Dusting Off a Couple of North Star Docs

Hey all, I’ve added a couple of new fossils to the Fossil Record, and they’re a little different. They’re not prototypes or videos or things. They’re foundational docs for a couple of games that I thought might be interesting to people.

The first is my nerdly focal points doc for The Sims 3. It defined the vision for Sims 3 from the very beginning, and it’s what we used to decide what was in the game and what was out of the game for pretty much its entire development. I don’t think it’s ever been seen anywhere, certainly not outside of the company, so I’m hopeful people can learn from it or get some insight or inspiration out of it.

The second is what I think I jokingly called a design manifesto for a SimCity after SimCity 4 that was destined for consoles, and as such was meant to be a little less math-y and simulation-y and more playful. There are a bunch of prototypes associated with it as well (you can see their thumbnails in the SimCity section of the Fossil Record) that I haven’t dug into on the site yet, but I will eventually.

The Sims 3 doc is the more coherent and genuinely solid of the two. And obviously Sims 3 was developed and shipped, you can see how the team brought that vision to life. The SimCity doc was much more formative and aspirational, but when I get into those prototypes eventually, you’ll see how it all bounced around that space.

Go have a read: