Here’s a new interesting fact that I can’t believe I never knew about. Sad thing is, I own a copy of SimCity 2000 Strategies and Secrets in which LazyGameReviews spotted this in. But of course in order to find this discovery myself, it would involve reading the book…and that is something I cannot do as I have to uphold my redneck stereotype in which we’re dumb, Nascar-loving, gun-toting hillbillies herp derp derp. Actually, no…I just haven’t gotten around to it yet – but I will someday!
Anyhow, while reading the book, LGR picked up on the fact that in the forward, Will Wright mentioned he was working on a game called SimWorld. Unforunately the artist cut off his rant before any details were given, so LGR took to twitter and asked the boss-man himself. Surprisingly to us all, Will actually answered his question!
@lazygamereviews Not really, we were thinking of connecting all our Sim games at some point (like we later did with SimCity&Simcopter)
Interesting. Not only did LGR get an answer, but he also found an old chat with Will conducted by CNN:
Will Wright: Actually, yes we have. We did about a one-year study of the possibility that we called “SimWorld.” And the idea was to have kind of an open standard through which our simulators could be plugged into each other. And in fact, the last game I did before “The Sims” was a helicopter game called “SimCopter,” and it was basically an experiment in that direction. “SimCopter” was an action helicopter game that you could play in a city that you had previously built with “SimCity.” The biggest problem really with that idea is the time scales are really different depending on what level you are playing at.
So there you have it. I wonder how this would of worked out back then. SimCopter, Streets of SimCity and SimCity 2000 all did the same thing…and well, 2 out of 3 games were…well, they weren’t exactly the best of games. It does seem like a very awesome idea though that I would love to see EA expand on. We have The Sims 2 and SimCity 4, but I’d love to see them do something similar with The Sims 3.
Thanks to my pal from LazyGameReviews, he’s been doing an excellent job on covering older Sim games!
I remember that you could upload your Sims from Sims 1 into SimCity 4 and see them progress as a SimCity citizen. It was pretty limited, but a nice attempt at some integration.
Of course the glitch was that pets from Unleashed were also moved to the city and were treated like regular citizens (with jobs and attitudes).
I think the Simworld idea eventually became Spore. I am too lazy to watch the making of Spore DVD at the moment.