Not Down With the Sickness
Back in March, Paradox Interactive revealed their upcoming life sim Life by You. Of course, many comparisons to The Sims were made. Paradox Tectonic head Rod Humble is actually a former producer of The Sims. In a recent interview, Humble shed some light on some features that were removed.
Like in The Sims, your characters in Life by You can live their whole lives. However, your characters can die as well. That’s just the circle of life. There was a more complex feature in the game concerning death, but it was removed.
Humble says that there were plans to include sickness and “unfortunate means” as causes of death. Bear in mind that this game had been planned over the past several years. He also confirmed that these plans were removed due to COVID-19.
Many games were delayed and adjusted because of the constraints the pandemic caused, but this is a little different. This feature removal was out of sensitivity that death by sickness might hit too close to home. In a similar move, the 2012 mobile game Plague Inc. also added new content in response to the pandemic.
Rod Humble also went on to say that Life by You “doesn’t come with any violence in it.” We all know that real life isn’t without its dark parts, but that doesn’t mean our games have to reflect every bit of it.
Life by You will be coming to early access on September 12th on Steam and Epic Games Store.
Do you think this was the right move for the developers? Let us know in the comments below.