Sims was "The Toilet Game"

By Robert Purchese Published 18 January, 2008

Wright says it almost didn't get made.

Will Wright has admitted The Sims might never have happened had it not been for his persistence.

Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, he said getting suits at developer Maxis keen on the idea was a "battle" from the start, with early testing groups ending in disaster and eventually forcing him to abandon the project.

"It was a battle, the first few years, inside Maxis," said Wright. "It was referred to as 'The Toilet game'. It was the game where you clean the toilet.

"We had a product review meeting at Maxis where we had to decide whether we'd publish this thing or not...and the executive said 'No, let's do [something else]'."

So he decided to work on it in secret, the cheeky risk taker. And it was only after he and a tools programmer introduced the open-ended object and character interaction that things began to take off.

Then eventually it got the go-ahead, and apparently we could have even seen it a year or two earlier. But Wright wanted to make it expandable, and a good job he did, given the 29 million worldwide sales for The Sims series and add-ons to date. [Update: Or rather, at the time of the interview - apparently it's up to more than 70 million now. - Ed]

"I thought the game would either do a million units or... 50," Wright bashfully admitted. "I thought a million would be a hit. It would be a hit or a total dog."

Will Wright is currently masterminding evolution-inspired simulation Spore, which should be out sometime this year. Ambitious? Check. Elongated development? Check. Worried? Not on your life.

"If you really believe in what you're doing, don't be discouraged easily," concludes Wright. "Otherwise you're in the wrong industry".

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jebus #1 4 years ago

    I suspect that the same kind of thinking will apply to Spore.

    It's either going to be the best game ever made or utter rubbish.
    I pray it's the former.

  • DB2k #2 4 years ago

    well its certainly got a lot more hype than the toilet game has which instantly will work against it if its cak.

  • Tweakmonkey #3 4 years ago

    Household chores for the win!

  • bloke #4 4 years ago

    Well - having produced 2 of the top selling PC games of all time, he's allowed the occasional weird one.

    Anyone remember SimAnt? :-)

    Am expecting something great of Spore - but not necessarily commerical.........

    This time, I think a million will be seen as a failure 'though :-(

  • chrisjm #5 4 years ago

    i never had sim ant, but sim farm was ace. more like that please!

  • hulahoops #6 4 years ago

    What's next? "The French invade England, King Harold Killed?" :)

    Spore will almost certainly be brilliant. It will also, sadly, almost certainly sell a tiny fraction of The Sims' sales.

    What is it about Maxis swinging between micro and macro with every release? Except I suppose Spore swings from the microest to the macroest in one swoop. Wonder if that's where he got the idea from?
    Edited by hulahoops at 18/01/08 @ 17:40

  • Feanor #7 4 years ago

    When is EA going to make The Sim-psons? The gameplay of the Sims 2 set in Springfield would be great.

  • viper_h #8 4 years ago

    Sim Tower was great :D

  • FWB #9 4 years ago

    I really really hope Spore turns out to be something special. It's right up my street.

  • Nithron #10 4 years ago

    Personally i'm hoping that when your Spore civilization reaches it's highest level it works out it's inside a computer game and it's entire cultural outlook changes.

    But then i'm a bit weird, really.

  • cak #11 4 years ago

    > well its certainly got a lot more hype than the toilet game has which instantly will work against it if its cak.

    Hey!

  • Baronen #12 4 years ago

    Impressive!

  • dllord #13 4 years ago

    The game is Toilet as far as i'm concerned!

    Fair enough, its a toilet that makes a lot of money, but its still a toilet!

  • Artemis_Matsas #14 4 years ago

    dllord +1

  • Lexx87 #15 4 years ago

    viper_h +1

  • bloke #16 4 years ago

    Sim Tower was written by a Japanese guy - actually I quite liked it.

    While I'm thiking of non-Maxis Sim titles - I think Sim Farm was out of house as well - and Sim Isle was done by the UK's own Intelligent Games (sadly no longer with us).

  • zoidberg #17 4 years ago

    This seems old. Not the article, the sound bite. I've heard him say this a bunch of times.

  • seasidebaz #18 4 years ago

    "this toilet prints money!"

  • Dragul #19 4 years ago

    Oh... SimFarm... My first entery to Sim... Great game, I really would like a SimFarm 2... Same gameplay, sweeter graphics!

  • Kill_Crazy #20 4 years ago

    Loved SimAnt - classic.
    It Came From The Desert (?) was also good. Giant, radioactive, mutant ants FTW.

  • zoidberg #21 4 years ago

    Sim Tower all the way ;)

  • Pirotic #22 4 years ago

    Surprised nobody has gone the obvious route and suggested they just make the perfect sim city game with lovely 3D graphics so you can really admire the place from the ground up.

  • marilena #23 4 years ago

    With Sim City it was the same, they had a hard time getting EA to launch it. It's very hard to tell how much an original game will sell. With a game in an established genre you can always have a guess based on quality, marketing budget and franchise power if that is the case, but with something as left field as The Sims you have no idea if it's going to be a hit or a bust.

    And all people who hate The Sims are people who haven't played it. It's a great game in all ways.

  • L0cky #24 4 years ago

    'Personally i'm hoping that when your Spore civilization reaches it's highest level it works out it's inside a computer game and it's entire cultural outlook changes. '

    And then! This causes us to realise we're inside a computer and by virtue of watching us, the people playing us realise they're inside a computer, ad infinium until the existence of everything explodes.

    Universe destroyed by Will Wright.

    I'd buy it.

  • HeroCookie #25 4 years ago

    Surprising, but I found the 'Sims' a great collection of games, of course that's if your into that sort of thing...

  • seasidebaz #26 4 years ago

    simtoilet

    that would be a great game!

  • CouldntResist #27 4 years ago

    I may be a bit of a pessimist, but i can't help but think that all these eras (cell, creature, tribe etc) might turn out to be less than the sum of their parts.

  • Dafridge #28 4 years ago

    Spore is sim toilet.

    You play a micro organism in Wrights toilet and evolve into the pond dwelling scum of an EA executive.

  • Camilitus #29 4 years ago

    this was mentioned at the the BAFTA induction - if eurogamer had bothered to attend