Sims 3 Story Progression: Life in the Simulation

The story of Story Progression in The Sims 3 is, well... storied.

​Early in the development of The Sims 3, we decided that we wanted the game to have a much more open world.  In contrast to the isolated, single home lots in Sims 1 and Sims 2, we wanted a bustling neighborhood, one that felt like a community full of interesting Sims and emergent stories to explore and become part of.  But that was going to require a ton of autonomous Sims running around, and that in turn would require an unmanageable amount of simulation.

But as we started talking through the problem, we realized that most of what Sims do moment to moment is really generally pretty unimportant, and extremely so if the player isn't watching them.  The Sims down the block don't need to use the toilet.  But once the player's Sims start forming relationships with the neighbor across the street and the guy they met at the gym downtown, those Sims need to advance (at a macro level) alongside the player's Sims in order to prevent player stories from breaking down. Your teenage sweetheart story isn't nearly as cute when one becomes an "elder" and the other is still a teen :).

This video explains a bit about how we arrived at the design of Story Progression and shows off the original prototype running a sample neighborhood simulation.  Check it out!

P.S.: Oh!  And check out the Story Progression page elsewhere on this site for somehow even more details.