So we're all pretty sure TS4 decision makers have no teenaged children, teenaged neighbors, teenaged siblings.
I'm assuimg you're referencing what I said earlier? They probably do. But you'd be fooling yourself thinking that raising a teenage child is enough to stop enforcing certain stereotypes that are very harmful to them. This is the reason teenagers tend to get along with adults very poorly at some point. But well, this is not a parenting forum so let's end it here.
Stereotypes are hurting this game big time. That and the fact some people are out of touch with reality. I'm still waiting for this franchise to really return to its roots and offer options for everyone, teenage or middle aged or elder. This used to be the beauty of this game!
For now, I'm pretty happy to see that most people who post here are actually my age
I'm assuimg you're referencing what I said earlier? They probably do. But you'd be fooling yourself thinking that raising a teenage child is enough to stop enforcing certain stereotypes that are very harmful to them. This is the reason teenagers tend to get along with adults very poorly at some point. But well, this is not a parenting forum so let's end it here.
Stereotypes are hurting this game big time. That and the fact some people are out of touch with reality. I'm still waiting for this franchise to really return to its roots and offer options for everyone, teenage or middle aged or elder. This used to be the beauty of this game!
For now, I'm pretty happy to see that most people who post here are actually my age
Focus on stereotypes seems like an ill-fitting explanation to me.
In the gameplay itself, for example, one of the primary complaints about the teen+ life stages is the minimal differences between them. And people usually ask for stereotypes to distinguish them more.
As far as I can guess/glean, if there's any one oversimplified weakness in the game that explains what commonly goes south, it's that there isn't enough permanence of choice. Just about everything is resettable, rewritable, in one way or another. Which is probably great if your goal is to craft your own stories and does make sense as a sandbox game. And yet... not so great if you want the game to lay some more permanent sense of foundation. Perhaps the culling options that are supposedly coming with the next patch will somewhat address this problem.
It was a pretty disorienting feeling the first time (this was early in the game's history) I had a sim culled who my sim had a high relationship with. It felt like someone had gone in and deleted something I built. I think it prioritizes better than it used to, but it still feels weird not having that stability of the same sims. Perhaps with this upcoming setting, I will try to do a longer-term save and try to craft a more permanent world with unique characters. I've always been thrown off by that sense of culling being able to delete sims at random.
So we're all pretty sure TS4 decision makers have no teenaged children, teenaged neighbors, teenaged siblings.
Because having a teen gives you a full insight of what goes on in their minds and what they like? My kids have a life of their own that doesn’t involve me in any way. They’re masters in delimiting that. And good for them, they don’t need me for everything.
One of the problems EA’s approach has, it that things change so fast for teens. What’s cool today is old fashioned and silly tomorrow. So you introduce Twilight vampires to be cool with your game, next thing you know teens spit on Twilight. Katy Perry was a great example of missing the mark as well (for all age groups except toddlers I reckon).
We can only be sure of one thing: TS4 wasn’t targeted at the simmers who came from TS2 and/or TS3. It was targeted at new very young “teens” who didn’t come from the previous game. Otherwise EA would never have dared to simplify babies, omit toddlers and attempt to save money too by giving teens the same height as adults.
So instead of raising kids TS4 became mainly about introducing very young “teens” to partying and trying to impress them with much more autonomous behahior from their sims and to focus the game even more as a dress-up game which also had the advantage that SPs (which are very cheap to make) hopefully could sell even better than ever before such that development costs for EA could go down and hopefully without hurting the sales numbers significantly. (EA just had to revise that when all the talk about the missing toddlers seemed to hurt the sales numbers unacceptably much anyway.)
I don’t think that this has anything to do with EA’s decision makers having teens themselves or not because they are mainly businessmen who just want EA (and thus indirectly themselves) to earn as much money as possible. Some of the previous Sims games for other platforms didn’t even have children. But EA knows that a lot of very young “teens” use the Sims games as one of the ways to prepare themselves for their life when they become just a few years older. So EA thought that saving some money by simplifying babies, omitting toddlers and giving teens the same height as adults and instead focus the game on more autonomous behavior and partying maybe was a smart move and a good way to renew the game. They just had to revise that idea later when they saw all the reactions and likely also a more negative effect on the sales numbers than they had hoped for.
