"Writin_Reg;c-16424182" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16424044" wrote:
@Stormsview You just forget that the developers aren’t the managers in EA who decide how EA’s money should be used. Also there are two other things that simmers usually forget:
1. The developers aren’t very often simmers themselves. When they list their own favorite games they usually list very different games instead. This shouldn’t be surprising at all because their education is about making games in general and for all platforms. Also the developers in Salt Lake City had mainly just made a lot of Tiger Woods golf games before EA suddenly chose them to make Sims games and also to release 4 EPs for TS3 in only 2 years (2012 and 2013). So of course a lot of those developers likely preferred sports games over Sims games.
2. EA’s top managers are mainly interested in sports games and action games too and they don’t really understand why people are playing Sims games. They negotiated of course with Rachel Franklin about this. But on https://simsvip.com/2015/09/14/rachel-franklin-on-the-future-of-the-sims-4/ she says:
”(Q) So you’re satisfied that not having toddlers was the right choice?
Rachel Franklin: That’s the decision that we made based on all of the information that we had at the time. So absolutely, I feel like it’s the best decision for the game to date. I’m not talking about future stuff. But I do think it’s important to know, that players play in very different ways. We see all kinds of different play styles and family players are very passionate, so are players that play other ways.
And I want to make sure that all of those voices are considered when people are thinking about whether or not we’ve included the right things. Because we do, we take it very seriously about whether or not we’re approaching all of those different play styles. We take it just as seriously as the players do that are asking for the things that they want.”
So again: EA knows that simmers play in different ways and that a lot of young simmers seem to be more interested in romance, flirting and partying than in raising kids. Therefore EA chose to use less money on babies, toddlers, children and teens than in the previous games and the plan can’t IMO have been to change that later.
Nope - some of the devs in Salt Lake City were devs that worked on Sims 2 (some were new) - I know because I tested Showtime for them and knew these devs from Sims 2. That PCA Golf was made by EA devs - they and one of EAs mobile divisions had studios in the Salt Lake City Studios well before Sims 3 Store was started there. The only crossover with EA Golf was for the Tiger Woods Golf game during Sims 2's development Sam Player who headed a lot on Tiger Woods Golf games -not in Salt Lake City but at the Redwood City Campus - did work on and head a couple of Sims 2 games made at Redwood City campus - Bon Voyage was one of the games he headed and Free Time for Sims 2 as well. But he never worked on Sims 3 - at all.
EA Salt Lake was Headgate Studios from their beginning in 1992 until December 2006 where they were bought by EA and renamed to EA Salt Lake. They began to publish games through EA already in 2000 though. But until 2007 they mainly only made golf games and among those golf games were every Windows version of EA Sports Tiger Woods Golf from 2001-2007.
Before the 4 Sims 3 EPs released in 2012 and 2013 Headgate/EA Salt Lake had only released two Sims games:
1. The Sims 2 Pets on Wii (2007)
2. The Sims 3 Pets on 3DS (2011)
But even as an EA studio they also made sports games:
1. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 on PlayStation 2, Wii and Windows (2007)
2. Madden NFL 08 on Windows (2007)
Beside that they made three Littlest Pet Shop games for Wii and Nintendo DS in 2008-2010.
I don’t know if any of the Sims developers moved the 11 hours away (by car) to Salt Lake from Redwood just to help EA’s new studio to get started with Sims games instead of their usual sports games. But if so it likely only were one or two developers because it isn’t easy to move that far away if you have your own house and family where your spouse also has a job.
