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, 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 exploration representing the handful of people on the team.
It was extra 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 steering away from more subtle overly geeky simulation of behaviors in favor of more chunky recognizable discrete behaviors even if those behaviors manifest infrequently.
Feel free to grab the Z5 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.
It was extra 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 steering away from more subtle overly geeky simulation of behaviors in favor of more chunky recognizable discrete behaviors even if those behaviors manifest infrequently.
Feel free to grab the Z5 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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