In the case of The Sims, this evolution was engineered into every aspect of the product, from the development model to the marketing strategy. For all its mainstream appeal, The Sims hinges on a sophisticated set of authoring tools that allow people with zero programming skills to do radical plastic surgery on standard-issue Sims and to create custom objects, from lawn ornaments to limousines. Eight months before the game shipped, these tools were released online. By the time The Sims hit the shelves, there were 20 independent tool developers, 50 fan sites, 40 artists hacking up custom content and 50,000 collectors of these user-created objects. When new players arrived, the virtual economy was already feeding itself.
Currently, 200 fan sites in 14 languages furnish 90 percent of the game's content. Mall of the Sims, an independent portal to SimPhenomena of all descriptions, is self-sufficient through advertising revenue. The Web has become a Sim central-casting agency for custom characters, from alien species to celebrity look-alikes. Sims furniture showrooms, sporting-goods outlets and clothing stores are chock-full of downloadable merchandise. Online, you can pour over Sim real estate listings, skim a newsletter devoted exclusively to other Sim fan sites and find out if your Sim is Hot or Not.
If you've got a software problem, a self-organized brigade of volunteer enthusiasts provides free technical support via ICQ. Online political rivalries, traffic-sharing agreements and interdependent social circles have grown up around The Sims that have nothing to do with Maxis.
When a trend gains critical mass in the Sim user community - say, converting one's house into a Hollywood B-movie set or throwing a theme party - Maxis publishes a $29.99 expansion pack that allows players to extend that experience.
The Sims Online, a persistent virtual world scheduled to launch next year, leverages community interaction on an unprecedented level by allowing characters to sell each other SimGoods and SimServices for in-game money. In its early stage of development, the obvious professions seem to be architecture and exotic dancing. Naked skins are freely available on the Web; a jukebox animates them, and a turnstile allows you to charge admission. It's amazing how these simple elements combine.
More subtly, the Sims Online will allow players to bookmark retail objects. For instance, if you see a cool chair at someone's house, you bookmark it. If you buy the chair, a commission flows back to the person from whom you bookmarked it, and the person from whom they bookmarked it, as well as the creator of that object. This motivates people to buy expensive stuff and throw parties. It also makes it economically attractive to buy one of every chair in the Sim universe and open a Chairs "R" Us showroom. Imagine a world where you could earn an Amazon-style affiliate commission for every product on your homepage - it makes retail into a massively multiplayer game.
For the business community, The Sims' lessons are twofold. The first is that interaction design trumps graphics. The Sims is less photorealistic than any computer game on the market, or any broadband site on the Web - it's not even fully 3D. Yet it succeeds tremendously because it allows players with different agendas to interact as consumers, producers, mavens and community leaders and to reap rewards for all of these activities. The richness and complexity of an online experience, like the richness and complexity of a city, is created by the people who live there as they engage with the place and each other.
The second lesson is that online businesses don't just exist, like buildings, in space. They exist, like cities, in human context over time. The best ones are designed to grow more interconnected, not just bigger, as the population evolves. They're always messy. They're never finished. They harbor an almost palpable sense of around-the-clock activity and a sense of place that owes as much to collective experience as to snazzy signage. When you open your window, there's a there there.
J.C. Herz is the founder of Joystick Nation, a consulting firm in New York.
