Forum Discussion
- Funny to keep reading about simmers claiming that “EA won’t make multiplayer games or online games anymore because we told them with our reaction on SimCity and Olympus (which was just one of many games dropped by EA) that “we” don’t want them!” :D :)
As if EA only makes games for the few simmers in this forum :D ;)
No, EA only makes games for one purpose which of course is to earn money :) And no: EA won’t stop making online games or multiplayer games at all - instead EA actually plans to make as many games as possible into that kind of games! :D :)
But even EA can make exceptions when needed. TS4 won’t become such a game and future Sims games for the PC almost certainly won’t either even though EA most likely will give them more and more multiplayer options and online play anyway ;)
The reason just is that the Sims games have the highest sales numbers among all EA’s games and that the huge number of expansions sell extremely well too. So why should EA ever want to stop this series soon or throw away the option to get sales numbers for the expansions even higher up by releasing a new big Sims game every 5 years? :D :) "TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”."JoAnne65;c-16240153" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240134" wrote:
"TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Why on earth should I continue playing Sims 3 when there would be a new great Sims game with new content and improvements and open world? I’d jump over to that new game immediately. It’s not open world (or CASt) that keeps me playing Sims 3. It’s the lack of a better alternative. I’ve tried the alternative and then returned. There was only one reason for that: while Sims 4 made me constantly go ‘what shal I do now..., oh what shall I do next’, then closing the game after two hours tops, my Sims 3 game sort of plays itself and I only quit because I have to go to bed. If they’d deliver a new game that does that, open world or not, Sims 3 could retire.
I didn’t write that to you and you seem to have misunderstood me.
The reason that I don’t play TS4 isn’t about the missing open world either and we seem to agree about what is wrong with TS4. That wasn’t my point.
But if TS5 is marketed as “a new Sims game similar to Sims 3 and with the open world returning” then it will get low sales numbers and especially if the EPs are just repetions too. Not because you won’t buy it because I am sure that you actually would :) But because most young teens would reject the game. Partly because they won’t like an attempt from EA to revive an old game - and partly because they would have wanted something new instead and think that EA must have run out of ideas :)
For us here in the forum such things aren’t really so important because we are the hardcore fans who most likely will buy almost anything. But for new young simmers without much money and with a lot of other interests too in their lives things are different. They won’t just throw out their sparce money on a game that doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer to them.- Sorry, a bit late into the discussion.
> @Erpe said:
> The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
1. Where did you get that "low ratings in the review" ? Metacritic gave TS1 & TS2 a 90% Ratings, while 86% on TS3. Those Ratings never falls below 8.0 by any reviewers (well, officially used in most wikipedia pages anyway). Except when TS4 released. All reviewers gave it a score below 8.0.
Even if it's a dollhouse, it's still a game.
> EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
(wikipedia) "(...) the game's concept was very poorly received by a focus group, so Wright had difficulty getting the project off the ground. He (Will Wright) managed to convince his company to let him work on the project (codenamed "Project X" at the time) in the background while developing SimCity 2000 and SimCopter. (...) were primarily developing an open-ended system of character behavior. As the project continued -
- Wright found that the social aspect of the game turned out to be highly engaging, and the team started to focus more on the characters of the game, such as by letting Sims visit the houses of one-another and by implementing long-term relationships."
This is, imo, is the idea of The Sims. And what kind of girl doesn't like "long-term relationships" ? Getting TS4 to Legendary Legacy is hard if you keep following the updates because something will always break something here.
> TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
2&3. The reason TS1 sold that much because. It's "fresh on the market". They improved on that and created The Sims 2. You know what that game got nominated in rewards ?
(taken from wikipedia)
"The Sims creator, Will Wright, was recognized by being nominated at the Billboard Digital Entertainment Awards for Visionary and Game Developer. The game was also nominated for two international awards in 2005. The Mac version of the game won an Apple Design Award in 2006. Computer Games Magazine named The Sims 2 the sixth-best computer game of 2004. The editors wrote that it is "more of a game and less of a dollhouse , but it remains a celebration of the beauty of the mundane." It also won the magazine's "Best Voice Acting" award." (end of citation)
True. The Sims 3 doesn't sold as much as The Sims 1, probably for the same reason The Sims 2 is on the middle of them.
