Is The Sims too childish now? Teen & Adult players have been forgotten

"Believe it or not, Sims 4 players are allowed to enjoy the game the way it is."

And you're welcome to play it. Too bad so many of us have watched an imaginative and exciting game franchise drained of intelligence and scope. Wish we'd been allowed to enjoy it as we liked it.

I just wish it were *even* really rated Teen but as far as it is now, it's actually conforming to E for Everybody. Sims walk around with Barney-the-Dinosaur smiles almost no matter what, unless it's time to crawl under the covers and cry because someone they didn't know died, again this week.

No fears, no consequences, no competitions (except chess, there aren't winners or losers at anything in actual gameplay for sports, though you can win or lose a harmless, consequence-free duel in Vampires or Realms of Magic), it's all Cooperative Parallel Play, like carefully supervised playdates for toddlers.

Which is why mods are so important to make the game worthwhile. But how messed up is that?

"telmarina;c-17480102" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-17479832" wrote:

"ButteredToast;c-17478171" wrote:

In other word, what I am saying is: the maturity/complexity of your sim depends on your creativity and involvement. This is the idea behind sandbox games. Sandbox games should not spoon-feed you stories, they should instead provide a blank canvas for YOUR stories.

Not sure that’s an argument I’d make but you did. Perhaps Sims isn’t as sandbox as people think, eh? One of the first things you do is define your Sim through one of the various personality builders each game has had. Once you’ve locked in your Sim, their “personality” “traits” “characteristics” - whatever - are you really left with a blank canvas? Sure, but at the same time no because you have a Sim with a personality that you established, who ideally should display that personality through gameplay right?

What are you left with when the personality builder is meaningless for live mode? Sims 4, which is the only game where you can go through all of that and still have a blank canvas when you start. Not because it’s a sandbox game, because it’s a poorly designed game where nothing means anything and you have to imagine mostly everything you want to happen. Some people like that, but it’s not a lack of creativity that gave Sims 4 it’s complaints; I t’s just literally a bad sequel that nearly flopped until EA mass marketed it at a reduced price.

Very well said. I don't think that it was never intended to have the 4th installment of the series be less in depth in what concerns to sims personalities and everything that is built around it in game. I think it was a failure. That's why after this years we can read in the surveys some intention on changing how traits work or on bringing consequences to the game.

It took me a very long time to enjoy playing sims 4 because i was playing as it was supposed to be, a game. Sandbox yes, but a game. Recently i started playing it by inventing storylines in my head (ok nothing new...) but also inventing the turn arounds. That is what is new. Simmers have always played with their imagination, having to imagine my play AND the consequent outcome is what is new...

The last paragraph is what I meant. Invention and imagination. Sims with trait in CAS is a starting point in a blank canvas which is his/her life.

One of my Sims completed a Strangerville challenge with a "loner" trait. Strangerville challenge requires your sims to socialize with other NPCs in order to complete it, which poses a difficulty to my Sim because after some social interactions, she would get an uncomfortable moodlet due to her loner trait. She also has a paranoid trait so she also receive something like "everyone is talking about me" moodlet. Her inner thoughts is my invention. I would imagine her emotional struggle as she has to drag herself out of her comfort zone and interact with strangers knowing that she sounds crazy (alien invasion? really?). But she loves her hometown and she wants to save it. In this case her traits do influence her storyline.

Now, the Sims 4 is not perfect. Can it be improved? Yes, definitely. I would be intrigued by new traits and how I can use them in my stories. Is it childish? That depends on your imagination. In my case, no it's not .

"Leahmiller2006;c-17479557" wrote:

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17475496" wrote:

"Leahmiller2006;c-17473949" wrote:
It’s rated 12 and i’ve had it since I was 8 (shhh?) and I have invested money into it. I have nearly all the packs and i’m 14. If they made it 15 rated i’d be technically to young. Also it needs some boundaries, it’s a 12 and your asking for this. If it was a 15 people would be asking for violence, if it was an 18 people would ask for much worse. Keeping it a 12 is very reasonable

I was technically too young for Mortal Kombat when it came out. I was about 8 then, and I was able to play the game without it rotting my young mind, because I had a mom who taught me how to handle and process media violence and a healthy dose of good sense. What your post does is illustrate two big problems with the game industry in particular and the media industry in general.

