Life sims are 'the most complex RPGs ever written,' says Life by You director

The Sims isn't the only PC life simulation game in town anymore. Dozens of smaller, more focused life sims have appeared in the years since Stardew Valley took off, and now upcoming Sims competitors like Paralives and Life by You are aiming for the same kind of broad home, relationship, family, and career simulation that EA's 24-year-old Sims series is synonymous with.

Life by You director Rod Humble, who was the head of The Sims series for several years in the 2000s, thinks the fundamental inclusivity of the life sim genre is responsible for its growth.

«The reason that life simulation is so big, and I think it's going to get bigger, is that it's an inclusive game genre that anybody can use to tell stories that are rooted in real life,» said Humble in a recent interview with PC Gamer. 

Humble, whose game credits date back to the early '90s, says he prefers working on sims to games with authored stories because the latter are «exclusionary» by nature. «Who is the lead character? What is their gender? What is their skin tone? What is their age? All of a sudden, I'm just cutting people out,» he said.

Designing a simulation like Life by You, on the other hand, is «always inclusionary,» says Humble. «It's like, how do we extend the magic circle to this colleague who has this worldview and who wants to make sure that they can play that worldview or play that style within our game? And it's an absolute blast.»

It's also a huge undertaking, which is perhaps why there haven't been a ton of Sims competitors. There's really no more ambitious genre name than «life sim,» and although Life by You doesn't make it all the way down to cellular biology, it aims to simulate quite a lot. At a high level, you can «drag, demolish, and rearrange entire towns,» and at its most granular, you can decide what a certain character says to another character in a particular moment, writing a live play (or soap opera, if you prefer) as you go.

I think people who don't play life simulators perhaps