The company was founded with VC money right off the bat (Will Wright, although a central figure, wasn't the "real" founder, the investors that found him and convinced him to start the company, not the other way around).
When they release SimCity 2000, they were right on track as VC expect... the problem is that game cycle is long, they expected to release SimCity 3000 or TheSims in at least 2 years, meaning 1 year without a big release, VCs weren't happy with this, they wanted exponential growth every year, not a "staircase" growth, so the VCs kept bugging them and the result was a premature exit (where they were sold to EA for a amount of money that I think undervalued them).
Now they are mostly dead :/ (after the massive failure that was SimCity 5, almost everyone was fired, including EA CEO).
some of the "weirder" games they released because they wanted to.
In fact SimCity 2k they made because they "had" to, they didn't wanted to make it, but it was their obvious cash cow.
SimAnt, was a prototype for "The Sims" (then named "Project Dollhouse") that ended becoming what was released instead (they made the "house" and the human and the dog in SimAnt before the ant farm simulator part).
After they released SimCity2k, the CEO quit (I dunno why), the VCs then started to meddle directly, and demanded they released 4 games by the end of 1996, they ended making SimCopter (that started as a 3D engine and AI prototype for The Sims again... later when they released the actual The Sims, they used the actual engine from Sim Copter, but "converted" back to 2D), SimPark (that also had parts of its engine used in The Sims and SimCity 3k and 4), Sim Tunes and FullTilt Pinball
It didn't went fully well, although SimCopter people liked it, the rushed release was problematic, for example with the buggy bimbo easter-egg (one of the programmers introduced without permission an easter-egg where men in speedos and nipples that glowed would run around named "himbos", a bug, not caught due to rushed released, made the easter-egg trigger in a frightening pace, spawning hundreds of "himbos", that would run toward the helicopter, get sliced by the blades and killed, heavy PR fallout ensued).
Then the VC demanded that they dropped everything (including The Sims) and started doing the next SimCity, but they wanted it in the SimCopter engine, despite the dev protests, knowing it would never work... Indeed, it didn't, SimCity 3k in SimCopter engine was throughly bashed at E3, with journalists extremely disappointed, and the team morally dropped like a rock, being forced to work in a product they knew it would never work.
So they ended needing the early exit to EA to save them, it was EA, or risk the entire team quitting.
Ah, I quite liked SimCopter. I would love to see a modern SimEarth, too, especially given how the threat of climate change which seemed abstract when the first came out has gotten a lot more tangible.
A new SimEarth would be cool, but if they made it now it would be the size of a tiny asteroid and you'd have to deal with everyone else on other asteroids in the asteroid belt.
The company was founded with VC money right off the bat (Will Wright, although a central figure, wasn't the "real" founder, the investors that found him and convinced him to start the company, not the other way around).
When they release SimCity 2000, they were right on track as VC expect... the problem is that game cycle is long, they expected to release SimCity 3000 or TheSims in at least 2 years, meaning 1 year without a big release, VCs weren't happy with this, they wanted exponential growth every year, not a "staircase" growth, so the VCs kept bugging them and the result was a premature exit (where they were sold to EA for a amount of money that I think undervalued them).
Now they are mostly dead :/ (after the massive failure that was SimCity 5, almost everyone was fired, including EA CEO).