Quarterly Teasers: Statement from SimGuruKate

"luthienrising;c-16944839" wrote:

"keekee53;c-16944835" wrote:

"invisiblgirl;c-16944781" wrote:

"LiELF;c-16944257" wrote:

"Zeldaboy180;c-16943324" wrote:

"LiELF;c-16942897" wrote:

"TheGreatGorlon;c-16942744" wrote:
I think EA and Maxis greatly discredit the power of "hype" and how teasers and "this is what we're working on" videos can really build up a burning desire in players for that content. I've played many different online games, and they periodically release teasers and even really early versions of bits from upcoming content, and even something as mediocre as a plant that might be found in the world can spark people to get excited wondering what kind of world might spawn such a plant, and so forth. Even Pokémon has taken this approach after the last like 8 years of having the entire Pokedex datamined when early copies/demos got out - with Sun/Moon they started slowly releasing new Pokémon over the course of like 3 months as the global release date approached, and this was an amazing way to get people excited for the new games. EA and Maxis should really take this approach when it comes to Sims content. It doesn't even have to be something big - like I mentioned above, even something mediocre like a counter or a chair could spark imaginations and give us something to theorize and get excited about.

Their inability to do this, which is fairly simple in my eyes, tells me that there's probably a lot of inconsistent upheaval in their production queues, or that EA doesn't have faith in the product to the point where they think building hype will result in a let down.

According to statements from the devs, there are actually legal obligations to adhere to that restrict their ability to talk about future content. It goes beyond company policy. I believe Grant said it was tied into Federal restrictions. I'm not sure exactly what those laws and restrictions say, but that's what was explained.

I remember that, and that's what they say, yet other companies have no issues. World.of warcraft can talk about free patch content half a year before its release, as can most mmo's that use live service formula. So if sims 4 is a live service, what's the reasoning here?

I don't claim to know the answer to that because I'm not a game developer. But it could have to do with one of many reasons. It could be because EA seems to function and plan their years and content within the quarters of each fiscal year, so their financial reports are probably also quarterly (I think I saw something about this from a dev once, but I only vaguely remember the details) and this might put restrictions on them that another company who does reports yearly or bi-annually or whatever, doesn't have. A huge company like EA has a lot of financial idiosyncrasies to juggle and if they stand to risk losing multi-millions of dollars from publicly releasing information that they then don't deliver, or that even gets altered and can be claimed it wasn't "as promised", you can best believe that they are going to clamp down and make certain that this kind of error doesn't happen.

I can assure you that businesses have a lot of taxation and income rules and laws to deal with. I ran a small business for several years and the accounting was way more complicated than I wanted to deal with, lol. And that was just a simple business with no employees or anything, and it gets a lot more complicated as a business grows and expands. When it comes to corporate and big money companies, the complications are going to multiply, and then you have certain types of businesses that have their own special sets of laws to consider.

So, again, I don't know the exact reasons for this, but I don't really find it hard to believe, either. And I have a feeling that even if we got the long answer to this question, many of us probably still wouldn't understand it, lol.

I think you're on to something with the quarterly reports. Both of these companies are publicly-traded, and you do have to be very careful about making promises that don't deliver - if the SEC doesn't come down on you, you could face a stockholder suit. Also, there is a bit of a difference between talking about a patch expected in a year and a half, and stating that paid content is coming next quarter. If you can't deliver in time for the quarter's end, you've got a problem, and software development doesn't always conform to marketing timetables. (Bugs happen.)

I totally get the whole quarter thing. Maybe they should call it a teaser instead of a quarterly teaser. This way they are not put on any kind of time frame. The reason she gave of about possibly not fulfilling the quarter promise is easily resolved by a name change. Gaming companies do this all the time. CD Project Red showed their first trailer of Cyberpunk back in 2012 and the game still is not out seven years later...lol If we need an American\EA example, they released the first Anthem teaser trailer in like 2017 and it is coming out this month. How is it other games can do this but the SEC is going to coming down on the Sims for doing it? Something feels off about that unless expansions are considered DLC and there are different rules for that.

No, it's not resolvable by a name change. The SEC has legally-mandated regulations specific to publicly traded software companies about what can be promised in one quarter but not delivered in that quarter. (Back in '15, when this issue first blew up in Sims world, I had a link to the regulation details.) The quarter exists whether you use the word or not. And EA has clearly decided to play it safe on the SEC regulations.

Nah although that's probably true to a large extent, EA has also used those SEC regulations to avoid having to answer certain types of queries at the time, i.e. toddlers. I'm only mentioning this because some of the things they told us they couldn't do or talk about because of those regulations, they did actually end up doing or talking about at a later date, post toddlers. So yes, although I'm sure they've got a role to play in all this, seems the main reason QTs stopped is simply because the constant flow of content stopped too. And well, if there isn't anything to show ... :) Not saying that's worse, it's just something that irked me a little at the time :D