In this forum we are mostly adults and older teens. So it is easy for us to forget that a lot of preteens play this game too even though they rarely visit the forum. But still some of us also played Sims games for years before we started here in the forum. So it shouldn’t surprise us. We just don’t really want to remember it
We can only be sure of one thing: TS4 wasn’t targeted at the simmers who came from TS2 and/or TS3. It was targeted at new very young “teens” who didn’t come from the previous game. Otherwise EA would never have dared to simplify babies, omit toddlers and attempt to save money too by giving teens the same height as adults.
So instead of raising kids TS4 became mainly about introducing very young “teens” to partying and trying to impress them with much more autonomous behahior from their sims and to focus the game even more as a dress-up game which also had the advantage that SPs (which are very cheap to make) hopefully could sell even better than ever before such that development costs for EA could go down and hopefully without hurting the sales numbers significantly. (EA just had to revise that when all the talk about the missing toddlers seemed to hurt the sales numbers unacceptably much anyway.)
I don’t think that this has anything to do with EA’s decision makers having teens themselves or not because they are mainly businessmen who just want EA (and thus indirectly themselves) to earn as much money as possible. Some of the previous Sims games for other platforms didn’t even have children. But EA knows that a lot of very young “teens” use the Sims games as one of the ways to prepare themselves for their life when they become just a few years older. So EA thought that saving some money by simplifying babies, omitting toddlers and giving teens the same height as adults and instead focus the game on more autonomous behavior and partying maybe was a smart move and a good way to renew the game. They just had to revise that idea later when they saw all the reactions and likely also a more negative effect on the sales numbers than they had hoped for.
In this forum we are mostly adults and older teens. So it is easy for us to forget that a lot of preteens play this game too even though they rarely visit the forum. But still me of us also played Sims games for years before we started here in the forum. So it shouldn’t surprise us. We just don’t really want to remember it
I agree with much of what you have said. What it looks like is that EA wanted to add more players from a younger generation as compared to the previous versions, and some of their decisions did not produce the results that they expected. So, they have had to make some changes in some of their expectations, and remove and replace some people in management in doing so. Though we have seen some progress (very little, but progress nonetheless) towards appeasing the complaints of former Simmers, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
"If you build it, they will come." - Movie: Field of Dreams
So we're all pretty sure TS4 decision makers have no teenaged children, teenaged neighbors, teenaged siblings.
We are? I was under the impression a handful of them did.
And you are right actually -some do have teens including one who had 2 teen daughters when Sims 4 started. There are a few others, but for the most part the ones that do have kids have mostly young kids. One just had a new baby - the one who planned for the Cats in fact. There are also devs with no kids yet.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Wow, on this forum there were more people who are over thirty + (who took the poll) than there are the teen category or the 20+ category. Glad to see that, I'm not alone with my old age here, lol. When it's all added up there are more here who are adults than YA and teen...get clue Maxis.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
I'll be 43 in 2 weeks. Bought myself Cats & Dogs as an early birthday present! I've been simming since TS1 but did take a break during the TS2 era. I have it now, as well as 3 and 4.
Wow, on this forum there were more people who are over thirty + (who took the poll) than there are the teen category or the 20+ category. Glad to see that, I'm not alone with my old age here, lol. When it's all added up there are more here who are adults than YA and teen...get clue Maxis.
Alas I don’t think that we have any change to fool EA because I am quite sure that EA has made its own market investigations and from them just know that a huge majority of the Sims games are bought for or by young teens and preteens - and Maxis of course just has to obey EA. So even though the majority are adults here in the forum this is probably also the reason why Maxis just more and more has ignored almost all the wishes from the forum during the years
Wow, on this forum there were more people who are over thirty + (who took the poll) than there are the teen category or the 20+ category. Glad to see that, I'm not alone with my old age here, lol. When it's all added up there are more here who are adults than YA and teen...get clue Maxis.
Currently there are 137 people under 30 and 115 people over 30, the largest group by far being the 20's. Besides this is only showing who uses this forum, not who plays the game, EA already knows the ages of the people actually playing.
