The Story of Maxis Software (1999)

I was going to say I miss the age in video games where there were well known players like Sid Meier or Will Wright, but then I noticed the article was written by Geoff Keighley who I still know of today for running the game awards. Kinda funny.

For anyone who's curious, here's a video of the Easter egg in action, along with a some more interesting backstory on Jacques Servin, the programmer in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4mh7Pc5MSI&t=495s

I worked at Maxis for about six months during the middle part of the events described in the article. I started during the tumultuous days surrounding the initial attempt at SimCity 3000 (I didn’t work on that project, though I saw its prototypes from time to time), up until shortly after the EA buyout was announced (but before it actually happened).

On my first day at work there was a giant poster in the reception area which you’d see on your way back out to the elevators, which began with the text, “To departing staff:”. The SimCity 3k debacle was already bleeding their staff, and I remember thinking — even as a fresh university graduate with no real work experience — that that probably wasn’t a good sign. (I don’t remember noticing it again after the first day; it may actually have only been up for that one day)

My cubicle was about two meters from Wil Wright’s glass-fronted office, with direct line of sight into it. My major regret is that I never introduced myself to him or even spoke to him at all (I was just a fresh university graduate and he was freaking Wil Wright. And also, he always looked kind of stressed and unhappy in there and I never wanted to impose)

RE: the story’s comment “There was absolutely no explanation as to why SimCity 3000 needed to be 3D,” I again wasn’t actually on that project, but it was clear to see that it wasn’t possible to make the game in 3D at that time. This was the era of the original 3DFX Voodoo card, and there were only two of them in the entire company (and somehow I had one of them and I never understood why). But the reason I was given for making the game in 3D was that it was a decision from Marketing; it was a core game bullet point that was going to be required if SimCity 3000 was going to save the company the way that SimCity 2000 had done. No 3D? The company wouldn’t survive. So there were epic battles between marketing and sales saying that it was what was required to save the company on one side, and the programmers who would have to actually implement the game saying that it wasn’t technically possible on the other side.

It was an interesting situation to be tossed into as your first thing out of university, I have to say. Even if I was kind of over to one side working on Streets of SimCity and only seeing it in my peripheral vision.

There are lots of famous names around, probably more so than before. Kojima and Myamoto come to mind, Tim Schafer is 20 years into a 'comeback', Minecraft - one of the most popular games of the last decade - has a well-known designer who'd still be part of the conversation if he hadn't taken it upon himself to torch his public reputation. And that's just scratching the surface.

> Somehow, Christmas 1996 came around, and Maxis did manage to ship all four games... or at least something resembling them. But no one was very happy about meeting the deadline, as corners were cut on all the projects. Wright was the most disappointed of all. "The low point for me was releasing SimCopter when we did," he says. "The gameplay was developing nicely, but we just had to ship it too soon."

As someone who tried SimCopter as a kid I have to agree 100% that it shipped way too son. It felt rough and incomplete, almost like a prototype to test gameplay mechanics, a far cry from the quality and polish of SimCity 2000.