SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony

About SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony

SimAnt (1991) is Will Wright's ant colony simulation for Maxis, based on E. O. Wilson's research, in which black ants battle red ants for a suburban garden and house, and whose pheromone trails later shaped The Sims.

SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony in Depth

The player is an ant in a black ant colony in the back yard of a suburban home, fighting a rival colony of red ants. The player directly controls one ant, shown in yellow, and can switch to any other; the yellow ant lays pheromone trails to food or enemy nests, orders other ants to follow, digs tunnels, carries food and pebbles, shares regurgitated food with nestmates and fights, and groups can kill spiders, caterpillars and antlions. Dangers include human footsteps, electrical outlets, bug spray, lawnmowers and rain, which washes away trails and floods nests. Underground nests are shown in side view and the yard from above.

In the Quick Game, the colonies fight over one small patch of yard. In the Full Game, the black ants spread across a map of the yard and house by producing young queens and drones, winning by eliminating the red ants and driving the humans out, a goal that set it apart from the open-ended Sim games. The Experimental Game lets players control red ants and spiders and place trails, walls, rocks, ants, pesticides and food. The SNES version adds eight scenarios.

Making SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony

Wright, fascinated by social insects and tired of waiting for someone else to make an ant farm simulation, based it largely on Wilson and Bert Hölldobler's textbook The Ants, especially its ideas of emergence. Production took under a year of round-the-clock work. Maxis and Broderbund released it in North America in November 1991, Ocean in Europe in 1992, and Imagineer in Japan, where Tomcat System developed the Super Famicom version later localised for the SNES. It won Best Simulation Game at the 1992 Codie awards, Dragon gave it five stars, Computer Gaming World called it "easy to get into, stimulating, fun, and increasingly challenging", and GamePro named it Educational Game of the Year. Sales were middling, over 100,000 for the PC version by April 1992, and Wright called it his biggest disappointment, feeling he failed to convey "how cool ants are"; it connected most with boys aged ten to thirteen rather than adults. Its pheromone trails became a model for the wants and needs of The Sims.