Currently there are 137 people under 30 and 115 people over 30, the largest group by far being the 20's. Besides this is only showing who uses this forum, not who plays the game, EA already knows the ages of the people actually playing.
FWIW- Looking at the analytics from the link to the poll that I posted on my Twitter, at least 50 of those votes came from outside of the forum.
Wow. I admit I am surprised to see how old we all are, lol. No, I mean I expected to be one of a few of the older people playing, instead it looks almost like we're the majority :P :D
Wow. I admit I am surprised to see how old we all are, lol. No, I mean I expected to be one of a few of the older people playing, instead it looks almost like we're the majority :P
I was pretty sure that most of the Simmers on the forums were in our age group, and most of the younger Simmers were using other social platforms. But this is an ambiguous survey and can be interpreted in many ways.
"If you build it, they will come." - Movie: Field of Dreams
Wow. I admit I am surprised to see how old we all are, lol. No, I mean I expected to be one of a few of the older people playing, instead it looks almost like we're the majority :P
I was pretty sure that most of the Simmers on the forums were in our age group, and most of the younger Simmers were using other social platforms. But this is an ambiguous survey and can be interpreted in many ways.
I agree. The only exception is likely the offtopic forum which I still think is dominated by teens who to my experience usually like forum games and similar things much more than adults do. I also know that the old oftopic area in EA’s Danish TS2 forum was completely dominated by 10 to 14 yrs olds because they were allowed to tell their exact ages in this forum and therefore always did it. The Danish offtopic forum for those reasons was bigger than all the other Sims 2 forum areas put together (except for a week or two after each new release of an EP) exactly because those very young simmers just loved to play forum games and talk about their real lives all the time. For them it wasn’t at all enough to just play the newest Sims game and discuss it all the time as adults usually have done. They needed much more variation.
Happy to report that I'll turn 60 in December. Well, ok, maybe not " happy" about it...but you know, it is what it is.
Have been Simming since the final year of TS1.
I didn't begin to visit forums, or even register my game until about a year into TS3.
I find it a little baffling that people suggested that The Sims should be rated M. Whenever I read someone suggesting this, their reasons tend to fall pretty short and are usually ignorant of where the line is between the T and M ratings. Whenever some people criticise TS4 for being childish and suggest to make it more mature to push it to the M rating, it’s like they forgot that The Sims 1, 2 or 3 even existed.
You do realise you can make a great game without it being rated M, right?
So nobody’s going to say anything about the 1-9 year-old vote?
LOL! I got a good laugh out of that one! Actually, I did Google what age group was considered appropriate for TS4 and I came across a few people stating that they allow their 4 and 5 year olds to play and thought it was completely appropriate for them! Go figure...
The german USK rating for TS4 is still 6+ which means that they see the game as suitable for 6 yrs old children. The site https://www.spieleratgeber-nrw.de/Die-Sims-4.4657.de.1.html which gives advice also about the pedagogical rating recommends the game for children who are at least 10 yrs old though. I have also seen older teens write that they began to play the previous Sims games already when they were 6-8 years old.
So while I agree with you that it probably was a joke when somebody here wrote that he/she belonged to the 1-9 yrs age group it isn’t because I don’t think that children in that age group sometimes play the game. It is just because I don’t think that those very young simmers are in this forum anyway
That's hilarious, it's rated M in Australia.
Most people would let a 5 year old play, but I don't think anyone would buy it for a five year old.
If you put it into perspective, the M rating in Australia is comparable to the T rating in America, as they are advisory ratings, whilst the MA15+ is equal to the M rating, as they are restricted ratings.
So nobody’s going to say anything about the 1-9 year-old vote?
LOL! I got a good laugh out of that one! Actually, I did Google what age group was considered appropriate for TS4 and I came across a few people stating that they allow their 4 and 5 year olds to play and thought it was completely appropriate for them! Go figure...
The german USK rating for TS4 is still 6+ which means that they see the game as suitable for 6 yrs old children. The site https://www.spieleratgeber-nrw.de/Die-Sims-4.4657.de.1.html which gives advice also about the pedagogical rating recommends the game for children who are at least 10 yrs old though. I have also seen older teens write that they began to play the previous Sims games already when they were 6-8 years old.
