A Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Sims 4
Posted by Alexander Ahlsen, Thursday, September 11, 2014 _ The Sims team has shared a brand-new blog post on TheSims.com about what a day at The Sims Studios is really like! You can read the full blog post inside this article! :)
** Now that The Sims 4_ has launched, I thought it would be fun to show you what a typical day looks like for a senior animator here where we make the game!
Early Morning: Arriving at EA**
The first thing I do is check my email to see if there are any issues, concerns, or requests. I do this while loading the latest build of the game. I scan my calendar to see if I have any design meetings or meetings to go over the implementation schedule. If I don't have any meetings, I get straight into animating, testing, or refining our contribution to the game.
A Little Later in the Morning: check-in, review, and prep for new animations
The animation team usually has a quick stand-up meeting in the morning. It's a bit like a roll call. When your name comes up, you share what you're planning to work on for the rest of the day. A one-sentence update on what's in progress and how far along it is usually does the trick. It helps the whole team to understand who is working on which parts of the game. The meetings are informal and fast, rarely lasting more than 5 to 10 minutes. Then we head back to our desks and get back to work. During the following hour, the animation leads check in with each of us individually to review the quality of our animations. The team is large, so the directors have split us into two groups to make it easier to allocate time. We're called the red team and the blue team. During the review with the director, we look at the first pass of animation, create reference videos, talk about how what we're doing should work in the game, get feedback on the animations, or discuss any technical issues.
Lunch:
I like to head out with my "animation pod." I oversee three animators, and we try to get away from work and have lunch together once a week. We go somewhere new each time. The hardest part is getting all four of us to agree on the same place.
The Afternoon: steady production
After lunch it's mostly heads-down, focused work. One of the best things about being an animator for The Sims is recreating a sense of something alive. As we work on our characters, we do our best to bring life, humanity, and fun little nuances into everything we create. Working on The Sims, we have a rare opportunity to craft both wonderful and wonderfully awkward moments. That's pretty exceptional in a game development context. I can't think of many other projects where the design team can come and ask animators to unclog a toilet, take food out of the oven, share a clumsy first kiss, or play on a jungle gym. That's genuinely fun for an animator.
The Afternoon: room for meetings
Most days there's a chance that meetings will come up. We have a meeting with the visual team and animation leads to discuss long-term goals, any concerns, schedules, and who needs to do what so others can move forward. I also organize a meeting every other week with the other leads and directors to go over new technology or animation styles. We use that meeting as an opportunity to train the animation team on tool improvements, workflow changes, or to share our animations with each other. We also use it as a Q&A session and an open forum to discuss any concerns.
At Any Point: requests from engineers, audio, or effects teams
While we're in production, we're constantly editing and improving the game. So once we've wrapped up a work session, it's no surprise when an engineer or someone else on the team comes by to ask us to make small tweaks to things. Everything depends on everything else, and for our work to look good in the game, we need to collaborate with other parts of the development team to make the game look as good as possible. For me, this is one of the best parts. I love working with the engineers. I love solving problems that come up after implementing a part of the game. It also helps that we have a group of incredibly smart colleagues who are accountable, approachable, and helpful when it comes to problem-solving.
Evening: wrapping up for the day
Mirroring how we arrived in the morning, we make our way out of the office and back home in the evening. Sometimes a few people stay behind to play Battlefield, and there's a gaming group that takes over the meeting room on Friday evenings. Sometimes a few of us head out for dinner together at a local burger spot. One of the most special things about working here is that we get used to each other, we grow together, and the workplace becomes like a second family. I respect everyone on the team even when I don't always agree with them, and I'm genuinely grateful for how they've helped me grow professionally. It's a team in the truest sense of the word — everyone contributing to create something far more amazing than any one of us could have built on our own.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek behind the scenes at EA and that you now have a little more insight into what it's like to work as an animator here!
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Tags: sims, sims 4, the sims, The Sims 4, The Sims Studios