The sims 3 is surprising its creators, and is fun and hugely entertaining to play!
I just finished reading an article at gamesindustry that was very informative and interesting. The article states the Sims3 is already up and running and fully playable as a 2d game. They also seem to have made the game more fun to play. The article is long, but well worth the read. It shows how they made the game fun to play.
Here's the excerpt I was referring to.
QUOTE; In fact, by the time the 3D engine was created, the studio already had The Sims 3 up and running in its entirety - as a fully playable 2D game. Every piece of the design was implemented in this prototype, from character personalities to object interactions, careers and so on. It may only have been made of labelled squares and circles, but the 2D version includes the entire town - and was so advanced that the team even used it to try out some user interface ideas.
The advantages of building this prototype rather than going straight to the 3D version are obvious; by the time the world was being implemented in 3D, the team already knew that they had a working game on their hands. Moreover, they knew that they had something fun - and The Sims 3 was already capable of surprising its creators with the emergent behaviour that came out of its complex, trait-based character creation system. Some of those traits rapidly turned out to be both anti-social - and hugely entertaining.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ping-the-sims-3