Will Wright's Proxi: The AI Life Sim That Blurs Reality and Memory

The Sims' designer's new AI game is giving me the creeps

"An AI life sim built from your memories," Gallium Studios breezes in its trailer for Proxi. Nice.... wait, what? Proxi is being developed by Will Wright, the original designer of The Sims. Instead of Sims, the game features eponymous AI-driven Proxies, which players can customise and train on their own memories. Basically, it sounds like The Sims reimagined for an emotionally disturbing episode of Black Mirror (and we thought the new Pac-Man horror game was dark). We're told that players will be able to customise their Proxies' height, skin tone, hair and clothing and then train them to embody their own personalities and interact with other characters based on players' own memories. The trailer above shows that a player will be able to input their memories by typing, which generates a 3D animated scene that the player can edit and viewfrom different angles. The scene becomes more complete as more memories are added. On X, Proxi suggests adding memories like a child's first steps, meeting a pet, a graduation ceremony. It even used the hashtag #cozygame. Players will be able to build communities by adding friends and family Proxies and by playing games together. But once trained, proxies are autonomous. You sit back and watch them interact in a simulated world using your own memories. Like the Sims, the aim is to simulate the real world, including its tedium, but Proxi blurs the line between the real world and simulation. And it makes some deep claims. On its website, Gallium says Proxi will allow people to "discover hidden connections between your memories, weaving them together to uncover their deeper meaning and shape their evolving story". You can also "map your proxies' memories to reveal unseen connections, unlocking new insights and layers of their personality"... or should that be, your personality? It sounds suspiciously like Proxi wants to be your therapist. Some would suggest it could all be a sinister plan to allow AI to not only scrape our photos but scrape our memories too. Gallium Studios was founded by Lauren Elliott. The studio says it's also working on player-owned assets, NFTs and blockchain tech as well as AI and clones. Everything gamers love then.

The Sims creator's first game in over 10 years is an AI life sim that uses your real memories: "The more I can make a game about you, the more you'll like it"

Watch out, The Sims 4 - series mastermind Will Wright is back with a brand-new game over a decade after his last, and while it's also a life sim, it seems nothing like its predecessors. 16 years have passed since Spore launched in 2008, and legendary Sims designer Will Wright has stayed out of the limelight since. He's making a return soon with a new project, however, and it's an ambitious AI life sim called Proxi. Wright discusses Proxi in a recent stream on Twitch, highlighting some of the game and emphasizing what Gallium Studios' mission is: "to create digital human beings that live, care, and grow with us." The game actually uses players' own real-life memories to shape experiences, allowing for almost unbelievably personal playthroughs. If it sounds like a challenging feat to develop, that's because it is - but Wright feels confident that Proxi's personalized approach to the life sim genre is the correct path to take, and his years of expertise back as much. "I found myself getting continuously closer and closer to the player," says Wright. "Kind of a saying I've lived by," he continues, "which is that no game designer has ever gone wrong by overestimating the narcissism of their players." He's not wrong - we live in an era of extensive customization and personalization. There are millions of Sims 4 mods that serve as proof, and hyper-realistic character creators such as rival life sim inZOI's own to boot. Of all the ways to tailor a player's experience, though, using memories might take the cake. By using memories, Proxi populates its "mind world" or in-game environment with familiar faces for players to interact with. They represent real people from users' school, work, or any other flavor of memorable circumstance. They're not meant to replace them, however - the project aims to "enhance, not replace human-to-human interactions." Think digital pals, but a lot more advanced than beloved virtual pets like Tamagotchis or Webkinz. I'm not sure how I feel about it all myself just yet, as I don't want to become invested and not see it come to fruition in the end as was the case recently with Life by You. Considering EA's new plan for The Sims 4 and Project Rene, though, I'm desperate for something bigger and better than ever before - and Proxi sounds like it could be just that. Now all I need to do is get out, touch grass, and make memories so that come Proxi, I can game-ify them.

The Sims creator Will Wright discusses his forthcoming AI life sim Proxi

Will Wright, creator of The Sims and co-founder of its developer Maxis, has shared fresh details of his forthcoming AI life sim, Proxi. The game was first announced back in 2018 and a gameplay trailer was shared a month ago by its developer Gallium Studio to explain its concept. Then yesterday, Wright appeared on Twitch to discuss development of the game (as spotted by PC Gamer). Proxi is a dreamlike life sim where players seemingly train an AI to create worlds from their memories. Players record a memory through text, known as a "mem", which the game interprets and forms into an animated scene using assets created by the developers (and eventually players too). These scenes can then be edited by players to tweak the details. Then players "train your Proxi's mind with each new memory" by placing them on a memory timeline and mindmap to create connections. Players also place these memories into a private mind-world made of terraformable hexagons, while sentiment analysis will alter the world according to the emotions of memories placed within. Shared worlds will also be possible, constructed with others. The trailer shows players can add Proxies of friends and family to their world, play games together, and export them to other worlds - Minecraft and Roblox are used as examples. On the BreakthroughT1D Twitch stream, Wright explained why he wanted to use the real memories of players for a personal experience. "I found myself getting continuously closer and closer to the player," he said. "Kind of a saying I've lived by, which is that no game designer has ever gone wrong by overestimating the narcissism of their players." He laughed: "It goes to figure that the more I can make a game about you, the more you'll like it." BreakthroughT1D is a global organisation funding research into type one diabetes, with a Twitch channel of talk shows and podcasts. The stream was hosted by Simmers Arielehm and Emily Morganti. The studio website states Proxi is coming soon and doesn't list platforms. Wright appears keen for Proxi to explore the varying perceptions and philosophy of memory. It certainly seems like a powerful tool and a clever concept, though six years after its initial reveal the perception of AI has drastically changed. I suspect Gallium Studio has an uphill battle explaining Proxi in full. AI is changing the future of game development as it becomes more widespread across the industry. Recently Google unveiled its Genie2 tool it claims can create playable 3D worlds.

