Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
Definition of a Sims game
Erpe
Posts: 5,872 Member
What are the core characteristics which are special for Sims games?
For EA they seem to be:
1. A sim is a character which can be modified more than characters in other games.
2. A Sim game usually have tools to build and design houses
3. Sims games are targeted at casual gamers who don't want hard or violent games. Therefore Sims games are made easy and peaceful.
4. In Sims games the sims can usually build relationships with other sims.
5. In most Sims games our sim can be married and in some of the games they can also have children.
6. Sims games are made for all platforms.
7. For the PC the mainline games are designed to have a huge number of expansions which mainly contain new buildings, new worlds, new stuff, new life forms and new careers and hobbies.
8. Other Sims games for the PC are designed to be much smaller than the mainline games.
Much of the fuss about TS4 is caused by simmers who don't agree with EA about this and think that Sims games always should be about raising a family and having children. But this obviously isn't part of EA's definition of a Sims game.
Personally I only partly agree with EA because I am not a casual gamer who only play a couple of hours each week. I play my favorite games much more and therefore prefer deeper and harder games. But I still like the Sims concept because the games are peaceful and about love more than war. (I play war games too - but violence all the time becomes boring in the long run.) I also like the Sims games because they are so different from other games.
I don't mind all the SPs. But I don't agree with EA that Sims games should mainly be about stuff and designing sims and houses because this has never been my favorite things in any Sims game. The gameplay is much more important to me.
Any comments?
For EA they seem to be:
1. A sim is a character which can be modified more than characters in other games.
2. A Sim game usually have tools to build and design houses
3. Sims games are targeted at casual gamers who don't want hard or violent games. Therefore Sims games are made easy and peaceful.
4. In Sims games the sims can usually build relationships with other sims.
5. In most Sims games our sim can be married and in some of the games they can also have children.
6. Sims games are made for all platforms.
7. For the PC the mainline games are designed to have a huge number of expansions which mainly contain new buildings, new worlds, new stuff, new life forms and new careers and hobbies.
8. Other Sims games for the PC are designed to be much smaller than the mainline games.
Much of the fuss about TS4 is caused by simmers who don't agree with EA about this and think that Sims games always should be about raising a family and having children. But this obviously isn't part of EA's definition of a Sims game.
Personally I only partly agree with EA because I am not a casual gamer who only play a couple of hours each week. I play my favorite games much more and therefore prefer deeper and harder games. But I still like the Sims concept because the games are peaceful and about love more than war. (I play war games too - but violence all the time becomes boring in the long run.) I also like the Sims games because they are so different from other games.
I don't mind all the SPs. But I don't agree with EA that Sims games should mainly be about stuff and designing sims and houses because this has never been my favorite things in any Sims game. The gameplay is much more important to me.
Any comments?
0
Comments
As far as I can see all Sims games are meant to be played in a casual way where you can enter the game and then build, rebuild or redecorate a house or you can make a new sim or change the look of an existing sim. If you want to you can also play a little. But the gameplay is meant to only be casual and easy even though it is also meant to be played a little longer if you want to. Still the focus is on CAS, buildmode and SPs and especially in TS4 even though this also was true in the previous Sims games.
Good points!
I just don't believe that EA like you see the four biggest Sims games as games with a different Sims concept and a different game concept as what make them different from all the other Sims games. For EA only their size and their number of expansions seem to be the difference.
For some, it is the building. Making your own cities, or neighborhoods ... uploading them. For those players, building is their priority and many of them build beautiful worlds all from scratch. Others are drawn more towards family/generational play. Others are drawn to making mods ... some fall in between.
I would relate this to someone saying ... every fantasy book must have an elf in it. Alice in Wonderland isn't then a fantasy book because there are no elves.
I also disagree with this:
Much of the fuss about TS4 is caused by simmers who don't agree with EA in the original direction that Sims4 took and what was left out and/or missing from the base game and what we as players feel should have been included. Much of the fuss continues due to the silence and speculation of what direction the Sims4 will take.
