Emotional delivery is the core tenet of speaking The Sims' iconic language fluently.
The last time you stubbed your toe, hopped on one foot, and cursed in a series of wordless noises—“mmmmnaaargh ow umph!”—you were speaking Simlish. The exact collection of strangled vowels that echoed down your hallway probably haven’t yet been heard in a Sims game, but their emotional delivery is the core tenet of speaking The Sims’ iconic language fluently. Here, anguish communicated more than “I banged my foot” ever could. Feeling is more important than phonology in Simlish.
Emotion is the answer to a problem that had developers scratching their heads in 1996. Sims needed to communicate realistically—it’s a life simulator after all—but using English would become repetitive and literally put words into the mouths of characters whose story belonged to the player. “We went with Simlish to solve the creative problem of the user created story,” says Robi Kauker, audio director for The Sims. “Simlish gives an emotional context to what is happening in game without interjecting specific meaning. So when two Sims have a conversation, it is up to the player to decide if it is about the weather, or an affair between neighbours, or anything else.”
Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and other fantasy dramas invented fictional languages that are spoken in real life as fluently as French. The grammatical richness of Elvish and Dothraki make Middle Earth and Essos seem more real, but it’s rare to find the same level of linguistic minutiae in videogames.
For Kauker, that’s partly because in some games like The Sims, players take an active role in world building, which requires a more laissez-faire approach from developers. We've republished a variety of stories about The Sims, taken from issue 334 of PC Gamer magazine. For more beautifully detailed articles about the best stories in PC gaming, consider subscribing to the magazine's
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