Thank you! Here are some Sims articles I've published on Medium, and I've written lots more stuff on HN, which I'd like to eventually clean up and publish on a blog some time:

Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)

https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...

The Future of Content — Will Wright’s Spore Demo at GDC 3/11/2005

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-future-of-content-will-wri...

The Soul of The Sims, by Will Wright

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-soul-of-the-sims-by-will-w...

The Sims 1 Crowd Sitter

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-sims-1-crowd-sitter-1f478b...

Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims 1

https://donhopkins.medium.com/dumbold-voting-machine-for-the...

The Sims Pie Menus

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74da...

Automating The Sims Character Animation Pipeline with MaxScript

https://donhopkins.medium.com/automating-the-sims-character-...

Head Phaking, Phase 1

https://donhopkins.medium.com/from-don-hopkins-to-chris-trot...

The Sims Object Placement Tool

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-sims-object-placement-tool...

And more documents at:

https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/

https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/

And some more videos:

The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY

The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs

Demo of The Sims Transmogrifier, RugOMatic, ShowNTell, Simplifier and Slice City.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imu1v3GecB8

Transmogrify Self

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTbs7IL5EI

Speed Dating With Cupid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM

Simprov Wedding Play Set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwt5LJlrMe8

FreeTheSims Sims Character Animation ActiveX Control Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzz0cFSmgiM

Also there's a great interview with Chris Trottier about "the toilet game", "tuned emergence", and "design by accretion", that I published on my old blog, which is still on archive.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160704065742/http://www.donhop...

>Sims Designer Chris Trottier on Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion

>The Armchair Empire interviewed Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims and The Sims Online. She touches on some important ideas, including "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion".

>Chris' honest analysis of how and why "the gameplay didn't come together until the months before the ship" is right on the mark, and that's the secret to the success of games like The Sims and SimCity.

>The essential element that was missing until the last minute was tuning: The approach to game design that Maxis brought to the table is called "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion". Before it was tuned, The Sims wasn't missing any structure or content, but it just wasn't balanced yet. But it's OK, because that's how it's supposed to work!

>In justifying their approach to The Sims, Maxis had to explain to EA that SimCity 2000 was not fun until 6 weeks before it shipped. But EA was not comfortable with that approach, which went against every rule in their play book. It required Will Wright's tremendous stamina to convince EA not to cancel The Sims, because according to EA's formula, it would never work.

>If a game isn't tuned, it's a drag, and you can't stand to play it for an hour. The Sims and SimCity were "designed by accretion": incrementally assembled together out of "a mass of separate components", like a planet forming out of a cloud of dust orbiting around star. They had to reach critical mass first, before they could even start down the road towards "Tuned Emergence", like life finally taking hold on the planet surface. Even then, they weren't fun until they were carefully tuned just before they shipped, like the renaissance of civilization suddenly developing science and technology. Before it was properly tuned, The Sims was called "the toilet game", for the obvious reason that there wasn't much else to do!

https://web.archive.org/web/20140720190605/http://www.armcha...