Life by You by Paradox Tectonic is a new life game created by Rod Humble who knows what he is responsible for. He is the former CEO of Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, and worked on The Sims 2 and 3. In Life by You, he promises to play without limits; When PCGamesN met Humble at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, he kept coming back to this core philosophy. It works like a rock throughout the game, whether it’s Paradox Tectonic’s approach to open world, mods, and player creations, or the downright absurd amount of crafting tools we were promised prior to Life’s release date. by You. .
“What I want is every time someone comes across this life simulator and says, ‘Oh, I want to do This“Don’t let the game get in the way,” Humble tells me in a rented workspace, sheltered from the raging storm outside. “It is the principle of ‘we work for the player and the client’. They own their creations, their games, and our goal is to sell you a complete core game with all these tools.
The Sims comparisons are inevitable, and it’s clear that Humble and Paradox are considering at least some of EA’s lunch, but all the talk about the open world and Life by You creation tools also makes it clear that they have different ambitions and more. big. Also. Yes, you will be able to create characters and manage them by following their day-to-day activities, but you will also be able to transform a bush into a toilet. This marvel of creative achievement comes not from having your characters come home from a night on the town, but from giving the player a rich set of tools.
“If you press F4, you go into real-time editing mode,” Humble says to a screen full of expanded creative options. “Then you can click on any 3D object in the world or on any person and you can just edit, modify or create them.”
You can still play Life by You like a more traditional life game, like building a house in The Sims or tweaking a task like in Stardew Valley, but you also have about 30 different scenario editors that let you play with everything. talking about how 3D objects work in the world. You can do, well, anything.
“Our goal is to be the deepest life sim with the richest gameplay right out of the box,” Humble says when talking to me about the toolset. “Because our scripting language is built into the game, you can click on any object and just change the gameplay. So the bush can be used as a toilet, but that’s just the beginning.”
The toolset may seem intimidating, but not only do you not need to work with it, you don’t even need to use what it provides. Humble says that anyone can share his creations, including mods, absolutely anywhere for you to use them, so we can all benefit from the genius of those with the technical or creative chops to create great things. “It’s important to us that players own their creations and can share their mods anywhere,” Humble says.
Paradox has its own mods website, and Life by You will certainly join Cities: Skylines and Crusader Kings 3 on the front page, “but we don’t force players to use our site at all. It is their creation, they can share it however they want and use any community”, confirms Humble. So whether he prefers CurseForge, Nexus, Reddit, or any other forum, he’ll have full control over where he shares his creations.
While most developers who capitalize on their modding communities have now learned to offer that kind of freedom and flexibility, it’s always nice to hear that Humble so openly supports player and community ownership that it’s sure to be born around Life by You. . “As many billionaires have realized recently, you know you can’t know what to think about the Internet,” he explains.
“We are very, very community oriented. In these types of games, in life simulations, the community is not optional, you have to understand the community and what it means to be a player in a live simulation.”
This goes back to how Life by You will give you all the tools and the option to play as a more traditional life sim or as a creator and then get out of the way. “The ‘we won’t get in your way’ philosophy runs through the entire product,” says Humble. The idea behind Life by You is total freedom, and that extends to what is perhaps the game’s most ambitious feature: the open world. Humble is no stranger to the idea, having worked on The Sims 3 himself, but not only is he ready to take the ball that EA lost by removing this feature from The Sims 4, he’s preparing to move on.
There are no loading screens in Life by You, and all of the AI, characters, and everyday life in the world exist at once. You can follow one of your characters, follow the postman on his rounds, watch the character at work, and then check exactly what the other character was doing, with his permission, all along.
“Create a simulation for everyone with no loading screens and an open world. That was the foundation,” Humble says of Life by You. “The open world is its core and it also permeates every element of the game.” Humble explains this through the lens of a daily process that most of us, both in real life and in The Sims 4, only see at the end: delivering a package.
“If you’re doing an online store at Life by You, there’s delivery, too,” Humble begins. But the delivery is real. This means that the artificial intelligence in the world has to physically deliver it to you, and you can follow the lives of the people involved all day and see how they perform the task themselves. “And if you see someone riding a bike, you can follow them and see where they’re going. And they’re probably going to work, visiting a friend, or going to the beach.”
According to Humble, “the open world is the foundation of that feeling of freedom.” The lack of loading screens and the world’s single space means that all these other tasks can be done while doing whatever you want.
During my half-hour chat with Humble, he was very candid about the Life by You development process, even going so far as to show me many creative tools in action. I’ve been led to question the organization that provides all of this, and here I find Humble to be a little more taciturn, saying only that Paradox Tectonic is a “flat organization” of industry veterans.
“So we don’t talk about the team structure because it’s quite modern,” Humble says at the end of our conversation. “I see it as a kind of competitive advantage, but I can tell you that it uses a lot of modern development methods. Therefore, I approach each project by structure, study and project team, and not the other way around. It’s one of the few secret things about how we work.”
Life by You enters Early Access in September, and while the Humble franchise definitely opened our eyes to the scope of its next game and community engagement, its huge ambition has left us with a lot of questions. The real answers will come when we finally play it.
In the meantime, our list of the best open-world games should keep you busy, along with our Life by You system requirements to help you determine if Humble’s next colossal adventure is right for your PC or laptop.
Source : PC Gamesn
