MJ Chun is a producer for the Sims series. Her focus on The Sims 3 was the Create-A-Sim feature, but she spoke with me about more far-ranging subjects, including what The Sims 3 learned from personal ads; how 28 Days Later was the inspiration for certain testing scenarios; and where the game stands on the controversy between dresses and pantsuits. We also touch on less incendiary issues like homosexuality, religion, and laundry.

Read the interview after the jump.

Tom Chick: I presume you guys have data on this. What can you tell me about who plays The Sims? How does it break down in terms of, like, age and gender?

MJ Chun: The gender split is about sixty/forty. And in terms of age, it's anecdotal for me, but I can tell you that the youngest person at our custom content creator event [when the game was in beta testing] was fifteen. She had to come with her parents. And the oldest person was in their fifties and didn't have to come with their parents.

TC: So that's sixty percent men, forty percent women, but for the sake of perspective, do you know how it breaks down for a normal videogame?

MC: It's actually sixty percent female and forty percent male.

TC: Oh. Well, there's my prejudice.

MC: It's one of the great things about the Sims. Because it's inspired by life, it's really accessible to people who don't think of themselves as gamers. It's about people. Everyone can relate to people. We live in a social world. I think that's the thing that draws a lot of different types of gamers and people who don't think of themselves as gamers into the Sims world.

TC: I'd like to talk about the transition from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3. Have you been a part of the transition? Do you go back that far with the series?

MC: The transition has been interesting. I had an opportunity to work on MySims as well, but before that I worked on The Sims 2 base game, through a lot of the expansion packs. It's been cool to watch and be a part of asking the same questions. What does a sim look like? What makes this game a Sims game? What's fun for the player? What motivates the sims? We get very different answers depending on the design direction, or what's appropriate for the platforms. For MySims, the question was, "What would The Sims look like in a Nintendo world?" With The Sims 3, we were dealing with issues like, you know, we really want to open up customization, we really wants the sims to look appealing, we want to push the graphics. But at the same time, we want the game to be accessible to as many people as possible. You don't want to cross the line into that creepy uncanny valley.

TC: I'm mainly curious about the progression of gameplay. In the original game, Will Wright created this system for virtual societies, this sort of life simulation. Then in The Sims 2, there was more of a strategy game built into that, more focus, more goals, more of a push for better gamplay. Once you come out of The Sims 2, can you tell me about the discussions about where to take The Sims 3?

MC: One of the main discussions was about the power of taking your sims outside. Breaking out of that artificial box that used to be your sim's home. You take your sim to a community lot and the entire town is simulating at the same time. The town grows old. You have neighbors you can't ignore. Well, I guess you can ignore them. But we were opening up the box into a whole town and having all those simulations run with you.

TC: I see a lot of parallels to the way Animal Crossing plays. Was that intentional?

MC: Oh. I actually never thought of it that way. So that's kind of cool because I'm a huge Animal Crossing person as well. There's less of a collection game in The Sims 3. It's not as core to the design as it is in Animal Crossing. The Sims 3 is very much about the sims themselves and the interactions between the sims. The lifetime wish and your other wishes are tied back to the personality traits, so that was another big discussion for us. How do you make the sims smarter? How do you make them come alive? You have so much control over these characters, but they still surprise you. That's one of my favorite things about it. So the discussions were about the simulation and the personalities of these characters. So we had the idea of these personality traits. A lot of that came from how people would describe themselves in personal ads. Lifestyle choices, such as "I'm a vegetarian so this is really important to me". Or "Hey, I'm a hopeless romantic and I like long walks on the beach". Or how would other people characterize you? Like "that person has a really great sense of humor but they're kind of evil and really crappy to work with". From all those things, we got the idea for personality traits. You can pick personality traits for your sims and there's no value judgment. It's just as important to your sim that they have a green thumb, as well as that they don't like children and they're brave. There's a huge range of emotional, psychological, and lifestyle traits you can pick for your character that impact the gameplay.

TC: A sim can only have five traits. How did you come to the magic number of five traits? Was there a discussion about having fewer or more than five?

MC: You never want to make it so the player doesn't understand why something happened. Whatever happens in the game, the player should be able to deconstruct why their sim all of a sudden cackled or wants to steal candy from a baby or go outside. Too many traits seemed to be giving lots of mixed messages. Too few traits seemed like having a really 2D personality, without a lot of depth. We felt like five is a good number.

TC: One of the things I've noticed, and I blame this on RPGs where you can minimize and maximize your characters, is that there doesn't seem to be any incentive to take some of the negative traits, such as unlucky or clumsy. Now I realize that's not a problem for most people, but did you guys anticipate that some gamers like me might sulk about the fact that there's no reason to take those?