So while I agree with you that it probably was a joke when somebody here wrote that he/she belonged to the 1-9 yrs age group it isn’t because I don’t think that children in that age group sometimes play the game. It is just because I don’t think that those very young simmers are in this forum anyway
That's hilarious, it's rated M in Australia.
Most people would let a 5 year old play, but I don't think anyone would buy it for a five year old.
If you put it into perspective, the M rating in Australia is comparable to the T rating in America, as they are advisory ratings, whilst the MA15+ is equal to the M rating, as they are restricted ratings.
Not really because the Australian G rating is compatible with the ESRB’s E rating while the Australian PG rating come close to the ESRB’s T rating.
PG means that the game can have classified items which isn’t recommended for children unless they play under guidance from their parents. This is just another way to see things instead of just giving such games a T rating.
M in Australia means that the game contains violence or nudity which the Australians don’t see as suitable for children and teens until they are at least 15 yrs old. So it is something in the middle between the ESRB’s T rating and M rating.
For a European like me it is very hard to understand why both the ESRB and the Australian Rating Board thinks that seeing a nude Barbie doll without any genitals is so extremely harmful for children because in my country many adult women actually played with dolls they could undress and those dolls often had real genitals when the now adult women were kids. I am sure that those adult women wouldn’t mind their own kids play with similar dolls today. But apparently such dolls aren’t nearly as popular anymore as they were a few decades ago.
The European rating board PEGI (which almost all European countries use) originally rated all Sims games as 7+ because they couldn’t see any harm in kids playing with naked Barbie dolls either and Germany still rates the Sims games as 6+ because Germany has their own rating board (USK). PEGI just changed the rating to 12+ when the UK joined PEGI and demanded it. But I don’t think that any of the other European countries really agree with the UK or even understand why the UK is so scared about letting kids see naked Barbie dolls without genitals. They have just accepted that this fear apparently dominate the attitude in the UK and don’t think that too much harm is done when it mainly just is the rating of the Sims games that they disagree with the UK about - and they think that it is more important to have the UK in PEGI too than to change the rating back to 7+ just for the Sims games when they usually agree with the UK about the ratings of all other games.
Ratings are not just about nudity. There is far more to ratings than the human body - but also about comprehension, and the way things work or need to work - even ordinary things like laws, government, mathematics, cultures, history, Geography, regions, working, education - ORDER. So you cannot defy ratings in one neat nudity package - now can you?
Young children are like a blackboard fresh out of the package with no concept of life and death, how the world around them works, the differences in cultures and history - never mind the evils of this earth - or life since life began. Shoot most adults cannot even fathom everything about the world around them - but we all at least have laws and try very hard to follow them while maintaining a life.
What is any of the things young children know and understand - going to even make the Sims game make any sense to them at all? Most children as I said are little clean, slate black board ready to learn - and the materials people give them to learn on needs to be age appropriate to their capability of understanding . The very fact all countries of this world differ in what they believe their own people should or should not learn at the learning stages of modern human evolution - differs - means no one - no country has a magical number as to the correct number to rate things for their own people - so how can any of us trust our own countries ratings anyway as scientifically the correct age to rate things period? How can any of us - dare to question any countries decision on the ratings just because some of us differs to what that number should be? We don't have that right? We, as adults simply must comply to what the laws are within our own countries until the world as one unity decides a single number for everyone and every stage. Ratings in our hands only matter when our countries are addressing our imput and we vote to change them - in the meantime regardless of what you or I think - the ratings as they are has to be adhered to and respected. Like it or not.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Wow, on this forum there were more people who are over thirty + (who took the poll) than there are the teen category or the 20+ category. Glad to see that, I'm not alone with my old age here, lol. When it's all added up there are more here who are adults than YA and teen...get clue Maxis.
Currently there are 137 people under 30 and 115 people over 30, the largest group by far being the 20's. Besides this is only showing who uses this forum, not who plays the game, EA already knows the ages of the people actually playing.
