Before Anna Huerta worked at Maxis, owned by Electronic Arts, on The Sims 4, she still played the game professionally. The success of The Sims as a franchise made it one of those games that other companies were always chasing, and to begin to understand it, you’ve got to play it not just as a fan, but as a professional. To dig into the details and start to pull apart the pieces that make the game what it is — it’s about learning from the legacy of a storied franchise. Huerta, now a senior creative director on The Sims 4, now plays the game from the inside, with all the data and research that comes with that sort of access.
Part of playing the game professionally while working at Maxis is to deeply understand the feedback players give, and to build that feedback into something meaningful for the game. The Sims 4 fans haven’t always been pleased with changes or fixes, but its game developers’ ability to distill that feedback and act on it is what’s given the franchise such a legacy — one that’s continued for 25 years, and The Sims 4 for 10 of those years.
Polygon spoke to Huerta about her prolific career in video games and how that led her to the iconic Sims franchise that’s now celebrating its 25th anniversary.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
Polygon: Could you introduce yourself and talk a bit about your and your career journey? When did you start working on The Sims and how did you get to that point?
Anna Huerta: It’s been quite a journey. I knew I wanted to work in technology when I was thinking about colleges, and I was looking more into learning modules and technology kind of intertwined. I loved being on a computer, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I loved video games and I was like, maybe there’s something there, but I am also a problem solver. I wanted to work actually in education, and something around gaming made sense.
I studied game development at the University of Southern California and ended up really just falling in love with the process. And my school was pretty well intertwined with EA, especially in Los Angeles. And so I actually got a lot of professors there and I ended up moving onto some experimental games in physical and occupational therapy and then started working on a concept with children. And that really opened up my door to more children’s games. Eventually I also got a master’s in education and it really gave me, I would say, a user-centered background or learner-centered, which in gaming or in tech, we call it player-centered. So really thinking about design from the landscape of the end person that’s using your product. I got very early in my career in education a wealth of knowledge and how to just build around what someone is looking for, what makes them excited and motivated and really just want to continue playing with something.
I worked in special ed for a little bit trying to apply some of those practices, but what really kind of kicked off my career is I ended up getting a job with Disney working on Pixie Hollow and I just loved it. I loved working with a really wonderful IP with a predominantly feminine audience that was very social and very creative, and they loved basically dressing up their fairies and making homes and interacting with each other and chatting. And actually I think quite a few of our [Sims] players probably have played that game as well.
I fell in love with that. It reminded me a lot of games I played when I was younger. I loved simulation games. I loved creating, and I never thought gaming could have been for me. I didn’t want to make the types of games that my brothers played, for example, even though I liked playing them, I just didn’t want to think about that all the time because they’re a little bit more violent. And I eventually went into Facebook and mobile gaming and got to learn very quickly about development cycles. It’s a much faster paced environment. Moved to San Francisco and got to put on very many hats, both game design and production and project management, and really got into how designers work and get incorporated into a game team. And my background is game design. And I ended up having the privilege of working with a lot of people that had left EA, many who had worked on the Sims, and were always trying to chase that dream.
I think the Sims has really echoed throughout the entire industry and every studio tries to chase what the Sims has done. And so it’s just been kind of built into my pedigree in this really interesting way, just both from college and having worked with people from EA there to working at this company that had a lot of EA employees that eventually went there, especially who knew and understood Maxis very well. And so eventually [in] my career, I was like, I really want to make The Sims, I think the end-all be-all of all video games. And I ended up getting an opportunity to apply for this role, and I just feel so honored that I get to do it. Working on this type of game that’s very creative for this audience is just something that has always been very important to me, but is not always an opportunity. And so I’m so fortunate that I get to have this opportunity for sure.
What was it like jumping into your current role at Maxis on The Sims 4, into a franchise that’s so iconic?
I had to take a moment, I had to take a step back when I was going through the interview process. It is a lot to take on. The audience has such a love and passion for this game, and you want to take care of it and you don’t want to do it wrong. And so I was very nervous. I did not know if I had what it took to continue this franchise more just from a personal perspective, because it is a big title, it is huge both from how big the game is technically to the amount of content to the amount of players that play it and how long it’s been in the industry. So I had to shake off, I think, a lot of that fear. And I don’t think I had imposter syndrome, but maybe that’s what it was that I could do this job with.
Also such a big team. The team is pretty big and everyone is extremely talented. And I have someone that I’m working with now who’s been here for 30 years, and that is amazing to me. So I was nervous on all fronts. I remember talking to a friend who had been mentoring me through my interview process and he was like, “This is it. This is your moment. This is what you’ve been wanting. And you just have to just let it happen and just take it all in.” So my first couple years, which is still now, I told myself, just learn the team, learn the audience, learn the game and away from a very professional perspective and just soak it all in and just really understand it. This could be a lifelong job. I think in the industry you see a lot of people jumping and moving around and I was like, I don’t want that for me.
