The Sims 5 Interview with Grand Rodiek

What’s going on with Project Rene right now?

Grant Rodiek: We are absolutely thrilled to finally put this experience in the hands of some of our players. Well, a smart part of the experience. What we’re doing is early days playtesting and this is just the start of an incredibly long journey. There’s a lot to do, and I’m talking years out. But, it’s exciting, we’re moving and things are finally starting to happen.

For those who are new to the gaming sphere; what is playtesting and what did you explore in the first playtest with Project Rene?

Grant: With Project Rene we want to develop this hand-to-hand with our players from the very beginning. We’re trying to take small snippets of the game, share it with a limited amoutn of people. And, find out what works, what’s fun, what’s too complicated, what needs to be revised. What we did this time is Apartment Customization. Where we took a lot of Build / Buy Mode so you can place furniture, move it around. But, you can also go deeper on individual pieces of furniture. So, for a couch, you can change the:

• Colors
• Patterns
• Material
• Part
• Size

You can do this in multiplayer with other people in real time. All of your creations can be shared, uploaded, downloaded – so we can start testing our UGC backend. All of this both on Mobile and PC.

It’s a lot, and it’s been a really fun test to get started on.

Starting with PC and Mobile: you guys showed that cross-platform compatibility. With The Sims being such a large game, there’s some concerns that it might be a shallower experience. How are you navigating, taking that from PC system into a Mobile device?

Grant: this is a huge challenge. But, the thing that excites us so much is that we can basically remove the barriers to play The Sims. So, what we mean by this is that you can have that deep dive at home, on your PC. Change every single thing about a piece of furniture that you can imagine, type in RGB values and changing every single part. That’s the PC experience – the true rich experience you’re used to.

But then, on the go, you can grab your phone and maybe it’s a different experience. Maybe you’re grabbing archetypes, preselecting templates or maybe grabbing the stuff you’ve already created. What this means is that you can now play The Sims, wherever you are without barriers and restrictions. We think that’s really powerful and exciting!

Interviewer: That is exciting! Let’s say I’m inspired by you now and I take out my phone, create you and take that creation of you and play with this creation of you on my PC?

Grant: 100%. The idea is that all of your information is wherever you need it to be. I have a toddler at home, so I get to game when he’s taking a nap. In this case I could be playing Project Rene on my PC at home. Boom, I hear him crying, he’s up. We’re going to go out and about in the park.

Then, I might continue what I’m doing on the park bench while he’s safely sliding. Pull out my home and continue where I left off.

The idea is that we can customize each platform to match the playstyle and the person. It’s very difficult, it’s not easy. It’s one of the challenges we’re trying to take on.

Multiplayer Experience. Where’s Project Rene landing between Multiplayer and Singleplayer?

Grant: Project Rene can be both. This is a big deal, but the reality is that we know that our players want to have that intimate, personal experience. Where they’re exploring stories and ideas in single-player. But, there are also really cool things you can do with others. Where you can share and create with the people that you want.

We think we can be both.

One thing to keep in mind is that Project Rene is not an MMO. It is not this public shared space where everything you do is always with other people. You could play on your own, on your terms. And then again, when you want on your terms, you can invite others to come and play with you. That’s the structure where we’re pursuing. We think it’s really cool and perfect for The Sims.

What stage are we at with Project Rene? What can players expect to see?

Grant: Right now we’re really focusing on analyzing our recent playtest. So we can use that information to make the game better.

We have a long path ahead of us to make Project Rene. Right now, we need to introduce our tools to our players to a better fashion. We need to make the mobile experience more accessible. We need to continue to experiment with how we can curate and recommend User Generated Content that other players have made. To other players. All so you can make your game better.

There’s a lot to put into our current build. It’s really early days, we are trying to analyze our last test and release you what we learned and what we can do about it to make the game better. You can expect regular updates from Project Rene in Behind The Sims. We have more tests coming out, where we’re gonna evaluate different parts of the game, new snippets.

More details on that soon and how to be a part of these tests. It’s years out, early days and a long time process that we want to work with you on. We’re gonna keep talking about it and I can’t wait to share more!