You missed my point. I said there are more people who (at the time) had taken this poll who were above 30+ than there were for those teen and below. At current count (Of this poll) there are 253 people who are over 20+(you have to combine all older ages) compared to the 48 people who are below the age of 20 (their targeted audience/teens and younger).
And to the one person who implied I want a M rated Sims, not, I simply made the comment for Maxis to get clue that more adults (20+ and older all the way to 70) are on this forum playing this game if they take the poll. Polls are representation of a % of how many of those older ages (above teen years) are playing. So if you know how many the poll sample represents then you can come up with the conclusion those on the forum are mainly adults %.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
So nobody’s going to say anything about the 1-9 year-old vote?
LOL! I got a good laugh out of that one! Actually, I did Google what age group was considered appropriate for TS4 and I came across a few people stating that they allow their 4 and 5 year olds to play and thought it was completely appropriate for them! Go figure...
The german USK rating for TS4 is still 6+ which means that they see the game as suitable for 6 yrs old children. The site https://www.spieleratgeber-nrw.de/Die-Sims-4.4657.de.1.html which gives advice also about the pedagogical rating recommends the game for children who are at least 10 yrs old though. I have also seen older teens write that they began to play the previous Sims games already when they were 6-8 years old.
So while I agree with you that it probably was a joke when somebody here wrote that he/she belonged to the 1-9 yrs age group it isn’t because I don’t think that children in that age group sometimes play the game. It is just because I don’t think that those very young simmers are in this forum anyway
That's hilarious, it's rated M in Australia.
Most people would let a 5 year old play, but I don't think anyone would buy it for a five year old.
If you put it into perspective, the M rating in Australia is comparable to the T rating in America, as they are advisory ratings, whilst the MA15+ is equal to the M rating, as they are restricted ratings.
Not really because the Australian G rating is compatible with the ESRB’s E rating while the Australian PG rating come close to the ESRB’s T rating.
PG means that the game can have classified items which isn’t recommended for children unless they play under guidance from their parents. This is just another way to see things instead of just giving such games a T rating.
M in Australia means that the game contains violence or nudity which the Australians don’t see as suitable for children and teens until they are at least 15 yrs old. So it is something in the middle between the ESRB’s T rating and M rating.
For a European like me it is very hard to understand why both the ESRB and the Australian Rating Board thinks that seeing a nude Barbie doll without any genitals is so extremely harmful for children because in my country many adult women actually played with dolls they could undress and those dolls often had real genitals when the now adult women were kids. I am sure that those adult women wouldn’t mind their own kids play with similar dolls today. But apparently such dolls aren’t nearly as popular anymore as they were a few decades ago.
The European rating board PEGI (which almost all European countries use) originally rated all Sims games as 7+ because they couldn’t see any harm in kids playing with naked Barbie dolls either and Germany still rates the Sims games as 6+ because Germany has their own rating board (USK). PEGI just changed the rating to 12+ when the UK joined PEGI and demanded it. But I don’t think that any of the other European countries really agree with the UK or even understand why the UK is so scared about letting kids see naked Barbie dolls without genitals. They have just accepted that this fear apparently dominate the attitude in the UK and don’t think that too much harm is done when it mainly just is the rating of the Sims games that they disagree with the UK about - and they think that it is more important to have the UK in PEGI too than to change the rating back to 7+ just for the Sims games when they usually agree with the UK about the ratings of all other games.
Australia’s M rating is indeed comparable to the T rating. For example, if a film gets rated M in Australia, that means underage viewers may attend, but be warned that the content is unsuitable for those under 15. If a film is rated MA15+, that means the film is restricted to those 15 years and over unless accompanied by an adult. The ESRB’s T and M ratings are the same bells and whistles, but the age brackets are 13 and 17 instead of 15 and 15.
It’s entirely possible that the early Sims games were passed 7+ by PEGI due to the oversight of the sexual content, but realised their mistake in future re-releases of The Sims 1 and the release of The Sims 2: University.
Remember, countries tend to have different standards of what’s okay and what’s taboo. Why do you think it’s so common for France to rate R-rated films as a “12” or “Tous Publics?”