MC: We wanted to make sure that different types of players would get something cool out of it. There's a great blog about Kev and Alice. Have you seen it? It's a storytelling-driven game experience where a character happens to be unlucky and clumsy. And we wanted people to be able to tell stories about their friends, or their family, or themselves. Sometimes people consider themselves clumsy. It's one of those things where not all the stats have to benefit you, but they have to impact your game. Even if you choose to be a vegetarian and you force your sim to eat meat, they'll be sick. There are consequences to your decisions. But in terms of min/maxxing, there are still a lot of great traits to choose from.

TC: You mention wanting everything to be very clear to the player. One of the great new things that drives that point home for me are the moodlets. The moodlet system has pushed the needs system from center stage. Almost literally. The moodlets now occupy that spot in the interface, front and center. How did the moodlets system come about?

MC: The team is made of a lot of gamers and we loved the moodlet system because it gives you an understanding of what impacts your sim without focusing on the micro-needs. When I play, I don't have my needs panel open at all.

TC: That's kind of new, isn't it? It used to be that when you played your sim, that needs panel was the one you watched. But you don't really have to do that in The Sims 3, do you?

MC: No. That's one of the coolest things for me. Being able to strategize on that level. Saying, "Oh, if I send my sim to the park to play guitar for tips, not only do I get the "Yay, I'm outside!" moodlet because my sim loves the outdoors, but I get the financial benefit and I'm increasing my guitar skill". All the different things that happen to you in your life impact you. Whether we like to admit it or not, getting that awesome parking spot or eating that perfect sandwich makes a difference. It's "oh, I'm having a bad day, but that sandwich was fantastic". You have a garden and maybe you grow a perfect tomato. Those are some of the things that make our lives so rich and there's a reflection of that in The Sims 3.

TC: The moodlets are a source of some delightful surprises as a player. I imagine it must have a been a great time coming up with moodlets. Were there many that didn't make it into the game, that didn't make the cut?

MC: There were a lot of moodlets that didn't make the cut. When it came to the treats and the moodlets, we have a great time being creative. But we also wanted to make sure the game was tuned and balanced. We wanted to make sure all the different activities and skills and careers and magical life moments impact your mood. Pregnancy? Huge moodlet. Getting promoted. Getting fired. Being humiliated. One of my favorite moodlets is being in the presence of thine enemy. I just love it to bits.

TC: Do you know offhand what moodlet has the biggest impact?

MC: I would guess marriage or pregnancy. I can get that information to you.

TC: The min/maxxer in me is wondering.

MC: I will send that along.

(Note: See here.)

TC: Now some things carried over from the various Sims 2 expansions. Cars, for instance. I think gardening. And some things didn't. Pets. Higher education. What was your criteria for what things from The Sims 2 would be included in The Sims 3?

MC: One of the things we looked at was the open town and the sense of exploration. Sunset Valley has little nooks where you can find rare metals or insects or other collectibles. Finding the rare seeds for gardening. Going fishing in special nooks. The sense of exploration pushed us to think about our open environment and what made the most sense. And cars definitely made sense. You get to watch your sim drive to work. That was one of my favorite things. My sim got in her car and went downtown. I was following her. You get to see the neighbors and what they were doing. That was such a thrill for me.

TC: That adds gameplay, too. There's a great sense of "Well, I'm on the way home from work, I'll swing by the grocery store" or "This sim lives near my route to work, so I'm going to drop by and visit him". That helps bring the town to life, the sense of geography and terrain.

MC: Yes, yes.

TC: The previous sims would have storylines. The relationships between the Goths, for instance. That was an old stand-by.

MC: Yes.

TC: But now that time passes for all the sims in the town, doesn't that make it almost impossible for you guys to do that. It seems like any cool scripted interaction you want to set up would pass with a single generation, once everybody has died.

MC: We had to account for making sure the town still had all the life moments for its residents. There's a setting for "story progression". Everybody eventually passes away, so we want new sims to move to town. Maybe sims need a career. The story progression takes care of that. We would have a testing scenario we jokingly referred to as the 28 Days Later scenario. If all the residents in town die off or move out, the town will have to repopulate itself. We were testing that system. The AI goes "Okay, let's have some families, let's make sure people are gainfully employed, but also some of the sims need to be unemployed". There was a lot of design around that.

TC: Are you happy with how it worked out?

MC: We love story progression. It's one of the reasons I love going to the gym or the park. I love meeting new sims who may not have been there when I first started my game.

TC: You mentioned the seeds and such. How are seeds generated in the world? Is that dynamic? Or are the same seeds in the same places?

