{"id":941328,"date":"2026-05-06T10:30:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T10:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941328\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T10:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T10:30:22","slug":"pre-production-sims-4-developer-reveals-before-willow-creek-there-was-titanopolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941328\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Production Sims 4 Developer Reveals: Before Willow Creek There Was Titanopolis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CONVERSATION<\/p>\n

Q&A With The Sims 4 Pre-Production Developer<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>I remember when it looked like this..<\/p>\n

\"sims<\/p>\n

User:<\/strong> Huhhhhhhhhh i need some more infooo<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>Before we settled on some weird New Orleans vibe the centerpoint of TS4 was supposed to be a giant city called Titanopolis. Nobody but me has seen that image in probably 15 years.<\/p>\n

I hated the visual direction the game went, especially the art direction, so I quit.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

User:<\/strong> Am i being trolled? This was supposed to be sims 4 or are ya kidding meee? I have trust issues<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal:<\/strong> No, mind you this was really early in production it\u2019s not meant to be what it was supposed to end up looking like. We were trying to find a visual style. I\u2019m not credited on TS4, but I was on the TS1 expansion team and lead environment artist on TS2 and TS3.<\/p>\n

User:<\/strong> You should do an AMA or make your own post with these images, it is so interesting!!<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>I am still kinda angry\/hurt about it, to the point I can\u2019t talk about it without calling out certain people. I don\u2019t want to do that, it\u2019s just not who I am.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/strong> why did they go to the pixar cartoony style direction? what about the decision regarding clay hair? did they really think the players would think the graphics were an evolution from 3?<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>We called it helmet hair, it was actually based off an illustrator named Leyendecker from the 50\u2019s. The original prototypes looked great, but I don\u2019t think it held up when they tried to scale it up and make CAS. CAS was always really hard to do well and not have generic looking characters.<\/p>\n

Statement:<\/strong> They had to rebuilt most of TS4 from the scraps of Project Olympus in less than a year because of how monumentally Sim City\u2019s online game flopped the year before TS4 was supposed to drop.<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>Early TS4 pre-production was horrible, they didn\u2019t have to rebuild because SC2013, they had to rebuild because it was bad.<\/p>\n

I was the lead environment artist during early pre production. Originally it was just me and an animator. The art direction that followed was so bad\/non-existent that I literally quit my job and only stayed because they offered me a spot on The Sims: Medieval. I love so many people at Maxis like family, but some of the people they brought in literally ruined the franchise.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/strong> what\ud83d\ude2dwhat year did its development start? is the whole Olympus thing real? any random curiosities? you have to spill more tea<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal:<\/strong> I think late 2009? I can\u2019t remember. Actually looking at the time stamps on the images I have it started in maybe July or 2009.<\/p>\n

Statement:<\/strong> it\u2019s crazy that we\u2019re stuck at a generation that started being developed in 2009 and with this Project X<\/a> sh*t EA still doesn\u2019t want to completely move on to a brand new foundation oh god<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>On Sims 4 one of the limiting factors was the desire to re-use animations from The Sims 3. The largest part of the budget went towards animating the sims and saving\/reusing animation was seen as a necessity. I wasn\u2019t privy to the early TS3 production, but I\u2019m guessing it was the same thing.<\/p>\n

\"TS3<\/p>\n

Statement: <\/strong>Sims 3 was near seamless transitioning from household to full neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Then they split it up Sims 2 style again and told us it was better that way. And made it look worse than Sims 1 Neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal:<\/strong> I made much of The Sims 2 neighborhood art, someone else did the early work on it but I was responsible for it on the expansion packs. I\u2019m proud of how it ended up considering the limitations. TS3 was really cool.<\/p>\n

Statement:<\/strong> Sims 2 was a huge part of my childhood, and so was your art!<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>Thank you! It was special to work on, the fact that people loved it just makes it even better.<\/p>\n

Statement:<\/strong> The Art and the Music in 2 were series defining. Lemon Jelly and Sim Heartbeat still hit my Playlist at random.<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal:<\/strong> We had the guy from Oingo Boingo in the office all the time, you might know him as Danny Elfman\u2026 he went on to be really famous for working with Tim Burton and a bunch of other movie stuff.<\/p>\n

Oh sh*t ! I\u2019m actually wrong. It was Mark Mothersbaugh who did the TS2 music, Danny Elfman did visit us several times. I always assumed it was him. Anthony Daniels came in couple times as well, I don\u2019t know why. Elfman might have been in because The Simpsons was being developed and he knew our sound guys.<\/p>\n

Question: <\/strong>was Sims 2 style supposed to be cartoony or were y\u2019all aiming for a realistic look and was it like that just bc of technical limitations?<\/p>\n

also why do you personally think the tone and vibe was never like that generation again? it seemed like they were going for a soap opera ish story<\/p>\n

Vertexnormal: <\/strong>The Sims 2 was just an evolution of The Sims 1, same lead character artist. It was cartoony because we added Create A Sim that allowed for editing sims and the technology and techniques at the time were pretty limited. It was also just the art style and direction. EDIT: In general it because more cartoony because we went full 3D and texture memory was our biggest graphical constraint.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

The Sims 1 was meant, or ended up, being a critique on consumer culture. It was pretty silly, but the idea of buying a bigger TV so you would be happier was kindof the point\/joke. The Sims 2 lost that critique and became more about enabling people to tell the stories they wanted to tell, and people wanted\/liked strange and funny stuff.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the Sims 3 really had any strong identity, the weight of the franchise just meant we all wanted to iterate on 2 and make something bigger and better.<\/p>\n

By the time Sims 4 rolled around I think they lost the plot entirely and in some ways it was driven by it needing to make money. Mind you the people working on it love the franchise and the players, it\u2019s more of the vibe coming from new management and EA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q&A With The Sims 4 Pre-Production Developer Vertexnormal: I remember when it looked like this.. User: Huhhhhhhhhh i…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-941328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116527171652073928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}