For the past 25 years, The Sims has reigned supreme over the life-sim genre and for good reason. Maxis’ groundbreaking title revolutionized what the genre could be, introduced players to a level of immersion never before seen, and subsequently, inspired developers to create boundary-pushing life-sims of their own. Yet despite wave after wave of new, innovative life-sims hitting the scene–and growing discontent from Sims players–The Sims has remained relatively uncontested; precious few titles have aimed to deliver the same depth and breadth as the game, and far fewer have the same level of resources as the Electronic Arts-backed title. Suffice to say, The Sims has largely lacked a compelling challenger–but Paralives is changing that.
Despite being developed by a core team of 15 and entirely crowdfunded, Paralives is the fiercest competition The Sims has seen thus far. Within its first week of launching in early access, the title hit one million copies sold. Not even two months after its launch in early access, 20,000 mods for the game exist on its Steam Workshop page, a testament to its eager and already-invested fanbase. If Paralives were a AAA title, this is right about the time corporate overlords might start brainstorming how to squeeze every last cent out of its growing playerbase. Fortunately for us, developer Paralives Studio shuns such practices.
Late last week, I spoke with Paralive’s communication manager Gab Boyer-Antoni about the game’s wild success and how that is reshaping the team’s strategies. The short answer? It’s not. Back when it was announced, the team behind Paralives released a statement explaining that all future content and DLC for the game will always be free. Though that might sound fanciful, Boyer-Antoni reaffirmed this remains the case, and offered a deep dive into how the team is defining success on their own terms.
GameSpot: The team made the call to delay early access from 2025 to 2026 based on playtester feedback. Looking back now, what specific area of the game do you think most benefited from that extra development time? Was it difficult asking this community that Kickstarted Paralives to wait a little bit longer to play the game?
Boyer-Antoni: I’ll start with the second part of that question. [The delay] was nerve-wracking. It was really, really scary because we didn’t want to disappoint people that had been following us for so long. Everybody was really looking forward to it, and our team was as well. But we got some playtesting results that were not great and we didn’t want to disappoint people by delivering a game in that way.
During that time, we focused a lot on major bugs, improving the live mode, and town mechanics. That’s really what was lacking before. Also the first-time user-experience features. During that delay, we added a lot of tutorials and a whole help menu that we would not have had if we had not delayed. I think that really helped us because nobody has played this before–it’s a new game. It was good to make sure new players would not be lost as they discovered new commands, new interactions, and how to play.
I feel like it’s tricky to launch a game in early access. Players know this game is incomplete, they know that you’re still developing it. But at the same time, you do have to have this kind of finished-enough version so that it’s enjoyable for players and it positively represents this larger vision. You also open yourself up for comparisons to other finished games. How did you know it was the right time to launch Paralives and how has navigating early access been?
It’s definitely tricky releasing in early access–especially when other similar games are not in early access or have not been for a while. We really worked hard on making sure the basics of the game were there: a good build mode where you could spend a few hours building your house and have it functional, a character-creator mode that also stood well on its own and could recreate yourself in a way that made sense, and a live mode that had all the basics in there but you could see the room for improvements.
The other side of it is communicating really, really hard that this is early access, what that means, our roadmap, and all the features that we want to do and plan on doing. We wanted to make sure players understood that’s coming at a later time and is not to be expected right away. Controlling the expectations, I feel, goes hand in hand with making sure the basics of the game were ready for early access.
What are some of the features that are at the top of your wishlist right now? Or features that you see the community is clamoring for and have become a top priority?
There’s so much right now. We’re focusing on bugs and we’re not adding much content, even though we just released a patch today that had some new things. But the bigger concerns are fixing bugs and making sure people can play the game without weird issues.
By the end of 2026, we want to release a first content update. And then throughout early access, there’s big themes and things that we want to add like weather, seasons, [and] pets. Those are some of our team’s favorite ones, but I think they’re also community favorites as well.
Also tools to aid the town, having more than one town, or just improving the build mode with roof tools–that comes up often. Staircases need some love as well. There’s thousands of things that we would love to implement, but we’re making sure we stick to our plan and we go gradually and in a way that it makes sense to add all these features.
What features so far have been the most challenging to implement? Are there any that you assumed might be a nightmare and then you did it and you were like, “That wasn’t so bad?”
One of our [developers] said that the open world actually is one of the toughest challenges because everything is intertwined with each other. Anything in the town that needs to be worked on then needs to be optimized and checked to make sure it doesn’t clash with other [items]. There’s path-finding, there’s autonomy, there’s buildings, and [it all] requires a lot of work. That’s definitely a feature that keeps on giving when it comes to challenges.
In terms of one that was actually easier than we thought, at the beginning of the game, there’s an intro tutorial on the train and that is something that the team scheduled to do from A to Z in one week–we didn’t have time to go overboard with that. And it actually worked [even though] it was something that was not at all in the game before. It wasn’t supported, but then they worked on it for a week, [and] everybody involved [made] it work. [It] didn’t need that much more work afterwards and it seems like it’s not really buggy so far.
I feel like that feature, and the card reading that you get at the end of each day, are both so unique. I have not played any life-sim that feels like it’s giving you feedback in the same way. Can you talk a little bit more about the team’s decision to add those things?
I think that was a big game-design decision–having little twists to life simulation and it feeling like you can choose a different path of play and how you direct your game. [We asked], “How can we make this more fun?” And that’s how it came about.
Our goal is to eventually expand the card system to create situations that trigger new objectives, sow chaos in the city, or challenge players in specific ways. At the same time, the storyteller system allows us to offer options for those who prefer to not have their gameplay disrupted too much. We [aim to] be able to accommodate both playstyles.