Comments
We are? I was under the impression a handful of them did.
I'm assuimg you're referencing what I said earlier? They probably do. But you'd be fooling yourself thinking that raising a teenage child is enough to stop enforcing certain stereotypes that are very harmful to them. This is the reason teenagers tend to get along with adults very poorly at some point. But well, this is not a parenting forum so let's end it here.
Stereotypes are hurting this game big time. That and the fact some people are out of touch with reality. I'm still waiting for this franchise to really return to its roots and offer options for everyone, teenage or middle aged or elder. This used to be the beauty of this game!
For now, I'm pretty happy to see that most people who post here are actually my age
In the gameplay itself, for example, one of the primary complaints about the teen+ life stages is the minimal differences between them. And people usually ask for stereotypes to distinguish them more.
As far as I can guess/glean, if there's any one oversimplified weakness in the game that explains what commonly goes south, it's that there isn't enough permanence of choice. Just about everything is resettable, rewritable, in one way or another. Which is probably great if your goal is to craft your own stories and does make sense as a sandbox game. And yet... not so great if you want the game to lay some more permanent sense of foundation. Perhaps the culling options that are supposedly coming with the next patch will somewhat address this problem.
It was a pretty disorienting feeling the first time (this was early in the game's history) I had a sim culled who my sim had a high relationship with. It felt like someone had gone in and deleted something I built. I think it prioritizes better than it used to, but it still feels weird not having that stability of the same sims. Perhaps with this upcoming setting, I will try to do a longer-term save and try to craft a more permanent world with unique characters. I've always been thrown off by that sense of culling being able to delete sims at random.
One of the problems EA’s approach has, it that things change so fast for teens. What’s cool today is old fashioned and silly tomorrow. So you introduce Twilight vampires to be cool with your game, next thing you know teens spit on Twilight. Katy Perry was a great example of missing the mark as well (for all age groups except toddlers I reckon).
So instead of raising kids TS4 became mainly about introducing very young “teens” to partying and trying to impress them with much more autonomous behahior from their sims and to focus the game even more as a dress-up game which also had the advantage that SPs (which are very cheap to make) hopefully could sell even better than ever before such that development costs for EA could go down and hopefully without hurting the sales numbers significantly. (EA just had to revise that when all the talk about the missing toddlers seemed to hurt the sales numbers unacceptably much anyway.)
I don’t think that this has anything to do with EA’s decision makers having teens themselves or not because they are mainly businessmen who just want EA (and thus indirectly themselves) to earn as much money as possible. Some of the previous Sims games for other platforms didn’t even have children. But EA knows that a lot of very young “teens” use the Sims games as one of the ways to prepare themselves for their life when they become just a few years older. So EA thought that saving some money by simplifying babies, omitting toddlers and giving teens the same height as adults and instead focus the game on more autonomous behavior and partying maybe was a smart move and a good way to renew the game. They just had to revise that idea later when they saw all the reactions and likely also a more negative effect on the sales numbers than they had hoped for.
In this forum we are mostly adults and older teens. So it is easy for us to forget that a lot of preteens play this game too even though they rarely visit the forum. But still some of us also played Sims games for years before we started here in the forum. So it shouldn’t surprise us. We just don’t really want to remember it
I agree with much of what you have said. What it looks like is that EA wanted to add more players from a younger generation as compared to the previous versions, and some of their decisions did not produce the results that they expected. So, they have had to make some changes in some of their expectations, and remove and replace some people in management in doing so. Though we have seen some progress (very little, but progress nonetheless) towards appeasing the complaints of former Simmers, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
"If you build it, they will come." - Movie: Field of Dreams
And you are right actually -some do have teens including one who had 2 teen daughters when Sims 4 started. There are a few others, but for the most part the ones that do have kids have mostly young kids. One just had a new baby - the one who planned for the Cats in fact. There are also devs with no kids yet.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
If it makes you feel any better (or worse), you were in your 40th year of life all year already. Becoming 40 just means you've finished that 40th year
Currently there are 137 people under 30 and 115 people over 30, the largest group by far being the 20's. Besides this is only showing who uses this forum, not who plays the game, EA already knows the ages of the people actually playing.