As for the rest, you can raise a family and have children. ( the child stage is my favorite life stage in Sims 4 ). If that is all the definition you need to define a Sims game ... then the Sims4 meets that standard, as you can raise a family in Sims4. You can have children. But it is much more than that, for those who want family play. You can't raise a toddler, there is a difference between having children and having a toddler. You have object babies tied to the bassinet and teens that are the same height as adults.
So you and other simmers become disappointed because EA doesn't obey you when you keep writing that TS4 now needs to be "fixed" so it anyway can become the game you wanted in the first place. So you keep fighting. But alas I am quite sure that EA still won't obey you.
I agree that the silence from the gurus is disturbing. But the silence will probably stop when the gurus know for sure what the remaining expansions for TS4 will contain. They can't tell us what those expansions will contain. But when they know the content then at least can tell us what won't be there (such as toddlers). But they can't as long as they still negotiate the content of future expansions with EA.
The term 'casual player' always confuses me by the way. What is that? There was a time, 2010-2013, I played the game every single day. My husband used to teasingly call my real life "your commercial break between simming". Was I a casual player? It don't think Sims players are casual players at all. It's just that a lot of us play just that one game. The Sims apparently appeals to a group of people that are not into other games. My son, who plays a lot of games, is much more casual about some of them you probably wouldn't define as 'aimed at casual players'. What's a casual player?
EA has always made Sims games for both consoles and mobile devices too. Those Sims games can't be as big or have a huge number of expansions like the big PC games. But they are still part of the Sims game family and so are the PC side games which EA always have targeted at casual gamers who maybe are scared by the size of the big games with all those expansions. So EA has always made the PC side games quite small too.
There are different definitions if you search for them. One of them is:
"A casual gamer is a type of video game player whose time or interest in playing games is limited compared with a hardcore gamer. Casual gamers can conceivably consist of any people who show more than a passing interest in video games; therefore, it is difficult to categorize them as a group."
Other definitions are:
"A casual gamer is someone who only plays a few games per year. The term "hardcore" is just a bad way of saying "dedicated".
and
"The type of game and amount of time you play it.
For instance playing 20 hours a week of candy crush makes you casual because it can fit into your life easily.
But 20 hours a week of an FPS or an MMO where you have to schedule time to play with others is hardcore because you have to fit your life around gaming."
But in this context I would say that a casual gamer is a gamer who only play games in very short periods of time and not a gamer who play a big game nonstop for hours. I believe that EA targets the Sims games at such gamers. But they aren't the kind of gamers who dominate this forum. Therefore IMO we have a conflict between the forum users and EA about TS4.
There is also a "definition" which is clearly wrong though: "A casual gamer is a gamer who play casual games." It is wrong because casual games are small games like solitaire, minesweeper etc. TS4 is targeted at casual gamers. But TS4 isn't a casual game at all.
But it is true, there is no definition of what makes a Sims game.
To me, if they have plumbobs then they are Sims.
Start replacing those plumbobs with something like an exclamation mark then I might start to get worried...
Actually @Erpe, I am not disappointed by the Sims4. I actually enjoy it. It holds my attention in ways that Sims3 never could. But just because I enjoy it as is doesn't mean I cannot see ways in which it still could be better. Even though I enjoy it, I can see why others find fault. I can understand their point of view in how the Sims4 lacks in their gameplay/thoughts/whatever it is for their issue.
I never cared much for Sims3, but that doesn't mean when people post pictures of their Sims3 games that I cannot see what draws them into that world and why they like the features offered, even if it isn't my proverbial cup of tea. I can understand it, I can visualize it.
As for the silence, I never see that stopping. Things change.
Well said
But this means that EA always will continue to make a game series as long as this is profitable and always will stop a game series if it isn't. Spore wasn't profitable so EA stopped the series. But the Sims game have always given EA a huge profit. Therefore it is very unlikely that EA will give up on making Sims games even if one of them should be seen as having disappointing sales numbers. EA just won't give up so easily and I actually don't believe that the sales numbers for TS4 is so disappointing after all.