Rod Humble has his son to thank for his upcoming life sim Life By You. After finishing up work on two successful mobile games around four years ago, Humble was itching for something new. But he wasn't quite sure what. "I was in the kitchen talking to my son about, 'Oh, what should I do? I don't know what opportunities there are,' and he was like, 'Why don't you just pick the company you want to work at and ask them?'" And as a life-long Crusader Kings player, the answer was clear. "Okay!?" Humble says incredulously. "I can do that, I guess. So I did. I wrote to [PR manager] Troy [Goodfellow], and he knew Fred [Wester, CEO], and that was it. It was two weeks later and I met him in San Francisco and said, hey, I'd like to start a studio, and here's the way I'd like to run it. And he was like, sure, let's go for it."

So began Humble's journey to creating Life By You, his upcoming life simulator that's set to give his former pet project, The Sims, a run for its money. With The Sims 5, or Project Rene as it's currently known, still some way off, Life By You seems poised to finally give life sim fans the game they've always wanted. "I wanted to make an open world life simulator where the core tenant was freedom," says Humble. "Where players could freely play and tell their stories with minimal friction." And what was standing in the way of that freedom? Loading screens, says Humble.

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