2001-2003
The Sims 1 - while I never actually play the game, from the looks of it, it's a simple life simulation (a.k.a. dollhouse) game that designed even the current era of tablet games (the design still holds value). I didn't know why, but probably because it's simpler ? And of course, low processing power needed. Less support. Let's just be honest here, it's already dated by the time TS2 released.
2004-2008
The Sims 2 - Compare it with The Sims 1. The difference is quite astronomical. It's like they changed the entire design. While I may not know many game titles released in the past, the only game I'm currently aware of that could manage to get close to The Sims franchise is probably Second Life. And even then, it's not as good. All the expansions are fresh and they don't have a guidelines for it.
- Will Wright "moves on" but he's still the one who makes the base game that's for sure.
2009-2013
The Sims 3 - I don't think I have to say much here. The only game that could rival this one is Grand Theft Auto 5. Even then, you can't have a family there. You cannot build a house. Well at least you can hold a gun and control a lot of vehicles freely. There is also story mode ! All the expansion packs are mostly a polished version of The Sims 2 packs, annnnnd some cash grab here and there.
2014-today.
The Sims 4 - In a general idea, it's the same as The Sims 1 & 2 combined. But with a much more less content. They scrapped Will Wright (in a sense) and everything from the previous game, with little to no improvements in the graphics, much less on accessibility, more on the little things (animation) details that actually gives the more casual players frustated to the depth of oblivion. Which makes the game looks awfully bad. And oh, they also increased the price.
Notice The Timeline ? Of course. The Sims 4 is indeed 100% harder to be created compared to the era of The Sims 2. The level of detail itself are different. But when you (again) consider the fact that after 4 years of development, we barely got half of The Sims 3 content, it's a lot lackluster and maybe, just maybe, did they bit off more than they could chew ?
> The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Which is why I said "Unless it becomes the (equivalent of) The Sims 2 era of New Generations (without Will Wright on it's head), a LOT of people are going to be dissapointed". It doesn't have to be The Sims 2, no. I don't want another Sims 2. But the amount of content AND quality should match that time when The Sims 2 are released.
I mean come on, Windows just released Windows 7 a month after TS3 released. And it's the staple of OSes. Now we got Windows 10, gastronomical (expensive) and advanced choices for (public) computers systems, We got VR ! Games are like a phone today. So expectations are rising. It's either they change, or they crumble. More than 10k games released every year worldwide. If they're hoping to compete, they've to change. Something I wouldn't see if they keep the current practice though.
That, is the reason why I doubted The Sims 5. They won't recreate The Sims 5 from scratch again, no. IMO, they might've even ditch TS4 right now, port it and improve on it, give a bit more EPs and release it as The Sims 5. As for EA, I think it's a lot more profitable to make 3 titles in 10 years than developing a single title for 10 years. Then if it is, why I would buy the first two installments then ? And if a lot of people think like this, chances are, sales for TS5 is going to drop even faster. Which means, no more The Sims.
I know that it won't probably be a bad game, but don't forget that somewhere, a game as big as Star Citizen are released. People are going to lose interest. Just saying. "TheHavocado;c-16240494" wrote:
Sorry, a bit late into the discussion.
> @Erpe said:
> The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
1. Where did you get that "low ratings in the review" ? Metacritic gave TS1 & TS2 a 90% Ratings, while 86% on TS3. Those Ratings never falls below 8.0 by any reviewers (well, officially used in most wikipedia pages anyway). Except when TS4 released. All reviewers gave it a score below 8.0.
I don’t usually get my ratings from Metacritic but instead from places like Gamespot and IGN.Even if it's a dollhouse, it's still a game.
There is a difference between toys and games. If kids are playing with a real doll or a real dollhouse the normal word for such things is that they is toys and not games. SimCity and the Sims are examples of non-games or software toys as Will Wright called them. You can read more about this on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-game
2009-2013
The Sims 3 - I don't think I have to say much here. The only game that could rival this one is Grand Theft Auto 5. Even then, you can't have a family there. You cannot build a house. Well at least you can hold a gun and control a lot of vehicles freely. There is also story mode ! All the expansion packs are mostly a polished version of The Sims 2 packs, annnnnd some cash grab here and there.
