Former Sims studio head is now making a competing game called Life By You

There's a new challenger to The Sims on the way, and this one is led by a former Sims developer. During its showcase today, Paradox delivered a short teaser for a game called Life By You being developed by Paradox Tectonic and led by former Sims studio head and Second Life studio CEO Rod Humble.

Today's announcement video above was a very quick teaser giving the suggestion of green, suburban neighborhoods, house construction, and simulated people doing real people-y stuff like hugging and microwaving a meal. Yup, it sure looks like Life By You is angling to be a direct competitor to The Sims—North American suburbs and all.

That's about all the initial reveal gives us to go on, though you can frame hunt down hints about the building interface and specific home decor styles. There's a vaguely '70s vibe going on in the teaser home interior. My own hope is that the strategy buffs of Paradox come out of the gate with an equally deep level of interpersonal simulation that The Sims 4 is only just now tackling in its upcoming Growing Together expansion.

A larger reveal with more details and gameplay will happen Monday, March 20 on the Life By You YouTube channel.

The bigger news out of Paradox's event today was the announcement of another sim, Cities: Skylines 2. We also saw the next game from BattleTech developer Harebrained Schemes, which looks a bit like Indiana Jones XCOM.

Paradox Interactive - a character microwaves food in a kitchen of a house with a '70s decor style

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)
Lauren Morton
Associate Editor

Lauren started writing for PC Gamer as a freelancer in 2017 while chasing the Dark Souls fashion police and accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as the self-appointed chief cozy games enjoyer. She originally started her career in game development and is still fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long books, longer RPGs, has strong feelings about farmlife sims, and can't stop playing co-op crafting games.