Kits and commodifying cultures

"RionAgrias;c-18064582" wrote:
Your culture, too, can be included, for a nickel and a dime.

I wouldn't want that to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised either. This is where mods/cc come in.

Also, I'd like to point out to some of you have responded that I know very well that this is still a product that still requires something to sell to us to maintain some form of profit. You all who are kind of talking down to me like I didn't know that was unnecessary.

Moving on from that, I would rather prefer that the Sims team veer more away from selling specific cultural attire to us and rather stick to more general themes not too tied into one's ethnicity or cultural traditions. Modern Menswear is a good example of that, even if yes, I have a hard time seeing any males who identify as males wearing any of these pieces (even tho they're supposed to be the 'future' of menswear and who knows what we'll be wearing in 10-20 years from now), but it wasn't really tied to anyone's specific ethnic/cultural background and it was more a collab with a fashion designer because they needed a reason to sell us more masculine attire to make profit. Yet, it didn't add enough to the CAS wardrobe at all and each new pack adds 10x more CAS pieces for fem and a bare minimum for masc sims, leaving us back to square one.

Also in response to some above posts, Sims team adding more ethnic/culturally related items in free patches still does count as having to pay for it yes, if you bought the basegame (that doesn't count those who got it for free) and sure, the Sims as a franchise itself is commodified because at its core it's a life simulator supporting the view of a Western/North American cultural lifestyle, with your occasional European stuff for good measure. At least they're making in-roads into giving some of it for free but there are still many packs that lock those items behind the paywall, and you don't have an option to not include them in your games if you buy them.

Honestly, sometimes I would prefer the Sims 3 Store over the Kits, because from what I've occasionally browsed through, many of the items available to buy are individual pieces rather than lumped together into packs including things you didn't want. That way you can pick and choose what works for you to purchase without having to purchase the whole thing including items you didn't want. I still wouldn't support the Store either, because at the end of the day they're microtransactions, which are the bane of the gaming industry.

I still think we could've avoided the Kits idea altogether (for at least another few years or so) had the circumstances of the world and the pandemic not gone the way it went. Regardless what has been given for free, the days of patching in content in batches to fill basically half a stuff pack are now gone, and whatever we do get for free in batches has only been a quarter of what could've been. They really just don't cost $5 a pop, I don't ever think they'll ever be on sale because of how low they're already priced at, and dare I say putting all the free content that went along with it also in the kit would've made it more akin to the price tag. I'm unsure of why they restrict the basis of each Kit to only Gameplay, CAS, or B/B only though, they could fill a bit more in if they weren't so constrained.

If you like how cultures are being sold back to you, you're more than welcome to believe that, but you should also respect those that don't want to be treated like they're an exotic commodity and their culture is worth nothing more than a few bucks to be spent to have some clothes and such in a game. If they tried to make it work better and integrate things more seamlessly with the game already, I would think it'd be totally fine, but as it stands the game as is needs a lot of work in integrating them respectfully, instead of plopping random clothes from different cultures onto townies and calling it 'cosmopolitan fashion'. EA/Maxis/Sims team needs to do better; they have tried, but they don't reach enough in many respects, or cater to specific occurrences where they would stand to make more profit, in the name of 'virtue-signaling' and 'wokeness'.