Life by You lets you turn bushes into toilets, that’s “just the start”
Paradox Tectonic’s Life by You is a new life game helmed by Rod Humble, who knows whereof he helms. He’s a former CEO of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, and has worked on The Sims 2 and 3. In Life by You, he promises a game without limits; when PCGamesN sat down with Humble at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, he kept returning to this core philosophy. It runs through the game as through a stick of rock, whether it’s in Paradox Tectonic’s approach to the open world, mods, and player creations, or the frankly absurd number of creation tools we’ve been promised ahead of the Life by You release date.
“What I want is that, whenever anybody pushes against this life simulator, and they say ‘Oh, I want to do this,’ that the game isn’t in the way,” Humble tells me in a rentable workspace, safe from the storm raging outside. “It’s this ethos of ‘we work for the player and the customer.’ They own their creations, their games, and our job is to sell you a complete base game with all of these tools.”
Sims comparisons are inevitable, and it’s clear that Humble and Paradox have their eye on at least part of EA’s lunch, but all the talk of Life by You’s open-world and creation tools make it equally clear that they have different, and grander, ambitions as well. Yes, you’ll be able to make characters and control them while following their day-to-day life, but you’ll also be able to turn a bush into a toilet. This marvel of creative achievement doesn’t come from your characters coming home after a late night on the town, but the deep toolkit being given to the player.
“If you hit F4 you go into live edit mode,” Humble explains in front of a screen filled with expansive creative options. “Then you can click on any 3D object in the
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