How many more years of TS4?

"Writin_Reg;c-16211349" wrote:

"Erpe;c-16211047" wrote:

"Writin_Reg;c-16210911" wrote:

"BuzzBuzz;c-16210895" wrote:
About two more years. The other games lasted for five years

I hear this game is going to be made - in their own words "as long as it is feasible to do so". Doesn't matter what the other games did - EA want longer shelf lives for all their games through updates and dlc - both free and paid. Besides all the other games varied a bit. Sims 1 was barely 4 years, Sims 2 was almost 5 years and Sims 3 was well over 5 years.

Yes EA wants to change all their games into online games and live services. But the problem here is that TS4 that way instead.

TS1 wasn’t planned to really have expansions at all because it was only planned to be a small sidegame to SimCity. But to EA’s huge surprise the sales numbers just exploded because very young girls just loved that game even though only few such girls had been interested in the SimCity main game. So EA had to release no less than 7 EPs for Sims 1 even though EA at most had planned to maybe make just one EP if the sales numbers became good. This meant that all those unplanned EPs were quite hard both to make and for us to install (unless they were installed in the correct order there were no chance that they would work). So already after 4 yrs EA preferred to release TS2 as a much bigger game that also was much better prepared for a lot of later expansions. But since then each Sims game has always had a lifespan of almost exactly 5 yrs (only with a variation of a couple of months). So I will actually be surprised if TS5 won’t be released at some time in the second half of 2019.

But if TS5 really will be an online game where we can play with our friends then it will likely have a much longer lifetime just as all other such games have because the game companies know that many gamers won’t move on to the next version of the game if they lose all their online friends in the game.

No it wasn't - we spoke to Will Wright when we tested The Sims, otherwise known as the Sims 1 back in 1999. It was meant to be just one full game and he already had an expansions or two in mind. He told us so. Also - of the 100 players he had testing the sims it was required we be 18 and over. Not young girls. It was males and females 18 +. Although He did tell us another story of an earlier test, testing the game on a room full of 12 year olds - and back then the game was still called The Dollhouse. When the boys in the test room heard it was called The Dollhouse - they all panicked and ran out of the room. That's what made Will decide he needed another name. LOL. He made the game in mind for everyone/ all ages, male and female to enjoy it by the way. The 12 year old girls thing was an EA marketing for Sims, mostly Sims 4.

What he had not planned on was the Sims turning into a series. He said he did get an idea to make a Simsville that would combine the Sims with Sim City - but discovered the tech at that time he'd need to go that direction, the way he had in mind was not readily available to him, was expensive and players could not easily afford equipment that could have even handled a game such as he had in mind.

So after two years of tossing it about, it was decided it would be too expensive and chancey at that time. What EA was interested in doing though was expanding the Sims to generations and making what became Sims 2. I had to laugh when he told us he was terrified though at the thought of expanding the Sims in that manner - but in the end - it all worked out and we got The Sims 2.

ETA - Also EA is no longer talking about making all their games online under this CEO. He believes that not all games were meant to be online. But yes he wants all the games connected to the live service via Origin - and more of EA's popular games (like the Sims) made for all the different devices people have and like to use.

Will Wright was a dreamer whith many ideas about making all kinds of simulation games which shouldn’t have a goal about “winning” like other games had. But his games never sold very well until TS1 was released. That was also the reason why he (and Jeff Braun) in 1997 had to sell Maxis to EA. (They got $120 million in stock for the trade though.) So it is probably true that he had all those ideas and dreams. But it was EA’s task to bring him back from the sky and down to earth and EA only gave TS1 a very low budget for its development. Therefore the graphics were simple, ugly and outdated and the basegame was very small.

The target for TS1 was clearly the SimCity players (at least for EA). But Will Wright of course had other ideas and it doesn’t surprise me if he considered “Dollhouse” as the name for the game. EA would clearly refuse that name though because EA didn’t even dream about TS1 being able to attract all those young girls who at the time usually didn’t like video games and called boys “nerds” for playing them. But EA got a huge surprise and I still remember wondering why all those young girls suddenly came into the game stores (often bringing their mum too) and only being interested in TS1 which I didn’t find interesting myself because it just looked like a primitive dumped down game with ugly graphics to me.

Edit: Will Wright was very admired by all simmers and of course because he invented the original Sims game. But this was actually his only really successful game even though SimCity was at least partly successful too. All his many other games were more failures than successes (even Spore).