MC: There are spawners. You'll always find certain types of seeds in certain areas.

TC: I want to ask you about a couple of potentially controversial elements of the game. The Sims has always been very frank about sexuality. Early on, homosexuality was a part of the Sims series. Was that emergent, or was the Sims written to allow for homosexual relationships?

MC: It's always been emergent. We make systems and then the systems interact in ways that surprise us. And then you add in the extra awesome ingredient of player creativity. It's staggering. It's hard to express, but we're so heads down when we work on the game, so one of the things we look forward to is seeing how people are playing the game, adding their own perspective and their own life experiences, asking "Hey, what happens if...?" and pushing our systems, and coming up with gameplay and stories and pieces of machinima. We've always been about making sure underlying systems are there.

TC: It seems to me that other games - I'm thinking specifically of World of Warcraft - get involved in thorny situations with sexuality, such as the situation with gay and lesbian clans. But it seems like The Sims, which openly acknowledges and presents homosexuality, has mostly avoided getting tangled up in controversy. Is that correct? Has that ever been a struggle for you guys?

MC: Because it's a single-player experience, it's always been about the stories individuals want to tell. On some level, it's about your game and your experience. We want people to be able to share their stories on YouTube and Facebook, but it's about the player and less about an interaction. Whereas in World of Warcraft, everything is an interaction.

TC: Okay, well let me ask you about another tricky issue. Something that I think is conspicuously absent from The Sims is something very important in many people's day-to-day lives. That's religion. How come the Sims has never incorporated that?

MC: I almost expected you to say laundry.

TC: Well, then that's my next question.

MC: We get that a lot. "When are you guys going to put in laundry?" We actually talked about laundry. It was like, "You know, to be honest, it's actually not that fun".

TC: Laundry is just kind of dead time, isn't it?

MC: We could a laundry object, but then we'd want to hook it into an entire gameplay experience. Then we're going down that micromanagement path. If you make it just a fun object, you know, "ooh, a laundry machine!" and you get a bonus moodlet, then it's hokey. Do you really want to play The Sims and go, "Socks! I'm gonna do socks tonight!"

TC: Now you're not off the hook for the religion question...

MC: Oh, I know.

TC: ...but the laundry thing makes me wonder why you guys don't have clothes with gameplay implications, rather than just cosmetic. Again, as an RPG player, I'm used to different outfits changing armor class and stealth and whatnot. Did you guys ever experiment with that with The Sims?

MC: For us, because it's such a storytelling game, one of the things we don't want to do is make judgments. The danger of making a game that is international, that crosses so many ages, is that tagging clothing a particular way is a slippery slope in terms of making judgments. If you give the long flowing dress a moodlet because you're more attractive, then somebody would wonder "Why not the pantsuit?" It limits players' storytelling ability. I think it's the same deal with religion. It's a game for everyone. It's like public schools. Public schools are for everyone. We don't want to impose on anyone's storytelling. We don't want to make a judgment on anyone's particular way of seeing the world. This is your game, your story. If the player decides that they're going to tell a story of a particular sim and religion happens to be a part of it, that's the story they're telling. But we're never going to insert that into their gameplay.

TC: Was there every any back and forth on building religion into the game?

MC: That's actually been one of the core tenets. Don't mess with the player. It's like the way we've thought about incorporating holidays into the game. Holidays are important because they come from a cultural, historical, social context. To make fake holidays didn't ring true for us either.

TC: Well, I want to thank you for talking to me, MJ. I also want to say it's a real delight to talk to a producer who's obviously still so enamored of her game. So often I talk to producers who I can tell are just sick of their games after working on them so long.

MC: It's an honor for me to get feedback. I can't wait to tell people when I talk to someone who really liked the game.

TC: You guys must get that a lot. I have a hard time imaging someone who doesn't like The Sims 3. Do you guys ever get negative feedback, or is it just adoration 24/7, with people constantly telling you how wonderful the game is?

MC: It's adoration 24/7. [laughs]

Electronic Arts PR manager Angie Newman: I'm going to go ahead and answer this, since I talk to reporters more than MJ does. What we usually get is a really really hardcore gamer site that feels like they have to pick something. There are articles with pros and cons, and they can't not put a con, so they'll pick something arbitrary like the fact that not every single one of our expansions is in The Sims 3. It's usually something ridiculous where you can tell his editor told him he had to pick a con.

TC: It's that Fox News approach to fair and balanced. You've got to come up with a negative side of the story.

MC: It's good to get this kind of feedback, though. Some decisions were really tough to make, so we like hearing what people think of the game.