The Simpsons Game - Development

Development

The game's storyline was written by Tim Long, Matt Selman, and Matt Warburton, who are all regular writers on The Simpsons. They wanted to create something that appealed to the fans of the show, and was, in its own right, "a great new game". Matt Groening and the writers had continuous feedback on the game's content, from its "look and feel" to its puzzles and gameplay. The game's executive producer, Scot Amos, said it was an amazing partnership between the writers and the developers. Selman, the head writer, says the reason they decided to call it The Simpsons Game and not add a subtitle was because they felt it was a restart of "the 'Simpsons' gaming franchise a big, new, fresh game that takes on video games and hilarious things of all time".

The Simpsons Game was published by Electronic Arts and developed by its subsidiary, EA Redwood Shores; the company had signed a contract for the video game rights to The Simpsons in 2005. The game's lead designer, Greg Rizzer, said that when he asked his bosses if they could parody some Electronic Arts games including Medal of Honor, they were enthusiastic about it. The Simpsons Game, which parodies video games from 30 years ago to the present, was forced to have some of its content removed after several video game companies complained about it. Rizzer, however, was still pleased with the amount of parody in the game and considered The Simpsons the "perfect vehicle to poke fun at the games industry". At the 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, a poster for "Grand Theft Scratchy", one of the levels in The Simpsons Game and a parody of Grand Theft Auto, was asked to be taken down by an employee of Rockstar Games, the company that develops the Grand Theft Auto series of video games. Several companies, however, embraced the game's parody of their video games, including developers from Harmonix, who were pleased with the game's "Sitar Hero", a parody of Harmonix's Guitar Hero video game. In addition to game parodies, The Simpsons Game also features several cameos with satirical spins, including Matt Groening as himself and Will Wright as an antagonist.

The graphics for the game's characters are cel-shaded, and an implemented technique helps flatten the character models from any angle that the camera views them from, in order to recreate the 2D, hand-drawn look seen in the show. The development team found it particularly difficult to render Lisa's spiky hair as 2D in the game's 3D environment. When working on the game for the Wii, several compromises had to be made when compared to the game's versions for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Because the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 had greater processing power than the Wii, the graphics were decreased in quality in the Wii version of the game.