I want this to be it, and I need to be patient and not just come in and try to change everything, which I think can be really scary for a team as well. When you have a creative director coming in, what are they going to do and what’s their vision? So I spent a lot of time just listening to the team and understanding what makes them work, what is challenging about building this product, and also what lens can I bring. And also a big one for me is how do we continue echoing what the players are looking for and bringing that into the game. So that was my lens for joining the team is, how do I approach just massive products?
“There’s still a lot of life in this game”
You mentioned taking the time to learn the game professionally. What does that mean to you? What’s different playing The Sims 4 as a fan or consumer?
There’s two ways to play a game professionally — one [you’re] not on it, and you’re outside looking in and you’re trying to guess why the studio is making certain decisions and then applying it to your own practices. So I had done that for a long time. Like I said, every game I’ve worked on, it feels like we’ve always had someone that was chasing The Sims and also the success of it. As someone who’s on the game team, you get to see how the sausage is made and why decisions get made, the limitations and also the inverse of that, of how much you actually can do. And for a AAA game, it’s definitely much bigger than a mobile title or even a Pixie Hollow.
So when I look at it, I now get to access everything behind the curtain. Why and how the game is made, how the simulation works, what can we do with it? And also from a design perspective, how do we utilize the work that’s been built in a way to create [something] new? There’s still a lot of life in this game, and you want to be respectful to the systems and try to orient things in a way where when you’re delivering it, there’s the careful craft of like, this is where we build a new system, or this is where we add new content and rework a current system. So I have to really understand the inner workings of that and the tech stack and how it’s working, even though I’m not a technical person, like an engineer. And then also with the audience, you can only guess from an outside perspective what players are doing, why they’re motivated, and what gets them excited. When you’re on a game team, you get to see all that. You get to see what players are actually doing in the game and how that’s different from maybe what they might say on social media.
You get to work with players more directly and ask them questions and get feedback in a way that you just don’t get from the internet or from guessing, and start to validate a lot of assumptions. This game works very differently than any other game out there and the way players play it, it’s very different from most other games. And so that was really fun to learn.
What have you found compelling about the original The Sims? Has that changed over time working on The Sims 4?
I think the most compelling thing is it introduced a lot of choice and storytelling at the level of the person. And I think that in itself was a big risk. Again, chasing these games, everyone’s excited about Sim City and making a city builder and the fact that you could zoom in and play people, I think was very unheard of outside of an RPG. This was more about the day-to-day life — people’s emotions, and just seeing that come to life. I think there was a question, how is that a game? And the fact that that happened, I think really set the tone for what’s been possible for games in this genre, and we continue to try to emulate that today. So it’s opened up the doors for a very specific type of storytelling that is really, I think near and dear to my own heart, which is human psychology and how people react to situations and things that are, I would say, are really important to us as people.
It’s almost like Maslow’s hierarchy to an extent, but also what brings us joy. And I think the early games really tapped into that and then added that little bit of fantasy and excitement and hopefully — oh wait, we’re not announcing that yet. Okay, so I’m not going to say that. Sorry. And so we get to continue that journey. I think Will Wright and his team definitely set the stage to do that and to tell stories from diverse perspectives as well. And so being able to have queer characters, being able to date and see whoever you want was really important. And we are just now more intentional about it these days. And so we got to see the audience really react to that looking from outside. And then now with The Sims 4 we get to continue to expand on a lot of those systems. And I think that maybe wasn’t the original intention, but it’s where the audience was asking us to go and to continue these multiple perspectives.
How have you experienced seeing the culture and massive impact of The Sims both personally and throughout the video game industry?
I’ll start with the industry perspective. ’Cause I think how it’s also affected me is, and I alluded to this earlier, is I think it taught the industry that there are other types of games out there that could be quite successful — these more creative, story-driven perspectives about the day-to-day from different types of people. So you see a lot of — especially indie games — a lot of these contain simulated experiences on very human topics. But before, games were more platformers and shooters and stealth and adventure. The Sims really opened up the door for I think something that was just a lot more human and close in connection. And then as a developer, knowing that I can make a game like that, I think, is really exciting. And for people like me who want to create more of these creative storytelling games, there is that opportunity. And now there’s more throughout their industry, which I think is really important to have that capability to be able to pursue a career that also brings yourself joy and happiness to be able to tell these types of stories.