The Sims 3 got more EPs (11) than Sims 2 did (8) and the first of the EPs for Sims 3 was World Adventures which was a completely new type of EP. So EA knew that it was especially important to start with an EP which people wouldn’t see as just a repetition of an earlier EP for the previous game.2014-today.
The Sims 4 - In a general idea, it's the same as The Sims 1 & 2 combined. But with a much more less content. They scrapped Will Wright (in a sense) and everything from the previous game, with little to no improvements in the graphics, much less on accessibility, more on the little things (animation) details that actually gives the more casual players frustated to the depth of oblivion. Which makes the game looks awfully bad. And oh, they also increased the price.
They scrapped Will Wright already after Sims 1 and he soon left the Sims studio to work on Spore instead.
The improvements in Sims 4 wasn’t about the graphics and they never intended Sims 4 to be an improvement of an earlier game at all. The improvement idea is the usual here in the forum. But it has never been EA’s idea. Instead EA just wants every new Sims game to become a new and different type of Sims game. So EA wanted Sims 4 to be as different from Sims 2 and Sims 3 as possible. Therefore Sims 4 got much less focus on raising a family and more focus on multitasking, partying and happiness instead. The simmers just punished EA for this though and EA had to add toddlers to Sims 4 anyway to get the sales numbers up. But this was surely not a part of EA’s original plan.Notice The Timeline ? Of course. The Sims 4 is indeed 100% harder to be created compared to the era of The Sims 2. The level of detail itself are different. But when you (again) consider the fact that after 4 years of development, we barely got half of The Sims 3 content, it's a lot lackluster and maybe, just maybe, did they bit off more than they could chew ?
You won’t ever get all the content from the previous games because that never was EA’s plan. EA doesn’t make repetitions of old games but new games instead. So EA just replaced half of the usual EPs with GPs and SPs instead because EA’s experience was that cheaper expansions sell better when they are sold as digital downloads. But if you buy all SPs, GPs and EPs each year then you still will pay EA just as much money as you did if you bought the same for Sims 3. So seen from EA’s viewpoint the same value of expansions has been released for Sims 4 as for Sims 3. EA doesn’t release even more because there of course is a limit to how much money most simmers (mainly young teen girls) can afford to use every year.
But this doesn’t in any way make the basegame younger or the amount of expansions smaller. So after 5 years EA will be in the same situation again: a too old basegame with so many already released expansions that sales numbers for new expansions have gone down. Therefore EA again needs a new basegame to be released after 5 years. So I will be very surprised if EA doesn’t announce the next basegame somewhere between March and August 2018 and releases it in the second half of 2019.- Grant was an associate producer in EA. He left in 2010 but returned in 2011. What he does when he doesn’t work as a producer for EA you can see on https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/50231/grant-rodiek
"JoAnne65;c-16241871" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240425" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240287" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240176" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240153" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240134" wrote:
"TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Why on earth should I continue playing Sims 3 when there would be a new great Sims game with new content and improvements and open world? I’d jump over to that new game immediately. It’s not open world (or CASt) that keeps me playing Sims 3. It’s the lack of a better alternative. I’ve tried the alternative and then returned. There was only one reason for that: while Sims 4 made me constantly go ‘what shal I do now..., oh what shall I do next’, then closing the game after two hours tops, my Sims 3 game sort of plays itself and I only quit because I have to go to bed. If they’d deliver a new game that does that, open world or not, Sims 3 could retire.
I didn’t write that to you and you seem to have misunderstood me.
The reason that I don’t play TS4 isn’t about the missing open world either and we seem to agree about what is wrong with TS4. That wasn’t my point.
But if TS5 is marketed as “a new Sims game similar to Sims 3 and with the open world returning” then it will get low sales numbers and especially if the EPs are just repetions too. Not because you won’t buy it because I am sure that you actually would :) But because most young teens would reject the game. Partly because they won’t like an attempt from EA to revive an old game - and partly because they would have wanted something new instead and think that EA must have run out of ideas :)
For us here in the forum such things aren’t really so important because we are the hardcore fans who most likely will buy almost anything. But for new young simmers without much money and with a lot of other interests too in their lives things are different. They won’t just throw out their sparce money on a game that doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer to them.
