as long as it's not mines!).....in public *hehehe*

So priceless
HawaiianActor at 02:52 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

i love some of the death animations in the Sims, my fav is the satellite falling on your head. cracks me up.
man_in_gauze at 03:14 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

@Arkanius:
Ragdoll in an RTS? Interesting. I guess you're zoomed-out enough to not notice those little realism-breaking things that happen with ragdoll physics, and it'd be pretty snazzy to see people get hit by a tank shell and go flying.

As far as FPSs go, I think Half-Life 2 did it best, just like it did basically everything best. :P
Zanibas at 05:42 PM on 05/03/08
Reply by Email
*

Actually, the thing I find funnier than a Sim peeing themselves is a Sim watching his stove burn =D.

It was thoroughly entertaining watching their reaction just dancing there and making to head to the phone.
bobtheduck at 01:39 AM on 05/04/08
Reply by Email
*

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the death animations in Killzone 2... they're not ragdoll... They're awesome and pretty dang realistic. Let's hope the game lives up to the graphics and death animations...

Granted, the actual topic wasn't really about death animations, but thanks to man_in_gauze that seems to be the topic now, so Killzone 2 would be perfect to look at.

2 things overdone in today's games: Ragdoll and DoF... I think the former could be fixed by including randomized twitch and tighten in dying soldiers, or perhaps related to where the bullet struck (or whatever weapon is being used) The latter could be fixed by... Um... Making the scale larger, because when the DoF happens on a lot of games, it makes everyone look like toys...
DrXym at 02:54 AM on 05/04/08
Reply by Email
*

So when are we going to see a Sims Torture Dungeon with optional incest features?

There was a game called Creatures where you had to look after norns (fluffy monkey / squirrel things) and train them to survive. Each norn had a sophisticated neural net that learned by the user reinforcing good behaviours and punishing bad ones. One Creatures fansite used to make people go nuts. The site owner, "AntiNorn" used to beat, torture and otherwise abuse norns until they were pain addicted quivering wrecks. I found it hilarious but some people loved their norns so much that they equated torturing a virtual creature to child abuse.

[creatures.wikia.com]
Knukleur at 06:22 AM on 05/04/08
Reply by Email
*

You gotta download mods for incest, torture, rape, stripper poles, teen pregnancy, and other interesting things, but they're not difficult to find if that's what you want, as well as "anti-Maxis pee obsession" and a hundred or so bug fixes that Rod and his funny pals never get around to. Hopefully the Spore programming will lend itself to mods, too, since it sounds too interesting to be deflated by lots of inevitable bugs and pee code.
man_in_gauze at 02:47 PM on 05/04/08
Reply by Email
*

@bobtheduck:

You mean like this?

[i133.photobucket.com]

That one's from a while ago, so I don't know if it accurately reflects what the game's like now, but it is truly snazzy. Although I'm still trying to figure out what the player killed him with, it looks like he stabbed the enemy with something, but I can't tell what it was.