I can make a game like this that represents me. I think people can play a game that also represents them. I would say the biggest impact is that player that is still exploring who they are or maybe are not getting positive reinforcement of who they are. They can see that positivity in the game. They can create themselves however they want. They can experiment with that, and hopefully feel accepted. We’re not a game that judges you for who you are, how you play. And that has had a profound impact on the way people just see themselves right now. Not everyone grows up in an environment that is accepting. And so to be able to have that safe space is extremely important. Also, a creative outlet that is at home and accessible is incredibly important. People just tell stories also outside of themselves and that helps them explore. And I’ve seen players say, I’m going to research this culture or this perspective and then try to emulate that here. And seeing players are doing research and to help their stories, that’s really cool to me. They care about other people and they want to know what their life is like and then they try to play that out in The Sims.
Electronic Arts and Maxis have released a ton of Sims content over the past 25 years. Is there pressure to keep iterating? How do you decide what comes next? I’m curious, too, if you look back at the older games to pull from, or if it’s more of a constant look forward?
Yeah, it’s everything. So our players are kind of the ones that tell us that we should be making more. And so that is first and foremost is, we get signals that show, “Hey, players want more of this area of the game” or just overall they want more Sims. And so that keeps us alive and going, is definitely players gravitating towards this game year over year. And then how we choose and what we study is, we study all of it. So we talk to players to see what it is that they’re looking for first and foremost, and that’s what stories do you want to tell? And what’s missing, too — as a game designer, you also look at the systems from a design perspective, and are they settled? Do they need more? Does something feel like it’s not, it’s missing? Or can we augment this to create something more interesting? And then from what we call our back catalog, both in The Sims 4 and past games, we absolutely look at what have we done well and what can we do better? We know what was successful about those past features that have come online for past games. And so sometimes it’s about like, hey, this game just deserves to have that. It’s a no-brainer, but what can we do differently and how can we make it work within this engine that we have? And as you probably noticed, a lot of it is about going deeper.
You can go deeper on a werewolf and it’s a lot more expansive than perhaps past werewolves. And then yeah, there’s always inspiration from life is definitely a huge one. What is it about life that we’re missing those stories that players can tell?
What are you most proud of achieving with The Sims?
I would say the way we talk about features, and I spent a lot of my time so far thinking about the human experience and coaching the team and how do we bring that in? And I think our relationship with our player has gotten incredibly deep the past couple of years. We’ve always talked to the players, but we’re kind of hitting this new phase, especially with user-generated content and this world of influencers, which wasn’t as big 10 years ago, and it’s huge now. And so part of it is we have more tools to talk to players, and a lot of my work is working with our teams to bring that in. And how do we translate that into our roadmap, and how do we translate that also to the human experience? And so my first, I feel like real bout with this was with growing together and taking this very day-to-day storytelling of having a child and raising them, but how do we make it beyond that and what’s the experience across multiple age groups and how they interact together within a family, and what does that dynamic look like?
That really came from talking to players about why they care about family dynamics. Why do they keep talking about generational gameplay? Why do players — why are they really interested? Family and generational play come up a lot. And then digging even deeper into like, well, why does that matter? And so we connected with players for that pack, I think got a lot of valuable insights that really changed I think what we were going to end up doing. And we just really focused on the family and those connections and also the drama of those interactions. And then what is the psychology behind that? And so looking at human development, psychology, and relationship psychology between family members — and the team did an excellent job at just taking that and then turning that into systems and mechanics that the players could tell stories with.
Has anything surprising come out of your conversations and research with players?
I think there’s also a couple ways for me to answer this. From when I first joined, the surprising things were how much choice these our players wanted. In games that I’ve worked on, it was more about a very specific way of playing. And in this game it’s like, there’s just a lot of choice that players want. And as a designer, how do you design for that? That could be endless. So that surprised me. I think professionally, just as someone who was new to the team, and I would say as of lately, I think it’s the continued, yes, we want the exciting fantasy gameplay, but what we really want to talk about are relationships between Sims and family and friends and drama. And that I think time over time that just doesn’t go away. And so it’s fun to see because it’s consistent, but I don’t know why. I’m always surprised by that. I always feel like, oh, players really want this high fantasy vision for the world and to go into these crazy spaces and they’re like, no, I want laundry day.
I was just going to say, there’s literally nothing that makes me happier than putting clutter or mundane things in my Sims’ houses.
Laundry Day players will always want the stuff that they have around them, which is really cool to see. And it’s not surprising. We know what players are motivated by, but it’s still like, oh yeah, that’s what they like.
The post The Sims 4 creative director on why The Sims is special: ‘We’re not a game that judges you for who you are, how you play’ appeared first on Polygon.
