The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 3: The Sims

This article tells part of the story of Maxis Software. I don’t think people realize how much tactical and strategic forethought goes into their daily lives. There’s a whole subconscious time-efficiency layer in our lives. In essence, real-time strategy is our lives. — Will Wright On the morning of October 19, 1991, two weeks after writing his last bit of code for SimAnt, Will Wright climbed out of bed and smelled smoke. Looking out the window of his home in the Oakland Hills of California he saw a dense black cloud blowing in from the east. He called emergency services, who informed him that the culprit was a grass fire that was under control. But after his morning shower, the smoke was worse than ever; great acrid plumes of the stuff were engulfing the house and seeping past the window frames, making it hard to breathe. The emergency-services number now yielded only a busy signal. Wright gathered up his wife Joell and their five-year-old daughter Cassidy and bundled them into the…