The first problem is that age recommendations as outlined by ratings systems are very generalized, and mostly err on the side of caution. I've played T rated games that are tame enough for a 7-year-old to play if the parents give them the cognitive and emotional tools necessary to understand and process the content properly. Then, there are people who are either very mature or immature for their age. So, you may have an 8-year-old who is mature enough to watch an R rated movie without acting out, repeating swear words, or having nightmares, and you may have a 17-year-old who sees an R rated movie and repeats every swear word they just heard, tries to copy all the dangerous stunts in the back yard with no protection, and can't stop having nightmares about the monster from the movie because their maturity level is far behind their chronological age. Parents need to teach their children how to handle questionable content in the media from a young age, assess their child's maturity level carefully and accurately when considering whether they should watch or play something, and talk with their children about what the media they consume to ensure that their kids are coming up right.

The second problem you've highlighted is the fact that there isn't a uniform, standardized, worldwide ratings system for media in general, and for games in particular. The U.S. has the ESRB ratings system, Europe has PEGI, and so-on. Each of these regions uses different criteria to decide what content is appropriate for what general age range and uses different ratings...and sometimes even different age ranges. For instance, the PEGI system uses the ratings 3, 7, 12, 16, and 18, directly referencing the minimum age that the game should generally be appropriate for. PEGI has stricter guidelines on gambling than the ESRB, which is why the Game Corner was removed from all new Pokémon games several years back, so that the series could remain at a PEGI 7 (I think that was the rating they were aiming for). PEGI also has a shorter and less nuanced list of content warnings than the ESRB system--9 to the ESRB's 30. This gives parents less detailed information about content and puts publishers at higher risk for getting a higher rating than intended because of how broad the PEGI content categories are.

The ESRB has the ratings E (all ages), E10+ (players 10 and up), T (players 13 and up), M (17 and up), and Ao (18 and up). The ESRB isn't as hard on gambling as PEGI is, and it has a longer and more nuanced list of specific content warnings to go along with its ratings system. So, while both systems have five general ratings, because the ESRB employs more detailed content descriptors, it gives parents more information about the product to make a more informed decision with and it gives publishers more wiggle room with their content to be able to stay within a desired rating without having to tone things down too heavily. When game companies release their games worldwide, these differences in how content ratings are handled can cause serious trouble, because the company may be trying to sell their game in all regions to players in roughly the same age range, but because the standards and rating systems are different all over the place, a game might end up either having to have multiple different international edits or just be toned down in general to try and stick roughly similar ratings in all regions. The latter sometimes works out alright, and sometimes ends up as a disaster as a company struggles to hold on to the rating they think the game should have in one region, while taking away features and content much beloved by players in other regions. Until the international community gets together and creates a single, standard game rating system, we'll keep having issues like this long into the future as companies place just as much importance on international markets as their own domestic markets.

I’m not even reading all that. Read the first line on each and it doesn’t sound have anything to do with what I said? I wasn’t talking about age ratings I’m talking about people’s stupid requests.

Well, if you had read the entire thing, you would know that it actually has quite a lot to do with your post. After all, you did bring up the game's rating in your region as a reason why you don't think those slightly more mature elements should make a return. So, just for you, the TL;DR version:

1. Ratings systems are just a guideline, the actual maturity of the kid is what really matters in whether or not they can or should play a game.

2. Because different regions have different ratings systems with different standards, chasing a "consistent" rating in all regions is a fool's errand which often leads to features that are enjoyed by players in one region (like the cake dancers, exotic dancers, and darkly humorous moments that appeared in previous Sims games, or the Game Corner in the Pokémon games) being removed across the board to adhere to tighter ratings standards in another region.

The "stupid requests" that you are talking about are just calls to restore features which were stripped from the games to appease more prudish ratings boards in other regions and get uptight church ladies to quit clutching their pearls. People want that stuff back because it was fun.

Definitely some things are aimed more towards children and teens but increasingly over the past 12 years i've seen things being more and more tailored towards the younger generations now it's tailored A LOT like that and acquiring all the little extras despite how watered down the game really is now THAT'S for kids... the way they've done it is something kids would want not the Adult players. But they've still given us some room to do quite a bit in the Base Game even using Generic Lots to build a Vacation Home (that a lot of people don't understand we can do lol), plus you can pretend to go camping by building Log Cabins at the edge of town near the trees THAT would be lovely, i'd love to make a Community Lot for Cabins but i don't think the NPCs are programmed to sleep on them even if the ones we're playing CAN they'd just go home it's not THAT much better programming than The Sims 2.

As for Storylines TS2 never had any you just created your own and pretended, Why do people suddenly have a problem with that? i don't get it... it was super fun in TS2 you say that was the best game but then when TS4 sims are like TS2 sims you now hate it? How can you forget so easily? TS4 sims aren't TS3 sims right now if they plan to make them like that cool... but if not then just pretend, even in TS3 there was still a great deal of pretending you had to do and that's fine to do, this game is all about Creativity and Imagination it's not about everything having to have as much realism as possible and i don't want to have to keep chasing my sims everywhere lets just play the game and have some fun.

