A portion from Stuff.co.nz
Although he’s generally been involved in producing The Sims games, Humble appears as a Non Player Character in an expansion pack for The Sims 2, Free Time.
“It wasn’t my idea and I objected at the time. It didn’t feel right.
“At the time there were threads on The Sims forums – we’ve got a community of about 5 million people that visit each day – and one of the top threads was Top 10 Ways To Kill Rod Humble. Another was Top 10 Ways To Have Sex with Rod Humble.” Forum members later created mutant children and started a forum called Top 10 Ugliest Kids You Can Have With Rod Humble.
“It was very disturbing,” he says. Before he started working with The Sims, Humble had been involved with Sony Online’s Everquest studio, and before that worked on some other online games. He now heads EA’s Play label, which focuses on causal titles and attracting new gamers.
Wow…I feel kind of bad for the dude. While playing games, we tend to forget that the actor portraying characters are real life people – with feelings…And it must feel very awkward when you read that your fans want to kill or make whoopie with you… :S
Wow, we expect EA and Rob to make a GREAT game and do everythignfor us, while we create things like “10 ways to keill Rob” i mean WTF!!! Thats just inhuman!! I feel ashamed of being a Simmer right now, never thought i’d say it, but right now i do!!
Well, what do you expect? While it might be awkward for Rod, we must remember that people try to kill/woohoo/torture/fall in love with all NPC’s in the game. His character is no different. I’d be worried when people DON’T try to do this; it means everyone is playing the same way and creativity is dead.
Sex, Judd, sex! It’s 2009 now, not 1970! 😉 lol But yeah, I agree that it is rather odd to have these threads. I think this is why we didn’t have any real life people in the game like we were originally going to have, such as Obama, Ben Bell, etc. I don’t blame them for the change of plans.
LOL 😛
Funnykid, i disagree greatly!!! How can you say it is the same as killing an NPC sim?!?! Its different in the fact that its a Sim specifically made after HIM!! A REAL person!! When you have a threat to a fake, not real, none-based off character, just some sim made up with a made up name, its not that personal! But when you have a Sim, speciafically created and named the exact same as to a REAL person, it potrays a REAL person, it becomes MUCH more personal and MUCH more different! I cannot believe you just said that!
Agreed Frankie! I think thats why we dont have real people protrayed in the game too!
I agree to disagree with you. People did both nice and mean things to Drew Carrey in The Sims 1. Some find him annoying, some find him entertaining. Different strokes for different folks.
And while these sims are modelled after real people, they are just characters to players. I doubt the same people who tortured SimRod in the game would harbor the same hatred in real life. While I admit it might be awkward to read about people killing or having sex with your sim counterpart, it isn’t something to scream about.