FWIW- Looking at the analytics from the link to the poll that I posted on my Twitter, at least 50 of those votes came from outside of the forum.
I was pretty sure that most of the Simmers on the forums were in our age group, and most of the younger Simmers were using other social platforms. But this is an ambiguous survey and can be interpreted in many ways.
"If you build it, they will come." - Movie: Field of Dreams
Have been Simming since the final year of TS1.
I didn't begin to visit forums, or even register my game until about a year into TS3.
You do realise you can make a great game without it being rated M, right?
PG means that the game can have classified items which isn’t recommended for children unless they play under guidance from their parents. This is just another way to see things instead of just giving such games a T rating.
M in Australia means that the game contains violence or nudity which the Australians don’t see as suitable for children and teens until they are at least 15 yrs old. So it is something in the middle between the ESRB’s T rating and M rating.
For a European like me it is very hard to understand why both the ESRB and the Australian Rating Board thinks that seeing a nude Barbie doll without any genitals is so extremely harmful for children because in my country many adult women actually played with dolls they could undress and those dolls often had real genitals when the now adult women were kids. I am sure that those adult women wouldn’t mind their own kids play with similar dolls today. But apparently such dolls aren’t nearly as popular anymore as they were a few decades ago.
The European rating board PEGI (which almost all European countries use) originally rated all Sims games as 7+ because they couldn’t see any harm in kids playing with naked Barbie dolls either and Germany still rates the Sims games as 6+ because Germany has their own rating board (USK). PEGI just changed the rating to 12+ when the UK joined PEGI and demanded it. But I don’t think that any of the other European countries really agree with the UK or even understand why the UK is so scared about letting kids see naked Barbie dolls without genitals. They have just accepted that this fear apparently dominate the attitude in the UK and don’t think that too much harm is done when it mainly just is the rating of the Sims games that they disagree with the UK about - and they think that it is more important to have the UK in PEGI too than to change the rating back to 7+ just for the Sims games when they usually agree with the UK about the ratings of all other games.
Young children are like a blackboard fresh out of the package with no concept of life and death, how the world around them works, the differences in cultures and history - never mind the evils of this earth - or life since life began. Shoot most adults cannot even fathom everything about the world around them - but we all at least have laws and try very hard to follow them while maintaining a life.
What is any of the things young children know and understand - going to even make the Sims game make any sense to them at all? Most children as I said are little clean, slate black board ready to learn - and the materials people give them to learn on needs to be age appropriate to their capability of understanding . The very fact all countries of this world differ in what they believe their own people should or should not learn at the learning stages of modern human evolution - differs - means no one - no country has a magical number as to the correct number to rate things for their own people - so how can any of us trust our own countries ratings anyway as scientifically the correct age to rate things period? How can any of us - dare to question any countries decision on the ratings just because some of us differs to what that number should be? We don't have that right? We, as adults simply must comply to what the laws are within our own countries until the world as one unity decides a single number for everyone and every stage. Ratings in our hands only matter when our countries are addressing our imput and we vote to change them - in the meantime regardless of what you or I think - the ratings as they are has to be adhered to and respected. Like it or not.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
You missed my point. I said there are more people who (at the time) had taken this poll who were above 30+ than there were for those teen and below. At current count (Of this poll) there are 253 people who are over 20+(you have to combine all older ages) compared to the 48 people who are below the age of 20 (their targeted audience/teens and younger).
And to the one person who implied I want a M rated Sims, not, I simply made the comment for Maxis to get clue that more adults (20+ and older all the way to 70) are on this forum playing this game if they take the poll. Polls are representation of a % of how many of those older ages (above teen years) are playing. So if you know how many the poll sample represents then you can come up with the conclusion those on the forum are mainly adults %.
It’s entirely possible that the early Sims games were passed 7+ by PEGI due to the oversight of the sexual content, but realised their mistake in future re-releases of The Sims 1 and the release of The Sims 2: University.
Remember, countries tend to have different standards of what’s okay and what’s taboo. Why do you think it’s so common for France to rate R-rated films as a “12” or “Tous Publics?”