Sims-R-Us
Sims-R-Us was a questionable experiment in what people remember about people they interact with and what elements of their behavior, environment, manner of speaking, etc. end up being filed away as defining characteristics of that person.
For fun, I decided to create a simple interactive fiction "game" representing the handful of people on the team. I created it in a language designed specifically for the purpose of creating interactive fiction called Inform. If you're not familiar with it, I highly encourage a trip down that rabbit hole. The whole culture, community and history of interactive fiction is fascinating, and even the development of Inform is a cool journey. This prototype was created in an earlier, more programmer-y version called Inform 6 which, oddly enough, is an entirely different language than the current Inform 7 which in turn is more human readable.
In the prototype, some people like Brian Deppiesse and Rod Humble wander around offering commentary, but most are sitting at their desks to be poked and prodded and questioned. At least one is only heard and can never be found. You can make things out of legos and give them as gifts. You can lose change in my comfy chair and smell my blanket.
It was extra particularly notably not deep.
For fun, I decided to create a simple interactive fiction "game" representing the handful of people on the team. I created it in a language designed specifically for the purpose of creating interactive fiction called Inform. If you're not familiar with it, I highly encourage a trip down that rabbit hole. The whole culture, community and history of interactive fiction is fascinating, and even the development of Inform is a cool journey. This prototype was created in an earlier, more programmer-y version called Inform 6 which, oddly enough, is an entirely different language than the current Inform 7 which in turn is more human readable.
In the prototype, some people like Brian Deppiesse and Rod Humble wander around offering commentary, but most are sitting at their desks to be poked and prodded and questioned. At least one is only heard and can never be found. You can make things out of legos and give them as gifts. You can lose change in my comfy chair and smell my blanket.
It was extra particularly notably not deep.
Essentially, players could wander around our space, talk to team members, interact with objects (with a couple of light puzzles thrown in for no discernable reason). Then I'd ask them to describe each person as represented in that experience and note what elements stuck with them. This somewhat influenced our approach to adding personality traits to The Sims in that it contributed to steering away from more subtle geeky simulation of behaviors in favor of more chunky recognizable discrete behaviors even if those behaviors manifest infrequently.
Feel free to grab the Z5 z-machine file below and try it out. You'll need a Z-Machine interpreter (old school Infocom "text adventure" format), or you can play it directly via this link using Parchment. You can also peruse the source INF file if you can't make any sense of it. The jokes are really only funny to people who were there, and hence, represented in it. You can type "character" followed by a person's first name to see a cheat sheet of what everyone's got goin' on.
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