LITTLE COMPUTER PEOPLE
Developer/publisher Activision Format Commodore 64 Release 1985
At Activision, as a rule, we didn’t take in game ideas from outside because everything in the lab was so secretive, but sometimes people would bring in products they wanted us to manufacture and publish. Little Computer People began as the digital equivalent of the Pet Rock [collectible toy]. A guy in LA called Rich Gold had this idea of doing a ‘Pet Person’. He got some money and some developers and started work, so
the house was there, some of the tasks were there, but it was entirely non-interactive. It was like a fishbowl. And he wouldn’t change his idea.
That project was so far over budget and over his head that he came to Activision and asked if we could take it over. I saw it and could see what it could become. It had to be interactive. I introduced the ability for the little guy to take commands from you, to write letters to you… I spent a full year of my time turning what was a nice screensaver into the predecessor of The Sims.
When you do something new, you always have concerns about whether the public will get it, but this was an era when videogames were being defined. We were innovating every day. We were pushing the hardware as far as we could and trying to make something fun. That’s what drove the innovation. And having a little person on your computer you could interact with, I knew that would be great, and I never doubted others would think the same. I heard a story of a grandmother in the UK who bought two Commodore 64s, two monitors and two copies of the game, just so her grandchildren could play it when they came over.
We had planned to put out lots of Little Computer People products. There was so much you could do. My first thought was instead of just having a house on a disk, make it an apartment complex. You could scroll around to different apartments and people could leave their apartment and visit yours and interact… but the game didn’t make money. We paid a lot for the concept and to cover the costs of the [original] developers. When Little Computer People hadn’t made Activision any money, you can’t say, “I want to make ten more of these!” It doesn’t work.