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It was the year 2000. We survived Y2K and sat at our computers obsessed with a strange new game called The Sims. It was the first game I ever played where the protagonist could be late to work, forget to take out the garbage, or be so preoccupied by the doldrums of life that they might pee themselves. I, alongside millions, was hooked and could not articulate why. Born from the mind of Will Wrightthe same designer who bucked the industrys penchant for arcade games for world simulators like SimCityThe Sims is almost as hard to define now as it was then. Is it a virtual dollhouse? A simulacrum of suburban life? A neighborhood of tamagotchis with jobs? An HGTV home improvement show crossed with Real Housewives? [Image: EA] By design, whatever you call The Sims may reflect on you more than it. From its earliest days, The Sims universe has attempted to be anything but prescriptiveright down to its progressive view on relationships without labels or gender expectations. Twenty-five years later, the franchise, now owned by EA, has amassed half a billion players. The Sims 4 came out over a decade ago at this point, but after it became free-to-play in 2022, its popularity ballooned to reach 85 million players, and its released 17 expansions that allow people to do everything from arguing over family inheritance to convening a court of vampires. For the 25th anniversary, I sat down with two creatives that have been with the franchise since the original game to discuss their core design approach of The Sims, whats kept players obsessed, and why fewer of these little characters are peeing themselves these days. [Image: EA] A funhouse mirror of the world The Sims may have a quiet premisecreate a character and their home, choose a profession, and socialize with neighborsbut nothing about the presentation from there is literal. Through every bit of its art, design, and animation, the world balances the mundane with the zany. That not only brings an element of fun to The Sims; it expands whats plausible at any moment. We definitely talk more about being relatable than realistic, which means that we do lean more dramatic in our acting and our animation, says Lyndsay Pearson, VP of franchise creative for The Sims. Thats partially because of the way you play the game: You’re far away [from characters], you need to be able to read it. But also because that supports the world and the stories we’re trying to enable. Each gesture of these little characters is exaggerated, as if theyre actors on a stage being read from the audience, even though youre just sitting at your computer. That ensures that the mundane feels interesting. [Image: EA] When you’re cooking, or going to sleep, or making up the bed, or doing these life actions, a lot of your players actually want to experience them in this extremely whimsical and playful fashion. Nobody wants to see that in a replica of actual real life the exact same way, says Nawwaf Barakat, senior animation director for The Sims. So it needs to be telling its own story every single time. It needs to look interesting the 1,000th time you’ve actually seen it. The tone of those moments isnt merely legible or entertaining; they also highlight the farce, expanding whats possible in the world. We’ve described it as a fun house mirror to the world, where it looks familiar enough that you can relate to it and feel like, Oh, if I if I take out the trash, I understand the chain of events and the rules of this universe, but it’s all skewed so that when a giant monster pops out of the trash, I’m not surprised. [The design] explains that these things can coexist. [Image: EA] Implying so the player can infer While players enjoy rich, multigenerational stories in The Simscomplete with love, backstabbing, and sudden plot twistsin fact, the design team admits that most of this narrative takes place in your head. The Sims is really a game of interpretation, says Barakat. It’s amazing how much our players will actually fill the stories in themselves. A key idea behind fiction, born from The University of Iowas Writers Workshop, is that the wrier should imply so the reader can infer. The Sims is designed to do this across a characters relationships. The Sims speak in Simlish (gibberish that sounds almost like English). You can broach a topic, like brag about promotion, but responses from characters are always in either Simlish or word clouds filled with simplistic, emoji-like images. [Image: EA] Many players try to tell multi-generational stories in the game, and recently, The Sims released an expansion all about death and family legacy. The challenge was about creating an opportunity for these stories without determining the plot ahead of time. We added enough conversation dialog choices or enough icons in the thought balloons to get them to think about the character or think about a gravestone, that you could make that story kind of happen, says Pearson. So, we have to carve out those spaces, particularly to leave room for that interpretation to say, Oh, this could be them all mourning at a wake,’ but it could also be, ‘They’re all fighting at a wake.’ [Image: EA] These techniques almost sound silly to deconstruct, but theyre also at the core of how iconography and symbology works across culture. There are points where interpretations are shared, and points where they diverge. Everything in between is the fun of criticism IRLand where the opportunity for differing interpretations around narrative exist in The Sims. You see comments online sometimes about how deep our game is, how we thought of everything, says Barakat. And we’re like, Wow, we didn’t really think about that! It was our players building that story based off of all the elements we provided. [Image: EA] By avoiding labels, not only is The Sims less prescriptive, it is also more inclusive. (You wont find Republicans and Democrats in The Sims, for instance.) Since the earliest days of the game, relationships spanned gender boundaries without specific labels around status. Today, The Sims 4 does allow players to very deeply specify a characters gender and sexual identity (and even if they lactate), but still, the way this background plays out in actual game logic can be fluid and, again, unlabeled. Sims may fight, but they dont judge. [Image: EA] Is polyamory just the absence of jealousy? Because functionally, that’s kind of what it is. If you decide what gets jealous of what, the player then can infer a lot of different types of relationships of that, says Pearson. And we don’t have to label all of them. We don’t have to provide specific definitions and restrictions. We sort of just have to open up space, which is a really interesting design challenge . . . we say, ‘What’s the lowest common denominator that would unlock a lot of these things?’ [Image: EA] Building forgivable failure (like, why Sims still pee themselves) You cannot win The Sims 4. But you cannot lose either. The way that the franchise has handled the topic of failure has evolved over time, climbing Maslovs hierarchy of needs to be less about survival than everything else in life. When you go back and play The Sims 1, it is very hard to keep your Sims alive. They caught fire all the time. It was a very dangerous world in The Sims 1, the plate spinning was really hard, says Pearson. So, when we moved into The Sims 2, we wanted to introduce a different level of pushback, a little bit higher up the sort of chain of needs. Sims began failing at the meta layers of life, like being too lonely. [Image: EA] But by The Sims 3 and 4, everything got a little bit easier about life. Your Sims don’t fail so much as they just aren’t thriving, and that you can do so much more when you’re working with them, nurturing them, and pushing them along the way, says Pearson. Screenshot Micromanaging has been tuned down in interest of choose-your-own-adventure story charting. If you aren’t spending every moment feeding yourself so you don’t starve, or showering so you don’t stink, you can spend more time, say, turning an entire town into vampires. But notably, you still need to tend to your Sim. You even need to make sure that they use the bathroom now and again, or else, yes, after 25 years, they will still pee themselves. This micromanagement isnt just gamification to keep the player active, but core to the emotional draw of The Sims. There’s a certain amount of pushback that the game still needs for you to believe that these are little people that need you, and that could be a mode of failure, like having an accident or starving. We try to make those entertaining as well: things like being hit by a meteor because you were stargazing for too long, says Pearson. Because at the end of the day, that is a reminder that there is a little bit of humanity in them that you need to pay attention to, and that you can’t just treat them like some ants and it’s fine if they die. You want to care about them. And perhaps thats the real appeal of The Sims after two and a half decades. In a world where we constantly dehumanize one another, reflexively hating people as avatars on social media, The Sims offers another waywhere even a few polygons and lines of code can be worthy of our care.
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E-Commerce
Paola Antonelli has a litmus test for worthy design. People often ask the Museum of Modern Arts senior curator of architecture and design how she decides what to add to the museum’s collection, and she gives them simple instructions: Close your eyes and think, If this object did not exist, would the world miss out? she says. Of course, filling one of the world’s preeminent art museums is not quite that easy. Antontelli says you also have to consider an object’s form, function, and problem-solving utilitybut her litmus test is something she returns to again and again. It doesn’t mean that something has to be necessary, Antonelli clarifies. Take, for example, the Tamagotchi. Totally superfluous, she says. [But] I think it would be a pity that it didn’t exist, right? Antonelli is telling me this at a preview of MoMAs newest exhibition, Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, which opened on a snowy New York City Sunday. The show examines design objects as change agents that have had a deep impact on society, as far ranging as the humble Post-it note, first Apple desktop computer, and a portable handwashing station developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design changes human behavior, Antonelli contends, and this exhibition proves her case in dozens of design inventions. Objects have consequences, she says. That’s really, in a way, the motto for the exhibition. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] This isnt the first time Antonelli has examined the social impact of designers and the objects they introduce to society. She launched the content series Design Emergency with Alice Rawsthorn in 2020 to examine the many ways design solves problems in moments of crisis. The series later became a book. Designers are trained to traditionally and classically solve problems, Antonelli told me in 2020. Design is a word that is as big as art or culture, she added. So its difficult to say what design can do in a particular situation. But it definitely is a lot more than just chairs and posters. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] Pirouette encompasses, yes, chairs (the Eamess RAR rocking armchair; the Monobloc chair; the Aeron office chair, to name a few) and posters (okay, lets say signs: a parking sign; a route sign for British roadways) but also a wide range of objects pulled mostly from MoMAs collection spanning furniture, electronics, symbols, fashion, wearables, industrial design, product design, and information design from the 1930s to the present. Milton Glaser, I NY concept sketch, 1976, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Photo: 2024 NYS Dept. of Economic Development] The I love New York concept sketch, NASA worm logo, Tabi boots, Crocs, a Telfar bag, a Bic pen, an infographic depicting Brazils deforestation rates: What these objects have in common is their invention. They changed the way people thought, saw, or interacted with the world. They all represent experiments with new materials, technologies and concepts, and offer