The Sims design mastermind Will Wright says the first Sims ever made were "too good" at staying alive and needed to be stupider for the game to be fun

A female sim in a red dress in front of a fire in an official Sims 1 render.

According to The Sims mastermind Will Wright, the original life sim had to be dumbed down as Sims' autonomy was simply "too good" to be enjoyable.

Speaking in a recent interview with The New York Times, Wright discusses the conception of The Sims – a title that "everyone in the room hated the idea of" but arguably revolutionized the simulation genre. "In early versions of the game," admits the developer, "the autonomy was too good." So good, in fact, that the Sims actually managed to outplay the players in a way. "Almost anything the player did was worse than the Sims running on autopilot."