I know you didn't directly adress me but regardless, the statement
"But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead."
begged for a reaction, because any simmer who's playing Sims 3 right now will probably confirm what I said. It's your theory EA has to have a brand new selling point to be able to sell the game and heck, for all we know EA agrees with you and thinks so too. I don't agree with that theory though, I don't think that's how it works for simmers. As long as they give us an immersive game that allows us to play with little people in a creative way, we're happy. In fact one of Sims 4's most popular selling claims among fans was 'back to its roots'.
Your theory (and who knows EA's theory) denies the fact that a community and sharing is highly important for simmers. The TS3 section is great, with lovely/sweet people sharing both information and experiences, but we're also sharing history. There is the occasional "Did you know that..." - "No, I didn't! Wow, got to try that!" but for the rest we're all stuck in the past. It's a beautiful past, I love that past, but that doesn't mean I - or anyone else - wouldn't rather move on. Playing Sims 3 has become a shelter, a place to turn to in absence of something better. Suggesting people who play the old games (regardless the version) do so out of lack of a will to move on/adjust/change, means you're shortchanging them and don't understand what they're coming from and it even denies their actual issues in a way.
And that's us oldies. When they'll announce Sims 5 it will be like 2020 earliest. Those young teens you're referring to will be kids who never played Sims 3, nor know the game. Open world will be a brand new concept for them.
The reason why we see things differently is mainly that you concentrate on what the forum here thinks. But by doing this you completely ignore the fact that if only the forum (or even 10 times as many simmers) bought the game then EA wouldn’t be able to support the game anymore without losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
So what EA concentrates about is of course instead the about 6 million other simmers all over the world. Most of those simmers aren’t hardcore simmers at all but instead mostly young experimenting new simmers who just bought the game because they found something in the advertising interesting. They usually play much less then people here do and they only buy something if it looks interesting.
Those simmers are also the reason why EA now regularly releases new content in the free updates because the reason for this clearly is to get lost simmers back to playing the game (and hopefully also buy a little more expansions). EA surely doesn’t use money on such things just to be kind to the few hardcore simmers in this forum ;)
We can guess about the the release day of TS5 all we want. Simmers have always thought that the next Sims game was many years out in the future and become very surprised when EA announced it years before they expected. The reason of course is that simmers always want the current Sims game to be “complete” before EA moves on. But EA has never agreed with this idea and instead just announced the next big Sims game to avoid that sales numbers for new expansion become too low and then released the new game 15 months after the announcement. So I expect EA to announce TS5 in the middle of this year and then release it next year anyway. But you are welcome to believe that EA just will go on releasing 4 SPs, 2 GPs and an EP each year forever until new simmers will have to buy hundreds of such expansions just to get a “complete” Sims 4 game :)
No, I'm concentrating on what I, a Sims 3 player, thinks ;) You were speaking for a group of simmers you don't belong to (people who love and play Sims 3), filling in for them what they would do. I'm one of those players and I can assure you, you are mistaken with your analysis of us. And we may differ in our expectation of the release of the next title, I sure hope you are right and I am not.
I made no analysis of your way of thinking. But you pretend to be able to speak for all the millions of TS3 players who never visited this forum at all. You can’t!
What you still won’t accept is that the few hundred simmers in this forum aren’t just like the millions of simmers who got the game too but rarely (or for most of them likely never) visited a game forum. The simmers in the forum like to speak about their game all the time. But the huge majority of the customers for Sims games don’t and they usually have several other interests too. Therefore they don’t just buy any new Sims game just like you do - and they sure won’t buy a new Sims game if it seems to be just the same as the old Sims game they maybe played less and less a couple of years ago! They need something new in the new game to bring them back - or they won’t buy the new game at all!
