In the acclaimed HBO series The Rehearsal, comedian Nathan Fielder builds meticulous sets and hires actors to help everyday people plan out their lives in an attempt to anticipate every possible conclusion of a difficult upcoming conversation. The results are absurd and thought-provoking, but life is much more complicated and unpredictable outside a controlled environment, and regardless of how much you influence the variables, things don’t always go exactly as planned.
Nowhere is this more evident than in video games, where life simulators such as The Sims permit users to build replicants and create their own fantasies, only to watch them unravel before their eyes as the chaos of artificial intelligence takes hold. Life By You, a new kind of social simulation game from Paradox Tectonic, seeks to blend the role of player and developer to give its users a level of control as yet unseen in the genre.