One of the biggest selling points for Paralives is, after buying the game, the DLC and everything else coming out for the game is free. How do you balance the studio’s financial stability and growth with that strategy?
That plan is something that we had announced before the game was released and our sales in the first week–the first day–confirmed that that was going to be viable. We’re a very small team of 15. We don’t plan on increasing that much, just a few senior positions, and we don’t have any investors. We don’t have to pay back anybody. The development so far has been fully paid for by our Patreons. And we’re good. We can last years like this and make sure that we offer free updates and free DLCs to players and keep on working on the game.
Speaking of how many copies you’ve already sold, I know you recently hit one million. How does that compare to what the team’s expectations were? Does it impact your plans for early access?
It doesn’t change much in terms of the timeline because we don’t plan on increasing our team by a lot. We’re not scaling [up] and even then, scaling doesn’t mean a faster development because then comes management stuff. I hear from bigger studios that it isn’t necessarily true that the more people you get, the faster things are. We like our team dynamic and I think it means we’re more comfortable with our budget. We hired a firm to do play tests in November, and those are the kind of decisions that are now easier to make–to get extra help when it’s really needed. It’s not like money can buy features and we still need to work on the game, but it just guarantees our future as a company and that’s really good.
Were you expecting to hit 1 million so quickly?
No. We were going to be really happy with 100,000 copies. Maybe 200,000 copies. One million is just crazy. I mean, we were aware that we were releasing in early access–we were just hoping to get some sales and then keep on gaining players’ interest and trust as early access got better. To start off at 1 million, and to continue like this, is awesome.
The community has really been responding positively to it. You recently gave me a number, and you said 20,000 mods have been made for the game, which is baffling this soon.
And that’s just in the workshop. We don’t have the numbers for outside platforms.
Are there any mods that you find yourself using? Has the team seen something and been like, “Oh, I wish we had that in the game?”
There are a lot of mods that people are making that are either the features that we want to do, or they’re little workarounds for features that we plan on doing. There are going to be moments where something that is officially going in the game used to exist [via mod.] But we were not expecting that number.
We were hoping that the community would enjoy modding. We had put out tutorials before the release to teach people how to add stuff to the game and make it as moddable as possible, but it’s just so awesome. I know a lot of members of a team use the mods because they’re fun. There’s a twerking one that’s really [great]. And some of our devs also have published mods for fun. Our artist made a Quebec language one as the game got released. It’s just so great to see the creativity and what the game is contributing to.
Have you had any bugs or errors that were reported to you that were just extremely funny? Things that completely slipped past and now you’re seeing people actually play this game and stumble upon them?
I think the Charlie Default one was really funny. It came up really, really soon [after launch] and it’s this weird glitch where suddenly a naked character called Charlie Default–because he’s the default Parafolk–would just appear as part of members’ household. They would see this naked guy sleeping in their bed as part of their household that they could control, and we had to be like, “Okay, we’re going to fix this in two days right away, but just feel free to kill him off or something.”
Also the babies glitch. There was one that, if a Para was giving birth in a certain mood or something, then the baby would be born and then keep on making more babies. Suddenly you’d end up with like, 16 babies around you. And then they’re all stinky, and then there’s a fire, and it’s just so funny.
My favorite part has been watching people’s bug videos float across my feed. And it’s just like, wow, that’s really bad, but it’s going to get worked on really soon. We’ve had so much feedback and it’s been so, so helpful to really narrow down what is the biggest issue that’s happening at any given time. People are quick to report them through the game or our forums or emails, and that’s just immensely helpful because we get to work on things and gather more information so much faster than when it was just a smaller group of playtesters on our team.
I feel like Paralives–in being this [type of] life-sim–it’s always going to be compared to The Sims. Do you think that the expectations of it being a Sims-like game have impacted your decision making at all? Do you intentionally try to distance yourself from The Sims, or do you think that the comparison works in your favor because people have some understanding of the experience that they’re going to be getting?
It’s probably a bit of a double-edged sword. We are coming into this market that has The Sims and then very, very few competitors. A lot of our features came to us as we were wondering, “Okay, we’re big fans of The Sims and of the life-sim genre. What’s something that we’d love to be able to do in a game that we don’t really see right now?” That’s part of our thinking when we decide on features.
[Online], people do compare us and it helps us get a lot of visibility. But also, people do tend to expect the same level of finished products when our game is in early access and [not] 25 years old.
On that topic, there’s something that I’ve heard thrown around a bunch with Paralives, inZOI, and then there was another game, Life by You, which unfortunately ended development, but it’s this idea that one of these games will become “The Sims-killer.” That one of these games will dethrone The Sims and become the default life-sim. How do you feel about this term?
I think having more than one life-sim game makes for such a better experience for players. It helps games get better and improve, and we want to offer a great experience for players. So that aspect of competition is great to have. There shouldn’t be just one amazing [life-sim].
Also, I feel like a life-sim game is three games in one and caters to so many types of players. Some people just want to build their cozy little bedroom, apartment, or house, and they don’t care about the live mode. Some people are really into the stories, the challenges, and [creating] generations of sims, paras, or zoi. There are so many types of players, and I think we need a lot of games to help cater to different needs. It’s a lot to expect one game to [do everything].
In most other genres of video games, you have a lot of [titles]. If you think of shooters, there’s so many huge games that have huge fan bases–it’s really rare to have just one that somehow caters to everybody. I think it makes for a stronger ecosystem of games that they don’t.
Generative AI is obviously a big conversation in games right now. Do you mind telling me if your studio uses it and if so, how?
Yeah. We don’t use generative AI and we don’t plan on using it.