EA knows this and therefore always concentrated on bringing something new into the advertising for each new Sims game and EA has during the years cared less and less about the opinions in the forum because the hardcore fans here always seem to just want the same game again and again (in slightly improved versions) because EA disagrees with the forum."aricarai;c-16241905" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16241883" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16241871" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240425" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240287" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240176" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240153" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240134" wrote:
"TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Why on earth should I continue playing Sims 3 when there would be a new great Sims game with new content and improvements and open world? I’d jump over to that new game immediately. It’s not open world (or CASt) that keeps me playing Sims 3. It’s the lack of a better alternative. I’ve tried the alternative and then returned. There was only one reason for that: while Sims 4 made me constantly go ‘what shal I do now..., oh what shall I do next’, then closing the game after two hours tops, my Sims 3 game sort of plays itself and I only quit because I have to go to bed. If they’d deliver a new game that does that, open world or not, Sims 3 could retire.
I didn’t write that to you and you seem to have misunderstood me.
The reason that I don’t play TS4 isn’t about the missing open world either and we seem to agree about what is wrong with TS4. That wasn’t my point.
But if TS5 is marketed as “a new Sims game similar to Sims 3 and with the open world returning” then it will get low sales numbers and especially if the EPs are just repetions too. Not because you won’t buy it because I am sure that you actually would :) But because most young teens would reject the game. Partly because they won’t like an attempt from EA to revive an old game - and partly because they would have wanted something new instead and think that EA must have run out of ideas :)
For us here in the forum such things aren’t really so important because we are the hardcore fans who most likely will buy almost anything. But for new young simmers without much money and with a lot of other interests too in their lives things are different. They won’t just throw out their sparce money on a game that doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer to them.
I know you didn't directly adress me but regardless, the statement
"But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead."
begged for a reaction, because any simmer who's playing Sims 3 right now will probably confirm what I said. It's your theory EA has to have a brand new selling point to be able to sell the game and heck, for all we know EA agrees with you and thinks so too. I don't agree with that theory though, I don't think that's how it works for simmers. As long as they give us an immersive game that allows us to play with little people in a creative way, we're happy. In fact one of Sims 4's most popular selling claims among fans was 'back to its roots'.
Your theory (and who knows EA's theory) denies the fact that a community and sharing is highly important for simmers. The TS3 section is great, with lovely/sweet people sharing both information and experiences, but we're also sharing history. There is the occasional "Did you know that..." - "No, I didn't! Wow, got to try that!" but for the rest we're all stuck in the past. It's a beautiful past, I love that past, but that doesn't mean I - or anyone else - wouldn't rather move on. Playing Sims 3 has become a shelter, a place to turn to in absence of something better. Suggesting people who play the old games (regardless the version) do so out of lack of a will to move on/adjust/change, means you're shortchanging them and don't understand what they're coming from and it even denies their actual issues in a way.
And that's us oldies. When they'll announce Sims 5 it will be like 2020 earliest. Those young teens you're referring to will be kids who never played Sims 3, nor know the game. Open world will be a brand new concept for them.
The reason why we see things differently is mainly that you concentrate on what the forum here thinks. But by doing this you completely ignore the fact that if only the forum (or even 10 times as many simmers) bought the game then EA wouldn’t be able to support the game anymore without losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
So what EA concentrates about is of course instead the about 6 million other simmers all over the world. Most of those simmers aren’t hardcore simmers at all but instead mostly young experimenting new simmers who just bought the game because they found something in the advertising interesting. They usually play much less then people here do and they only buy something if it looks interesting.
Those simmers are also the reason why EA now regularly releases new content in the free updates because the reason for this clearly is to get lost simmers back to playing the game (and hopefully also buy a little more expansions). EA surely doesn’t use money on such things just to be kind to the few hardcore simmers in this forum ;)
We can guess about the the release day of TS5 all we want. Simmers have always thought that the next Sims game was many years out in the future and become very surprised when EA announced it years before they expected. The reason of course is that simmers always want the current Sims game to be “complete” before EA moves on. But EA has never agreed with this idea and instead just announced the next big Sims game to avoid that sales numbers for new expansion become too low and then released the new game 15 months after the announcement. So I expect EA to announce TS5 in the middle of this year and then release it next year anyway. But you are welcome to believe that EA just will go on releasing 4 SPs, 2 GPs and an EP each year forever until new simmers will have to buy hundreds of such expansions just to get a “complete” Sims 4 game :)
No, I'm concentrating on what I, a Sims 3 player, thinks ;) You were speaking for a group of simmers you don't belong to (people who love and play Sims 3), filling in for them what they would do. I'm one of those players and I can assure you, you are mistaken with your analysis of us. And we may differ in our expectation of the release of the next title, I sure hope you are right and I am not.
