Yikes .... The Game Pack Trailer has more dislikes than likes

"alanmichael1;c-17636258" wrote:
@LiELF Your analysis is very good, but I still think that EA is making a mistake.

The Sims is one of very few mega-successful decades-long entertainment franchises for all age groups, comparable to Harry Potter, Dr. Who in the UK or the detective series The Three Investigators (Die drei ???) in Germany. The success recipe of these franchises is that they never, never abandon their big aging fanbases. Instead the products become more mature with the audience. Acquiring young new fans is done via spin-offs for kids (the German series is a masterpiece in this respect, and also The Sims does this with the mobile phone games).

If TS4 becomes a trendy game for teenagers only, they will loose their fans every 5 years and can start at zero. Sadly I think this is what happens.

@alanmichael1 No, I hear you. I'm still a huge lover of Sims 2 and every single time I play Sims 4 I miss the depth of interaction and behaviors from that game. The early Sims games were very special and unique and had an extraordinary formula that worked perfectly. It's heartbreaking to see that formula washed down the drain of capitalism.

I think that if they had not named TS4 as a sequel in the franchise, but rather as a stand alone, the reception may have been very different and the expectations wouldn't have been as high. Had they developed an additional game that was truer to its predecessors and released it a few years after TS4 and named it the fourth in the series, people might have supported both games and appreciated TS4 for what it is. But, alas, that didn't happen.

Sims 4 was originally going to be an online game and its engine was built for it. Multiplayer online games usually have robust engines when performing for what they were intended. I have to wonder if this new story driven direction is a way to cater to the game's original purpose. Why fight the engine to make it something it really isn't when they could embrace it and go larger with what it's meant to do? Perhaps that's one of the reasons why they've switched direction. It doesn't mean players will like it, but it would make a little more sense as to why we're getting a pack like Star Wars.