EA Made it More Childish Because Its for Teen Rating or Making more Kids-Friendly.

"SimAlexandria;c-17481274" wrote:

"PmlTry;c-17481257" wrote:
Yes. It is too childish. It went from being an interesting, creative game to a sort of online Barbie dollhouse.

A question to all you folks who piped up to say you like the childishness, the oh so pitty-pitty Sims, etc...

Would it really spoil things for you if those of us interested in more sophisticated storytelling had it as an option? Does the story really HAVE to be lobotomized for everyone in order for it to be fun for you?

I like it how it is, but I don't "like the childishness" so not sure if I'm who you mean. I just don't think it's childish.

But it would spoil things very much for me if they made the sims the way they are in, say, Sims 2. I have that game too and I can't play it without getting bored very quickly. I just can't be creative enough with it. The sims fight against me left, right, and centre to do their own thing when I want them to do something else. They have their own personality which makes it so that I can't be creative with them and tell stories in my game play the way I like to, which is really frustrating. If I wanted them to do their own thing I may as well watch a movie because my game play style is to create a story, not to watch them make the story.

I find it quite the opposite, TS4 is - to me - very boring very quickly, while TS2 is lively, entertaining, and certainly not a bore. The very depth of sims you deplore is what for me sparks the creative juices, opens up new avenues of thought and plot development, and makes for a richer gaming and story writing experience. It's like guiding real little people, not shoving around carboard cut-outs & stage props. RL is full of the unexpected, something that TS2 coneys very well, bringing with it the challenge of weaving that into the story. Being a published author I know a bit about story telling; and as a long time simmer, I know that every player has their own style of play that is good for them - there is no right or wrong way to do sims. One of the points I see in this thread is that earlier versions provided for various play styles, while this version does not -that it has taken a blander approach. Something like oatmeal rather than a steak.

"AlexSimmerman;d-974277" wrote:
Controversial but with Sims, adult players need to be prioritised with regards to marketing - not kids. We’re the ones with disposable income to actually invest in the franchise. Don’t make it overly childish, we can handle some drama, tragedy etc

For a Teen rated game, Sims 4 seems solely targeted towards children? The players who’ve grown up with the franchise & continue to play seem to have been forgotten about. We want messy storylines, drama, personality, DEPTH. Everything’s just too pretty, happy and dull

They haven’t even bothered to put an affair storyline in, or a secret child or even a death. How fragile do they think we are? We can handle a bit of emotion and scandal

This won’t happen but I’d love The Sims franchise to start being marketed as a 15+ game with teen/adult concepts like violence, crime, scandals etc. Kids will always convince their parents to buy the game no matter the rating anyway. Make it less childish?

I would also really like more adult rated game play. Maybe there could be an option to check in the options or installation process to choose child or adult version. Though I imagine that would probably take a lot of extra work. If nothing else Id like an open world would be nice.

This iteration is far more sandbox-y, more kid-friendly, and with far less obstacles or roadblocks than any previous one. If you like it that way, there’s no reason to get sensitive about it. For some people, it just tends to feel more like a diorama than a game—it feels like there is demonstrably less gameplay and far more moving around of the dolls. Which some people find relaxing, some find it unchallenging.

Some people like it that way, some don’t. Don’t know why people are taking others’ opinions to heart so hard?

"popstarissa;c-17531951" wrote:
This iteration is far more sandbox-y, more kid-friendly, and with far less obstacles or roadblocks than any previous one. If you like it that way, there’s no reason to get sensitive about it. For some people, it just tends to feel more like a diorama than a game—it feels like there is demonstrably less gameplay and far more moving around of the dolls. Which some people find relaxing, some find it unchallenging.

Some people like it that way, some don’t. Don’t know why people are taking others’ opinions to heart so hard?

It's definitely back to it's Sandbox roots, people are still very confused why the Packs don't seem to "Add" to the game but they aren't supposed to it's just extras like Sandbox Games always were, it's cos in TS2 it seemed like it did but honestly i only bought 5 Expansions for TS2 plus Happy Holiday but after getting all of them for free it didn't really "Add" much more to the game just more items and a few more activities like Vacations and Neighbourhoods but that's it... so even in TS2 they weren't supposed to "Add" to a game exactly... i just think it's the way you started off with hardly anything in the TS2 Base Game that made it seem that way to get you to buy the Packs but now in TS4 we don't have to it's like "Huh?" LOL. People say its like a Doll House but if you read the Wiki about Maxis it says that's what The Sims is based on is a Doll House so i guess that clears that up.