I made no analysis of your way of thinking. But you pretend to be able to speak for all the millions of TS3 players who never visited this forum at all. You can’t!
What you still won’t accept is that the few hundred simmers in this forum aren’t just like the millions of simmers who got the game too but rarely (or for most of them likely never) visited a game forum. The simmers in the forum like to speak about their game all the time. But the huge majority of the customers for Sims games don’t and they usually have several other interests too. Therefore they don’t just buy any new Sims game just like you do - and they sure won’t buy a new Sims game if it seems to be just the same as the old Sims game they maybe played less and less a couple of years ago! They need something new in the new game to bring them back - or they won’t buy the new game at all!
EA knows this and therefore always concentrated on bringing something new into the advertising for each new Sims game and EA has during the years cared less and less about the opinions in the forum because the hardcore fans here always seem to just want the same game again and again (in slightly improved versions) because EA disagrees with the forum.
But you're doing the exact that you're accusing @JoAnne65 of doing. You're making assumptions for a large group of people. You can't possibly say a huge majority of whatever group does this or that or will buy this or that, unless you've conducted some sort of poll...of which results I would be interested to see.
I have known a lot of young gamers through the years and they usually aren’t at all like most of the simmers in this forum because they don’t just go on and playing the same game as they did 5 or 10 years ago. They also wouldn’t just go on and on buying expansions for the same game. So the game companies never released a lot of expansions for their games.
Besides that I am different myself too because I have tried hundreds of games and a few of them were my favorites which I played all the time for a year or two. But even so I don’t miss them and I won’t go back to playing them. I need new games instead.
But of course this wouldn’t prove anything if EA followed the forum and just released slightly modified versions of the previous Sims games and with just slightly improved versions of the same EPs. At a time EA actually had the policy to switch between new EPs and remakes of previous EPs all the time. But EA clearly has dropped that idea completely for TS4 and now attempts to only release new expansions and no repetitions. So EA seems to know that repetions generally sell worse than new types of expansions do because otherwise EA sure wouldn’t do it this way! ;)"MidnightAura;c-16241939" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240176" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240153" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240134" wrote:
"TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Why on earth should I continue playing Sims 3 when there would be a new great Sims game with new content and improvements and open world? I’d jump over to that new game immediately. It’s not open world (or CASt) that keeps me playing Sims 3. It’s the lack of a better alternative. I’ve tried the alternative and then returned. There was only one reason for that: while Sims 4 made me constantly go ‘what shal I do now..., oh what shall I do next’, then closing the game after two hours tops, my Sims 3 game sort of plays itself and I only quit because I have to go to bed. If they’d deliver a new game that does that, open world or not, Sims 3 could retire.
I didn’t write that to you and you seem to have misunderstood me.
The reason that I don’t play TS4 isn’t about the missing open world either and we seem to agree about what is wrong with TS4. That wasn’t my point.
But if TS5 is marketed as “a new Sims game similar to Sims 3 and with the open world returning” then it will get low sales numbers and especially if the EPs are just repetions too. Not because you won’t buy it because I am sure that you actually would :) But because most young teens would reject the game. Partly because they won’t like an attempt from EA to revive an old game - and partly because they would have wanted something new instead and think that EA must have run out of ideas :)
For us here in the forum such things aren’t really so important because we are the hardcore fans who most likely will buy almost anything. But for new young simmers without much money and with a lot of other interests too in their lives things are different. They won’t just throw out their sparce money on a game that doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer to them.
I disagree with this. Open world is a standard In so many games now it’s normal. It’s an expectation if you will. My niece who is 9 plays the Sims now. She has just started getting into it. She has played my sims 3 game and she’s she’s played the sims 4. (I bought her her own sims 4 copy on Console for Christmas) but having said that she prefers the sims 3.
