The Sims Office Pranks

Maxis is bursting at the seams with creative people. Usually, that creativity is spent making awesome Sims games. Sometimes, it is channeled into art projects or landscaping or fine cuisine. Or, occasionally, that creativity gets diverted into mischief. I remember a lot of that mischief fondly, so I'd like to share just a few of the occasions when it found its way into someone's cube.

The Giant Beach Ball

Meet Manu! Manu made the mistake of being away from his office for a while during the middle of The Sims 3 expansion packs. Naturally, we filled his office with small beach balls. And a gargantuan, 12-foot-diameter ball.

And here's Manu, clearly able to work super-effectively with his new office arrangement. (I'm not sure, but I think he lost his office mate in the back somewhere.)

The Ghost Keyboard

Look closely at this setup...

This was our Art Director's desk on The Sims 3 World Adventures (now Art Director on League of Legends... Hi Adam!). He was rather minimalist with his desk, so one night I took it a step further for him by removing all the keys from his keyboard, and replacing his Wacom tablet with a photocopy.

Adam came in the next day, sat down, and tried to log into his computer. He "splashed" his keys across his desk and onto the floor (in his words), and then his brain had to understand what had just happened.

Various Cube Messes

Here are a few more random pranks:

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Gotta love the "Engineer Trap" set by concept artists (bottom left).

Foiled!

Question: What do you get when you cross six Sims 2 Object Engineers with six large rolls of aluminum foil? 

Answer: All of the below.

We covered the victim's entire office: floor, walls, ceiling, desks, cabinets, computer, coffee cup, phone, chair... We even took a picture of foil-wrapped feet on the foiled desk, then made that the victim's computer background.

The office with the lights off.

Now with the lights on. Notice we even covered the ceiling tiles. At one point, the team needed a rally to follow through with the ceiling and the floor, but it made a huge difference. This is the power of teamwork. (In retrospect, I'm a little bothered that we didn't do the underside of the desk!)

A box of Kleenex with a perfectly comfortable tissue to blow your nose with.

The victim's office phone. Still fully functional, if not a little tinny-sounding.

The victim returns to his office the next morning.

Conclusion

Pranks like this encourage creativity, and they make the office an even more fun place to work. (And in retrospect, more than a decade after I’ve left The Sims, these were some of the most memorable and cherished moments of office life.)