unconventional solutions to conventional problems, reads part of the exhibitions opening text. In these objects, designers have channeled their vision and ingenuity, distilling energy into momentum and setting them in motion like ballet dancers performing pirouettes. Ed Hawkins, Warming Stripes 1850-2023, 2018-ongoing [Image: Ed Hawkins] I asked Antonelli how she curated an exhibition with such a range of seemingly unrelated objects. In some cases, it’s very free-flowing. It’s almost like word association, she says. In others, it’s really juxtapositionand putting objects into conversation with each other. I pointed out how she had situated a pair of Crocs, Tabis, a Telfar bag, and a plastic Monobloc chair near each other in one corner of the exhibition. The Telfar bag is there, and the conversation that it’s having really directly, in my opinion, is with the Margiela Tabis. But also it’s having a conversation with the Crocs next to it because Telfars motto is This is not for you, it’s for everyone. So there’s also this idea of making things for everybody. Antonelli then connects the Crocs and Monoblo chair. They’re so ambiguous, she says. [Theyre] amazing mass products enjoyed by billions of people. But they also have this flip side. The Monoblock chair has become almost synonymous with waste and with consumerism, she says. Meanwhile, Crocs are at the center of an eternal discussion that gives the design tension: Are the Crocs beautiful? Are they ugly? There are all these different associations that somebody like you, who’s conversant in design might catch, she says. Others who are less erudite, because everybody knows design, will catch them anyway, but at a different level. And maybe they will not catch them at all, but they will focus on every single object. Shigetaka Kurita, Emoji, 1998-1999, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Image: 2024 NTT DOCOMO] Each object, Antonelli sayswhether M&Ms candies, a Moka Express, Sony Walkman, or Bernadette Thompsons money manicure artificial nailsshifted the way we operate in the world. Some designs are so intuitive and intrinsic to our day-to-day lives as to be imperceptible, like the flat-bottomed paper bag. Other objects are more subtle and esoteric, like Sabine Marceliss resin Candy Cube, which might have an effect on other designers and percolate into society that way. As she said of information design in 2020: Our actions dont have reactions in a very unequivocal way, but rather have reverberations that can go in many directions. [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] The exhibition text warns that objects have the power to shift the ways we behave, for good and for bad. The objects in this exhibition exemplify human ingenuity, providing new answers to previously unsolved challenges that you can see with your own eyes. Some of those solutions, like the injection-molded plastic Monobloc chair invented in the 1950sa quintessential mass-market product that provides people around the world an easy to clean and cheap place to sithave consequences that aren’t so black and white as good and bad. It’s always time to make people understand how important design is, Antonelli says. But right now, I would love people to have something constructive to think about. Design is a lens to look at the world in a constructive way. It’s a beautiful expression of human creativity, positively directed, in the case of the objects that are in this exhibition, at least.
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E-Commerce
Starbucks’s new CEO, Brian Niccol, made a bet last September that the company could draw customers back into its stores by reintroducing personal touches you might see at smaller, third-place sort of coffee shops, like handwritten names on to-go cups. Here we are about four months later, and Starbucks has beaten Wall Street expectations, announcing $9.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of last year during its earnings call Tuesday. Niccol attributed the chain’s performance to “getting Back to Starbucks and those things that have always set us apart. (Though it’s worth noting that the companys sales are still down year over year.) Starbucks developed a back-to-basics approach to reintroduce itself to consumers. Changes include a simplified menu, a new no-loitering policy, an expanded refill policy, ceramic mugs for in-café sipping, and the return of handwritten notes on to-go cups to better connect with customers and elevate the café experience for those who choose to stay and work,” Niccol said. The strategy comes after the chain experienced falling sales at its struggling coffee shops due to factors like rising prices and longer wait times. Niccol, a former Chipotle CEO, wrote in a letter after assuming the top post at Starbucks that its stores “have always been more than a place to get a drink, but admitted that the company hasn’t always delivered on that experience and that telling its story would be part of its comeback. Bringing back handwritten notes on coffee cups is the focus of a new ad spot launched last weekend. Set to the 2008 hit That’s Not My Name by the Ting Tings, it shows baristas putting pen to coffee cup to write out messages like “Let’s goooo!” and “Shine on.” The closing message is “Your pick-me-up is ready,” with “pick-me-up” styled to look like it’s written out by hand. Ad agency Anomaly developed the spot, which received mostly positive reactions online, even among people who said they didn’t like Starbucks coffee. At least when it comes to ecommerce, a study published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing in 2022 found that handwritten thank-you notes have the potential to double future sales. “Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers,” the study’s authors wrote. Improving its app is another step Starbucks says it’s taking as part of its comeback, but a simple analog solution could also prove useful. Might what works for online retailers prove equally successful for selling Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espressos? Starbucks certainly hopes so.
Category:
E-Commerce
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