The Sims 3 Blooper Blog!

Welcome to Sunset Valley Blooperville!
The amazing part of a Sims Developer’s job that keeps us coming back to work day after day is the sheer number of hilarious and unexpected moments that occur in our game, typically as the result of portions of the game that are “works in progress.”

Just like any movie, television show, or heck, typo filled IM conversation, we’ve got bloopers piled a mile high. The simple truth is that any video game is incredibly complex. The formula is quite simple:

100 People X Animation X Sound X Engineering X Modeling X FX X Design X Sims = Chaos!

I don’t recommend you use that formula in a paper for school.

Some bloopers are simply from text. For example, Townies and Sims created by Story Progression get their names from a huge pool of names. These names come from members of the development team, famous people we like to reference, and in some cases, old census data from the United States circa 1901. Don’t ask! These leads to hilarious names, such as your friendly neighborhood pizza guy “Torgo Pendragon” or a lovely baby named “Charity Slaughter.”

Cars also lead to some of our most amazing bloopers. They are incredibly complex objects that involve pretty much every development discipline and every level of difficulty. For a while, once Sims entered their cars they never left them, so in a sense the Sims BECAME their cars. Just imagine the possibilities: Sims playing chess in the park…as cars. Sims going home for dinner…as cars. Sims fishing at the beach…as cars?

How about a night on the town? Just you, a limo, and your favorite duck.

Death is another favorite of ours. The engineer who does the programming death has been doing so since The Sims 1 – it’s more or less “his baby.” We always try to implement Death so that he has a slight bit of randomness, but this often leads to the unexpected. New for The Sims 3? Death protesting! Can you blame him though? Nuclear power is dangerous. Though I imagine it’s only good for his personal business…

Animation bugs are also high on the list of hilarious. Our Sim rigs can be quite complicated. This is only made more complex by the fact that Sims can do so many things and often times in many different ways. Why is this funny?

Well, how about a Sim taking out the trash becomes a Sim doing break dancing?

Or the always hilarious Sims throwing a toddler?

It’s important to note that no toddlers were harmed in the production of The Sims 3!

Graphics and rendering bloopers don’t always result in awesome hilarity, though sometimes we’re pleasantly surprised. I’m a native of Texas so it’s hard not to be familiar with the gigantic waving Texan at the State Fair Grounds in Dallas. Or, his distant cousin in an early version of The Sims 3.

That is actually my Sim’s shadow! But wait, there’s always more!

Oh hey there! I didn’t see you there FLOATING SET OF EYEBALLS.

Stay tuned for more Blogs from The Sims 3 Development team! Until next time, have a good time Simming!

grant (aka SimGuruWalrus)