Rod Humble says the future of the metaverse is private and player-first

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Rod Humble's latest game is a return to familiar waters for the veteran developer.

While Life By You is the first title for his studio Paradox Tectonic, it feels much more in keeping with some of his older work – stints on The Sims franchise and Second Life in particular – than the output of his most recent previous employer, mobile firm Jam City.

"I decided I wanted to get back into life simulation and extend it more in the open-world direction that I'd been exploring before," Humble tells GamesIndustry.biz at a meeting during last month's Game Developers Conference, explaining how he came to start Tectonic with Paradox.

"Paradox shares my philosophy of empowering our players, particularly with mod support and enabling them to customize their games the way they like," Humble says. "And of course, Paradox has a long history of working on sandbox games in general, and this is a big sandbox game. So it was a marriage made in heaven."

"Big" may not cover Humble's aspirations with Life By You. He aims to make it the "most fully featured life simulator ever," an open-ended game where users can create the people, towns, stories, and activities that matter the most to them, all in a sprawling open world where they can take direct control of denizens as they go about their lives.

And when the developers haven't included something, they want enterprising players to be able to mod it in.

"I've always had an interest in empowering the player and the customer, versus the designer, and over the years, I think my design philosophy has shifted more and more toward that," Humble says, noting that he worked on 1992's CyberBykes: Shadow Racer VR, which let