Humans, given a sandbox environment in which they can interact in ways not necessarily envisioned by the game designers, will create more interesting gaming than story driven games that are “on the rails.” The Sims Online could turn into a self-governing world, and ts creators could sit back and watch it evolve over time.
Will Wright, one of the key members of the Sims Online team, admits he is tremendously excited by what The Sims Online could eventually grow into. One day, Wright predicts that there may be an elected set of representatives in the game who could tune the economy themselves and police the world. "We have a club structure coming, and we're hoping that can evolve into a government for each city." Beyond that, there are many other wild ideas about what The Sims Online could become.
Wright, however, cautions that he wants to let players decide how to evolve the world. "It has to come from the bottom up," he posits. "We can't do it from the top down and dictate structure." Instead, players need to build covenants with each other and establish the conventions of the world over time. "Who knows what the emergent behavior is going to be?" asks Chris Trottier, Wright's codesigner.
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