thevogel - you are soooo wrong. Try talking to devs from other companies and they will tell you how wrong you are. I have done that over two years ago and in their knowledgable view they shake the hands of the "amazing" teams at Maxis. They laugh at us at having so little knowledge of what the Sims 4 is - and cannot imagine people so dedicated to this series as not being able to see the complexity and work put into this game - "like never before ". Even when I actually hated every thing about Sims 4 and was so sure I was right they really set me straight. Even a couple of devs from Colossal were there that day and Colossal was the only other studio that even (made it known they )considered trying to make a Sims game - they made Skylines and even said had SimCity not failed their project would have never been released even - but they stated even if the Sims stopped tomorrow they knew it was too big and difficult to even come close to a Sims 4 and if we did not appreciate the Sims 4 - we would never appreciate what they could do.
You can say what ever you think - but that is all in your head and not at all coming out of the people who actually make games at other companies.
I even learned at that discussion when an Activision dev stepped in and talked about their go at a Sims type game - he called it The Movies and was sort of a take on Sims 1 Superstar. He said it sunk faster than the Titanic - and they tried hard as they could with amazing teams of talent but not even a year and half after it was released it was pulled. From my understanding as I have never seen it - it fit what you were looking for a full game more or less - and it hardly made it out of the gate.
Also another dev from yet another big studio - I do not recall him saying where but other devs there knew him obviously, mentioned their own go at a life simulation that actually failed halfway through developement - as the funds for even developing it were so inflated the main company told them to drop it. He assured me it was not all that long ago and they have huge working budgets - but the Sims style game is just too much and other companies already know the fans of this game are very demanding and do not care to even consider what the real price for these games should be compared to the vast number of people it requires to be dedicate to this game. He basically blame the fans as to why other companies won't even tackle such a project - as he also believes we expect far more than most studios would ever consider putting into such a complex game. He did state their romp in a life simulation would have been more geared to an M rating being based a bit more on real life and some of the dark side of things. They also were working on the use of real money purchases with in the game (as well as dls packs additions) - which he knew the fans of this game had no tolerance for - which is already a thing for most other companies.
So what we'd like to think is not at all the way it truly is - You can't just say how you think they will be - you need to go to forums like Reddit or other such forums where devs often hang out and ask them yourself. Ask for devs of pc games and eventually they will come in and start answering your questions. They are not saying at all what you are saying - or at least were not 2 years ago. Also keep in mind Maxis and EA devs are also often on those boards as well and many of those devs know our devs - so maybe that colors what is said a bit - I can't say.
