Welcome to The Sims 2! Part 41

Greetings, Sims fans:

The blooper reel is a long-standing tradition of TV and Film. A serious actor might spectacularly flub his lines, or a boom mic might drop on someone's head. The cast and crew all get a hearty chuckle for a few moments, and then it's back to business as usual. Any production is going to encounter their fair share of gaffes, and some of these prove to be so compelling that they're often compiled and tacked on to the closing credits to give the audience a few additional laughs and a look at the lighter side of the process.

Videogames these days are hardly different.

The process of creating a video game is a long and arduous journey, filled with its fair share of aggravation, frustration, and headaches. But the great thing about creating a thoroughly modern video game like The Sims 2, apart from being able to play it when all's said and done, is that the technology behind it has become so complex that truly bizarre and hilarious things can happen in the game when even the tiniest of things go wrong. Usually, when we encounter bugs in the game, it's no fun at all. The game grinds to a halt, or crashes, and we all pop a couple of aspirin, roll up our sleeves, grab our caffeinated beverage of choice and prepare for the hard slog necessary to fix the problem, but occasionally the results surprise us all. Throughout this process, we've been constantly compiling and playing new builds of the game, and especially early on in the process, they would each have their own set of quirks – their own "flavor". Different builds, if they break just so, can put a smile on the face of the whole team. The team member who makes the discovery will take a snapshot of the screen and it gets passed around, to the momentary delight of everyone else. Then we all grimly set about finding, and squashing the buggy culprit.

And here's a few more just to show you what other sorts of code-based bloopers we've seen along the way:

Get a good look, people! This is the only place you'll be seeing bloopers, 'cause they definitely won't be in the game! Our code is now as tight as a...err...very, very tight thing, and all the laughs in the game are completely intentional. And hey, if we're willing to share our past mistakes with you, then not only must we be pretty close to finished with the game, we must also be utterly confident that the game-play experience found in The Sims 2 is going to provide you with the best people simulator that money can buy.

Can't wait for you to see for yourself!

Lucy Bradshaw

Sims 2 Executive Producer