The Sims uses a visual programming language called "SimAntics" for scripting behaviors and "AI" of people and objects.

The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo. This is a demonstration of the pie menus, architectural editing tools, and Edith visual programming tools that I developed for The Sims with Will Wright at Maxis and Electronic Arts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74d...

The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998. A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims for The Sims Steering Committee at EA, developed June 4 1998.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74d...

Mod The Sims Wiki: SimAntics:

https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=SimAntics

Simantics Wiki:

http://simantics.wikidot.com/

SimsTek Wiki: SimAntics

https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics

From Ken Forbus's game design course:

Under the hood of The Sims:

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~forbus/c95-gd/lectures/

Programming Objects in The Sims:

http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/papers/Files/Programming_Obj...

Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

A bunch of disgruntled computer science grads questioning their life choices, at the large telecommunications provider for which I was working.

The Watson language just doesn't provide any other way to do anything. It's a common problem amongst visual programming languages as mentioned in the article.