The Sims designer Will Wright is making his next life sim more personal by building it with your actual memories: 'No game designer has ever gone wrong by overestimating the narcissism of their players'

"It goes to figure that the more I can make a game about you, the more you'll like it," Wright said playfully while discussing his next life sim, Proxi. Will Wright, the designer of The Sims and co-founder of Maxis, appeared on Twitch today to talk about his next game, Proxi, which is "an AI life sim built from your memories" according to this teaser trailer released last month. During the stream on BreakthroughT1D's channel, a gaming and streaming initiative that raises money for type 1 diabetes research, Wright revealed more about Proxi as well as discussing the development of The Sims series. In Proxi, you type in a memory (for example, a trip you took with a college buddy) and the game turns that memory into an animated scene. As you create more memory scenes they're added to your "mind world," a 3D environment you can explore and play games in. The people who are part of your memories (like that college buddy you told Proxi about) will populate the world as "proxies" that you can interact and play games with. "I don't remember when I first thought of [Proxi]," Wright said on the stream. "I think it's more like an idea that was percolating for a long time. Obviously it has a lot of relationship to The Sims." Case in point: as Twitch hosts Arielehm and Emily Morganti played The Sims 2 on the stream, the character of Mortimer Goth got frightened by the ghost of Victor Goth (Mortimer's dead relative) after visiting the graveyard. Using the memories panel, the hosts could see that Mortimer retained that memory, along with other important events and milestones from his life. Wright explained why he wanted Proxi to be a more personal experience by using the real memories of its players. "I found myself getting continuously closer and closer to the player," Wright said."Kind of a saying I've lived by, which is that no game designer has ever gone wrong by overestimating the narcissism of their players." As the hosts laughed, Wright explained further: "It goes to figure that the more I can make a game about you, the more you'll like it," he said, chuckling. Wright said all this rather playfully, but look, he's not wrong: I've created versions of myself in just about any game that will let me, including every one of Wright's The Sims games. Hell, I've bought games, created myself in the character creator, and then never even bothered to play the actual game. Thing is, I usually create myself in games so that I can have an adventure I wouldn't have in real life, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea of creating myself and then immediately saddling this digital version of me with the same memories I'm already carrying around in my big dumb head. But who knows? Maybe I'm just self-absorbed enough to recreate not just myself in Proxi, but my memories too.

The Sims creator's new life sim will let you arrange dinner with Napoleon, or 'a cage match between Cleopatra and my grandma'

A life sim where players collaboratively create memories for in-game avatars? It can only be a Will Wright game... Last month, Maxis founder, The Sims creator, and one of the Great Elders of PC gaming, released a teaser trailer for his new game Proxi. The game could be described as a memory-focused life sim, as you flesh out the inner lives of your avatars (Proxies) by typing up their memories, which you can then play out in animated scenes within your "mind world." Wright revealed more about the game in a stream on BreakthroughT1D's Twitch channel, which we partly covered yesterday, and expanded on the kind of things you'll get up to in Proxi. He gave some examples of the interesting scenarios that Proxis memory creation system could throw up, and, in a soundbite for the ages, said: "I could have an amazing dinner party between Cleopatra, Napoleon, and Da Vinci, or I could have a cage match between Cleopatra and my grandmother." The way this will work, in theory, is that players create vast community-built entries for their Proxies, 'almost like Wikipedia pages,' that expand a character's well of memories, which in turn informs how they behave in the game world. "There might be 100 people building the Wikipedia entries for Cleopatra... and have Cleopatra as a character in the game," said Wright. The description on one of the slides for the game read 'Trained with your memories, expanded with AI,' so it looks like some degree of AI learning will be applied to the memory banks to help realise a given Proxi's personality in-game. The Proxies you'll be able to create can be entirely fictional, or based on historical figures, or even on family members. One of the co-hosts talked about how they were researching the life of their late grandmother with their family, and how interesting it would've been had they been able to gather this person's memories and stories, then apply them to this Proxi in the game. "That, to me, becomes almost like a software heirloom, something that you treasure like an old box of photos," said Wright. What you actually do in a gaming sense in Proxi still remains a bit of a mystery. It looks like Proxies interact with each other in a hex-based world, and you'll apparently be able to create mini-games and export your Proxis to other games, but how does it all fit together? Still not sure. But hey, this is coming from a guy who made a pretty convincing ant simulator, as well as Spore, a game where you evolve a species from a single-cell amoeba to space-faring super race. High-concept 'how will he make this work?' sims are Wright's whole wheelhouse, and he hasn't let us down yet.