The COVID-19 pandemic had a big impact on video games, hitting the development of some so hard that they still haven't launched. One way you might not have expected it to affect a game is devs deciding to omit illness from their project entirely having developed throughout the pandemic. That's what the Life By You team has done, revealing your virtual people will never die from illness.
Shown off for the first time last month, Life By You will be a Sims competitor from Rod Humble's Paradox. Humble has previously worked on The Sims and Second Life, so they know a thing or two about life simulation games. Life By You will aim to be as immersive as possible, but Humble revealed to GLHF (thanks, NME) that the immersion line will be drawn at illnesses.
“We actually removed all of that due to COVID,” Humble explained. “We had the idea of sickness and death by unfortunate means, but it just didn’t really sit right.” Humble also confirmed Life By You will not include violence, but that nudity and romantic relationships will be fair game. “That’s really more about the emphasis of that kind of storytelling, the important stuff,” Humble said, adding that other games already do violence much better than it would be done in Life By You.
“We’re also [a] life sim, and you can make grandma and your family. We don’t want people to see horrible things happen to grandma.” It's a fair point. There will be a lot of you out there who likely remake people you've lost in life sim games, and losing them to illness again but virtually would probably be pretty upsetting. That said, illness is a very natural part of life, so its omission from a game aiming to be more immersive than a rival with more than 20 years of experience may well be a deal breaker for some who weighing up whether to play Life By You.
Life By You's early access will go live in September and the debate over whether it's even needed will likely continue until then and beyond. While The Sims is one of the only games that has almost no competition whatsoever in its field, the first real competitor coming from someone who previously worked on The Sims has got some thinking Life By You will simply be more of the same. Perhaps even a watered-down version of what we already have.
You'll also need to have a more powerful PC to run Life By You than you do The Sims, something Humble has already made abundantly clear. One of the biggest promised differences gameplay-wise will be how time works. Although the option to fast forward will be there, testing revealed players want time to pass by almost as slowly as it does in real life.