InZOI creator says hilarious bugs like hitting kids with cars appear due to the genre’s complexity, but “problematic situations” must be patched immediately

The Sims competitor InZOI launched to major success earlier this year, offering a new take on the life simulation formula with open-world driving, realistic visuals and more. As soon as the game released, fans discovered some truly hilarious bugs with players kidnapping characters as they await adoption features and also found time to hit kids with cars.

In an interview with VideoGamer, producer and director of InZOI Hyungjun “Kjun” Kim explained that these bugs may be funny to some, but they are seen as “crtiical issues” that need to be addressed as soon as possible.

InZOI’s best bugs are need to be eliminated

Just like how The Sims has some truly hilarious bugs and even more hilarious patch notes—such as “kleptomaniac Sims can no longer steal Subway Stations”—InZOI also has some iconic bugs. Kim explains that these bugs are only possible due to the game’s huge levels of simulation, but they’re a key issue when they arrive.

“We see these types of bugs as critical issues that must be addressed,” the developer said. “In fact, we’ve found that games in this genre are far more complex and difficult to develop than we had initially thought. There were many development challenges that we hadn’t fully realized when just experiencing the game as a player.”

Kim explained that bugs like kidnapping and vehicular manslaughter in a playground “were never intentional”, but they “occurred due to the emergent nature of this genre, where countless situations arise spontaneously based on player behaviour”.

Kim also explained that there is only so much the team can do to spot these bugs when they appear as there’s no way a development team of any size can spot everything. When millions of players jump into a game on day one, there’s immeditaely more testing being done in that moment than there can ever be during development.

“We end up spending much more time fixing bugs than actually building new features.”

INZOI CREATOR KJUN

“There is only so much you do to account for all of them in advance,” the developer said. “As I’m sure other developers in this genre would agree, we end up spending much more time fixing bugs than actually building new features.”

Despite this, the team never wants bugs to stop the team from adding new freedom to InZOI via new features. For example, when the game’s roadmap features like pets arrive, there’s bound to be a tonne of issues, but they can simply be fixed after the fact.

“I believe that “emergence” is one of the genre’s most defining and essential elements,” the director said. “As long as the bugs don’t result in problematic situations, the core appeal of this genre—and the central direction of our development—is to allow players to try out anything they can imagine or dream of within inZOI.”