Paradox Tectonic’s Life by You is a new life game directed by Rod Humble, who knows what he’s leading. He’s the former CEO of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, and worked on The Sims 2 and 3. In Life by You, he promises unlimited gameplay; When – Game News sat down with Humble at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, it kept coming back to this core philosophy. It cuts through the game like a stick of rock, whether it’s Paradox Tectonic’s approach to the open world, mods and player creations, or the downright absurd amount of crafting tools that were promised to us earlier. of the release date of Life by You. .
“What I want is that every time someone stands up to this life simulator, and they say, ‘Oh, I want to do It is“, let the game not get in the way,” Humble tells me in a rented workspace, sheltered from the raging storm outside. “It’s that spirit of ‘we work for the player and the customer.’ They own their creations, their games, and our job is to sell them a basic game complete with all these tools.
Sims comparisons are inevitable, and it’s clear that Humble and Paradox have their eye on at least part of EA’s lunch, but all of the open-world talk and Life by You crafting tools show just as clearly. that they have different and bigger ambitions. Also. Yes, you will be able to create characters and control them by tracking their daily activities, but you can also turn a bush into a toilet. This marvel of creative achievement comes not from your characters returning from a night on the town, but from the set of tools provided to the player.
“If you press F4, you enter live editing mode,” says Humble in front of a screen filled with expanded creative options. “Then you can click on any 3D object in the world, or any person, and you can just edit, modify, or create them.”
You can still play Life by You like a more traditional game of life (think building a house in The Sims or perfecting a task like in Stardew Valley), but you also have around 30 different script editors that let you to play with everything from makeup to character conversations to how 3D objects work in the world. You can do, well, pretty much anything.
“Our goal is to be the deepest life sim with the richest gameplay, right out of the box,” Humble says as he walks me through the toolset. “Because our scripting language is built into the game, you can click on any object and just change the gameplay. So you can use the bush as a toilet, but that’s just the start.”
The toolset may seem daunting, but not only are you not required to participate in it, it’s not even a prerequisite to take advantage of what it allows. Humble says anyone can share their creations, including mods, absolutely anywhere for you to use, so we can all benefit from the brilliance of those with the technical or creative chops to make great things. “It’s important to us that players own their creations and can share their mods wherever they want,” says Humble.
Paradox has its own mod website, and Life by You will surely join others like Cities: Skylines and Crusader Kings 3 on the front page, “but we’re not forcing players to use our site at all. It’s their creation, they can share it however they want and use any community,” confirms Humble. So whether you prefer CurseForge, Nexus, Reddit, or any other forum, you’ll have full control over where you share your creations.
While most developers who benefit from their modding communities have now learned to offer that kind of freedom and flexibility, it’s always nice to hear that Humble is so openly supportive of players and the community that it will no doubt born around Life by You. “As many billionaires have recently discovered, you know, you can’t tell the internet what to think,” he explains.
“We are very, very community-oriented. With this type of game, with life sims, the community is not an extra option, you have to understand the community and what it means to be a live sim player.
It goes back to how Life by You will give you all the tools and options to play like a more traditional life sim or more like a creator and then go out of your way. “That ‘we won’t get in your way’ philosophy runs throughout the product,” says Humble. The spirit of Life by You is one of total freedom, and that extends to what might be the game’s most ambitious feature: the open world. Humble is no stranger to the idea, having worked on The Sims 3, but he’s not only ready to pick up the ball that EA dropped when they removed the Sims 4 feature, he’s preparing to go further.
There are no loading screens in Life by You, and all of the world’s AI, characters, and everyday life exist at once. You can follow one of your characters, follow the postman on his rounds, watch a character at work, and then check out exactly what another character he thinks has been up to all this time.
“Making the simulation simulate all the time for everyone without a loading screen and in an open world. That was the basis,” Humble says of Life by You. “The open world is the center of everything , and it also permeates every element of the game.” Humble explains it through the lens of an everyday process that most of us, both in real life and in The Sims 4, only see as a conclusion: parcel delivery.
“If you’re doing an online store on Life by You, there’s also delivery,” begins Humble. “But the delivery is very real.” This means that an AI in the world has to deliver it to you physically, and you can follow the lives of the people involved for an entire day and watch them perform the task itself. “And if you see someone passing by on a bike, you can just follow them and see where they’re going. And they are probably going to work, to visit a friend or to the beach”.
The “open world is central to that sense of freedom,” according to Humble. The lack of loading screens and world space means that all of these other tasks can happen at the same time as you do whatever you want.
During my half-hour chat with Humble, he was very open about the development process of Life by You, even going so far as to show me many of the creative tools in action. I wonder which organization provides all of this, and here I find Humble a little calmer, only saying that Paradox Tectonic is a “flat organization” of industry veterans.
“So we didn’t talk about the team structure, because it’s quite modern,” Humble says at the end of our chat. “I consider it a kind of competitive advantage, but what I can tell you is that it uses a lot of modern development techniques. So the way I approach each project is by structure, the studio and the project team, not the other way around. It’s one of the few secret things our way of working is covered.”
Life by You will launch in Early Access in September, and while Humble’s franchise has definitely opened our eyes to the scope of its upcoming game and community engagement, its sheer ambition has left us with plenty of questions. The real answers will come when we can finally play it.
In the meantime, our list of the best open-world games should keep you busy, along with our Life by You system requirements, which can help you determine if Humble’s next colossal effort is right for your PC or laptop.