She prefers it because of horses and the fact that she can move around the world swithout loading screens. She gets frustrated at all the loading screens in the sims 4 but you have to remember she is growing up playing many an open world game. She also says all the sims 4 sims Do is talk lol
If EA brought out a sims game and said it was similar to the sims 3 with an open world I think it would do incredibly well and as a sims 3 fan it would pique my interest for sure it’s probably the only thing that would as right now I’m not hopeful for a sims 5.
Plus what is “new”for the series by this point anyway? Four series in and so much has already been covered. That’s one of the reasons every time a “new feature” comes to the sims 4 it has already been done at some point in the series and the sims 4 version tends to be more watered down in some capacity, take cats and dogs and not being able to view any information about them.
There will be teens out there who won’t have played the sims 3. The only reason my niece has is because I have it, had she become a Simmer under her own steam she would never have had the chance.
Your daughter isn’t typical for two reasons:
1. She already has TS3 and TS4 and therefore doesn’t need to convince her parents (who usually aren’t simmers) to let her get the games. She already has them and knows them.
2. The target group is mainly 10 to 14 years olds who already are quite good readers and therefore can read the texts in the game. But your daughter is likely a little too young for this.
EA has attempted to renew the game and its expansions. But mostly for the sales videos which now are happier than earlier and show a lot of funny behavior. This is intended to sell the game and it seems to work quite well such that TS4 and its expansions now seem to sell as well as TS3 and its expansions did. But we know that the forum users can’t be the reason because a lot of them have stopped playing or returned to TS3. Therefore the reason must be that the young (mainly girls) in the target group wants the game and all its expansions just to try them out and to see all this funny behavior in their own game. They likely just don’t play the game long enough to become bored with all the repetions like most of us here do. Instead they just stop playing for a while when they have seen the things that amuses them and wait for the next free update or expansion. If this wasn’t true then how would you otherwise explain the high sales numbers for TS4 which now even have motivated EA to release two GPs each year instead of only one yearly GP like EA did in the beginning?"MidnightAura;c-16242028" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16242008" wrote:
"MidnightAura;c-16241939" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240176" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16240153" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16240134" wrote:
"TheHavocado;c-16240016" wrote:
Well if anything, The Sims 5 should be the new era Sims 2 or a lot of people are going to be dissapointed, especially if they did the lackluster release day again. The Sims 4 Ratings shot down faster than an F-15 during it's first week release, especially when (according to wiki) you consider the fact that "...This was the most successful PC game launch the company had ever had to date".
The Sims games have always had low ratings in the reviews and among other gamers who never have understood why this game got high sales numbers at all when it in their eyes isn’t even a real game but more like a toy for mainly young girls (or a virtual dollhouse).
EA also clearly hadn’t expected TS1 to become successful at all. Therefore the budget for TS1 was very low which meant that its game world became very small and its graphics looked very simple and outdated too. The reasons was that EA only expected a part of the SimCity gamers to buy it. But what EA hadn’t foreseen was that TS1 suddenly attracted millions of young girls who never had played a game before.
TS3 may have had the most successful launch (most copies sold on its release day). But TS1 still sold almost twice as many copies. So TS1 must clearly be the most successful game that EA ever launched.
The high sales numbers for TS3 on day one was caused by the open seamless world. But EA can’t ever get a similar success just by advertising the next Sims game as ”The return of the open world” anyway because the simmers who loved it then most likely will just stay with TS3 instead. So EA needs something new to use in the advertising instead. Maybe it will be something about ”the option to play and cooperate with your friends in the game”.
Why on earth should I continue playing Sims 3 when there would be a new great Sims game with new content and improvements and open world? I’d jump over to that new game immediately. It’s not open world (or CASt) that keeps me playing Sims 3. It’s the lack of a better alternative. I’ve tried the alternative and then returned. There was only one reason for that: while Sims 4 made me constantly go ‘what shal I do now..., oh what shall I do next’, then closing the game after two hours tops, my Sims 3 game sort of plays itself and I only quit because I have to go to bed. If they’d deliver a new game that does that, open world or not, Sims 3 could retire.
I didn’t write that to you and you seem to have misunderstood me.
