She’s trying to teach games how to love — and she’s doing it from inside one of the biggest franchises in gaming.
A quick tour through a young career
Victoria Vera is a game designer at Maxis who was among the opening speakers at the inaugural Guadalindie event in Málaga last week. Despite being relatively young, her résumé spans many corners of the industry: she began as a tester at Electronic Arts, later worked at Novarama and Pyro Studios, and spent time at Ubisoft where she contributed to the design of Rainbow Six: Siege. Today she helps shape The Sims 4, a franchise where relationships have always been central but have shifted in emphasis across installments.
Researching romance: a thesis that treats love as gameplay
Victoria’s academic interest goes beyond making games: for her undergraduate final project she explored how to portray a mature, believable love story through interactive systems. She anchored that work in Erich Fromm’s theories of love and used Campo Santo’s Firewatch — released eight years earlier — as a case study. What impressed her most about Firewatch was its capacity to feel like a real story: the player’s agency makes you feel as if you truly are the character, and the emotional bond that develops with Delilah comes across as authentic rather than contrived.
Why small games often do intimacy better
At Guadalindie she recalled a conversation with Daniel Benmergui (creator of Storyteller and I Wish I Were the Moon), whose artgame about a love triangle — inspired by Italo Calvino and available on itch.io — demonstrates how mechanics and emotion can work in harmony. Both Benmergui and Vera agreed that it’s usually easier for smaller, freer projects to create relationships that feel “real.” Firewatch stands out as an exception: an indie title that penetrated mainstream audiences, letting simple interactions and dialogue build a convincing emotional connection.
Putting relationships back at the heart of The Sims
Victoria argues that recent entries in franchises like The Sims — and even Animal Crossing — have tilted toward creativity and building systems at the expense of social simulation. “Sims has moved heavily toward creation and creativity, and has somewhat sidelined social simulation,” she says, noting that Sims 2 and 3 offered more depth in interpersonal systems. At Maxis she’s part of the team that can nudge relationships back into a more significant role. She’s excited by the subtle, emergent moments the game can produce — affairs, arguments and discoveries — and stresses that much of the current behavior is systemic rather than fully scripted: the game reacts to player actions. While she can’t reveal specifics because she works at a large company, she confirms that adding social-simulation depth is being considered on the roadmap for The Sims 4 so gameplay is more than just build mode content.
Thinking about games, not just making them
Vera’s interest in theory isn’t a hobby but part of her professional identity. Her article on design and love reflects a curiosity about game studies and how practice can connect with reflection. She acknowledges that industry work often leaves little space to step back and analyze: production demands dominate. Because of that, she hopes in the future to pursue more academic work — potentially a doctorate — to study the craft, question its assumptions and create knowledge that helps future creators make stronger decisions.
Lessons from onboarding: systematizing what we teach players
One concrete example of Victoria’s desire to share practical lessons comes from her experience redesigning the onboarding for Rainbow Six. That project taught her a lot about learning patterns in games, and she plans to write about those findings. Her vision is pragmatic: develop reusable frameworks and schemas for tutorials and onboarding so teams don’t have to start from scratch each time. Having shared standards for teaching players would save time and raise the quality of onboarding across projects.
Find more from Guadalindie
You can read our full coverage of the Guadalindie festival in the dedicated event hub we prepared for the Málaga showcase.
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Logan Whitmere is a gaming enthusiast who lives and breathes video games. Whether it’s reviews, gaming tips, or news about the latest releases, Logan’s passion and expertise bring the virtual world to life for every reader.