The reason that I don’t play TS4 isn’t about the missing open world either and we seem to agree about what is wrong with TS4. That wasn’t my point.
But if TS5 is marketed as “a new Sims game similar to Sims 3 and with the open world returning” then it will get low sales numbers and especially if the EPs are just repetions too. Not because you won’t buy it because I am sure that you actually would :) But because most young teens would reject the game. Partly because they won’t like an attempt from EA to revive an old game - and partly because they would have wanted something new instead and think that EA must have run out of ideas :)
For us here in the forum such things aren’t really so important because we are the hardcore fans who most likely will buy almost anything. But for new young simmers without much money and with a lot of other interests too in their lives things are different. They won’t just throw out their sparce money on a game that doesn’t seem to have anything new to offer to them.
I disagree with this. Open world is a standard In so many games now it’s normal. It’s an expectation if you will. My niece who is 9 plays the Sims now. She has just started getting into it. She has played my sims 3 game and she’s she’s played the sims 4. (I bought her her own sims 4 copy on Console for Christmas) but having said that she prefers the sims 3.
She prefers it because of horses and the fact that she can move around the world swithout loading screens. She gets frustrated at all the loading screens in the sims 4 but you have to remember she is growing up playing many an open world game. She also says all the sims 4 sims Do is talk lol
If EA brought out a sims game and said it was similar to the sims 3 with an open world I think it would do incredibly well and as a sims 3 fan it would pique my interest for sure it’s probably the only thing that would as right now I’m not hopeful for a sims 5.
Plus what is “new”for the series by this point anyway? Four series in and so much has already been covered. That’s one of the reasons every time a “new feature” comes to the sims 4 it has already been done at some point in the series and the sims 4 version tends to be more watered down in some capacity, take cats and dogs and not being able to view any information about them.
There will be teens out there who won’t have played the sims 3. The only reason my niece has is because I have it, had she become a Simmer under her own steam she would never have had the chance.
Your daughter isn’t typical for two reasons:
1. She already has TS3 and TS4 and therefore doesn’t need to convince her parents (who usually aren’t simmers) to let her get the games. She already has them and knows them.
2. The target group is mainly 10 to 14 years olds who already are quite good readers and therefore can read the texts in the game. But your daughter is likely a little too young for this.
EA has attempted to renew the game and its expansions. But mostly for the sales videos which now are happier than earlier and show a lot of funny behavior. This is intended to sell the game and it seems to work quite well such that TS4 and its expansions now seem to sell as well as TS3 and its expansions did. But we know that the forum users can’t be the reason because a lot of them have stopped playing or returned to TS3. Therefore the reason must be that the young (mainly girls) in the target group wants the game and all its expansions just to try them out and to see all this funny behavior in their own game. They likely just don’t play the game long enough to become bored with all the repetions like most of us here do. Instead they just stop playing for a while when they have seen the things that amuses them and wait for the next free update or expansion. If this wasn’t true then how would you otherwise explain the high sales numbers for TS4 which now even have motivated EA to release two GPs each year instead of only one yearly GP like EA did in the beginning?
If you read my post it’s my niece not my daughter. I don’t have children yet.
Quite good readers and can read text in game? And being too young for this? Erm she Is 9 and while she isn’t an avid reader like I was/am she at 9 years old can understand written text just fine. She has no problems in that area. I’m sorry but your post reads as a little patronising.
But you are right she isn’t typical in that she doesn’t enjoy the sims 4 as much as 3 and is bored by it very quickly by lack of things to do and not being enough deviant play. But that doesn’t mean that every single teenage girl or preteen is happy for shallow do it once and never do it again game play. It’s a huge sweeping generalisation to say that they will pick up a game and play it for a day and then drop it like a stone until the next big exciting comes around. Some may yes. The same way some adults do. But you cannot imply that all teens and in my case preteens are happy for shallow, simplistic game play as if anything else is too difficult for them.
Sorry for confusing your niece with your daughter!
My problem with such discussions is that people here don’t seem to understand the difference between the average simmer and all simmers because I am writing about the first concept (which of course also is what interests EA) and people just go on and on claiming that I am writing about the last concept instead and therefore think that only one special example is more than enough to prove me wrong.
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