BitLife and The Sims

tweedle

Anyone else feel like BitLife is what present-day Sims would be if the age demographic never shifted to cater towards younger players? It seems like with every main iteration of The Sims, EAxis keeps trying to appeal more and more to a younger audience (I'm not saying the original Sims game was M/A rated, it's just that The Sims 4 is very saccharine compared to the previous games i.e. the juice keg in TS4 University is literally juice while in TS3 is was euphemism for beer). This makes me miss spin-off games such as the MySims series which was specifically made to attract kids.

I wish EA did more to cater towards their older audience. Despite being purely text based, I always have a blast playing BitLife. It's so funny and engaging. I cannot say the same for The Sims 4, though. I know rebranding The Sims 4 to cater to an older audience would be a real risky move since so many fans I see are around 12-16 (idk the official demographics, this is just anecdotal). I hope EAxis considers doing spin-off games again and creates a separate series of simulation games that older fans can enjoy. Does anyone feel the same way?

Edit: Sorry in advance if this is in the wrong section. I wasn't sure if I could put this in Feedback since I mentioned another game

bella_goth

off topic but reading your signature, is dong censored?
LOL d_o_n_g is censored tf

bella_goth

(i forgot to post this comment too lol) okay so regarding your post. there's something that annoys me, ea seems to want to cater to younger audiences yet they keep hinting at a possible online gamemode. sorry but it smells weird in those arguments.

i too think the game has become too childish. i'm not talking about explicit content but sometimes it feels like ea treat their players like toddlers, like when dora says "wheres the map" or something and it's right there man it feels literally the same.
i don't know what bitlife is but i would prefer if the sims had a more mature and sophisticated tone rather than a silly one. i really don't think the sims games were meant to be for kids. it's a game about life and life's hard my dudes.

tweedle

@bellagoth_ When I saw that "Baby Ariel" was added to the game I knew that I was probably getting to old for this game, lol.
The "childishness" of this game also explains why the Sims 4 seems so easy compared to other games. Keeping your sim happy is not really a problem at all while in previous games I was constantly sending my sims to work/school while in horrible moods because it was so difficult to managed a household.

Bitlife is an app that is a text-based life simulation game. It's not 100% serious and is pretty silly but it has a lot of cool features that I wish were present in TS4 (i.e. signing a prenup before you get married that your fiancée can either accept or refuse). It's free, I suggest you try it out.

And yes d-o-n-g is censored

bella_goth

@tweedle the most likely reason for them attracting young audiences is to get a new generation of players and because kids are less critical when it comes to quality. but ea has had some issues when it comes to sick f#cks so if they still plan on getting online gamemodes for the sims they should stop marketing the game for kids.

since devs have the excuse of ts4 scrapped online game and bla bla bla, we had to believe them and hope ts5 doesn't end up with the same kind of limited engine & flawed coding. so now ts4 is a shallow game where we have to pretend our gameplay rather than play it. i believe devs are able to kinda fix the engine especially when it has +6 years but we don't know if they don't do it cuz ea has them on a thin line with packs, or because they just don't want to/can't do it.

the game is easier also because people complains otherwise. due to this game getting away from its main purpose, it has gathered a lot of different fans and now devs can't deliver enough for any of them so of course the community is very divided. devs ignoring our feedback doesn't help either.

tweedle

bellagoth_ wrote: »

@tweedle the most likely reason for them attracting young audiences is to get a new generation of players and because kids are less critical when it comes to quality. but ea has had some issues when it comes to sick f#cks so if they still plan on getting online gamemodes for the sims they should stop marketing the game for kids.

@bellagoth_ Yes, I've noticed this, too. Usually, the ones to give EA the benefit of the doubt every time they release a crappy pack or update are not much older than 14. And I also think that it wouldn't be in EA's best interest to market a future online Sims game towards kids. The team doesn't havea good track record with dealing with "creeps".

I commented in a previous post I made that EAxis' biggest mistake was getting rid of their spin-off franchises. The Sims community is way too diverse to pin point what gameplay the community wants (every "upcoming pack survey" is evidence of that). Maybe if big updates weren't so few and far in between and the Sims Team were more transparent about future development, this wouldn't be a huge problem. And, yes, it doesn't help that EA's solution to dealing with too much feedback is to listen to no feedback.

I'm hoping that with the launches of new simulation games like Little Sim World and Paralives, there will finally be a stable contenders in the life-sim genre. And I hope more developers try their hand at making these types of games as well.

tweedle

Lol I can't even say cr////appy? C'mon EA!

bella_goth

@tweedle i will always say it, the sims is not a game for kids. it's funny though, because i started playing them when i was a little kid. but man previous sims games weren't as childish, in fact the sims 1 is amazing, and now that i grew up i still love that game a lot.
i also loved the sims spin offs like castaway, the urbz, the sims medieval etc. yes they had their flaws but you know what? they were spin offs NOT the main game so it was more forgiving. i can see the reason they stopped doing them, they flopped on sales. but instead of stopping doing them why not improving them?? for example the reason sims medieval flopped was because of the limitations, rabbit holes & lack of replayability. but a good portion of people loved the game and many folks are asking for a medieval pack to be in ts4.

the thing i dislike the most about ts4 are its developers, yes you may think i'm being heartless but the difference between the original developers and the newest ones is huge. devs used to have a clear idea on their mind, used to have ambitions, creativity and most importantly, the skills. the only thing they didn't have was enough technology. but now? all these devs do is making excuses, victimizing themselves, mocking their players and also ignoring their feedback. of course i am assuming because we never know what's behind the department but this idea is what they show us.

i'm also expecting good competition on the simulation field. i expect that devs use this competitors as motivation to improve the game.
but i hope they abandon the online gamemode idea, and i hope ts5 won't be another childish game.

bella_goth

tweedle wrote: »

Lol I can't even say cr////appy? C'mon EA!

hahah right? the censor on the forums is too much, just look how they censored d_o_n_g too, and in the game, names like hell are also censored. there's this thread talking about it https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/982452/game-saying-hicks-is-a-disallowed-word/p1

MoQ

I don't mind the series growing to be more inclusive to a younger audience, but sometimes simplifying and streamlining can go too far.

Also children know what beer is, there's no need to hide it. Especially not when woo-hoo is a central mechanic XD

Nushnushganay

@tweedle question for you: you said the "juice" in Ts3 was just a euphemism for beer, whereas it's literally juice in TS4. how? What's the difference if both were called that?

Oh and whether you buy a sack of suckers or a bag of lollipops depends on where you live.

morganlefaye

I miss how Sims wasn't for kids. I remember some themes were for older teens, but I do miss the maturity level on it. I honestly didn't even know who was baby ariel. I think they should cater the sims 4 to people in their 20s who grew up playing this. I honestly feel like when we all get older, we're gonna be like "back in my day, when I was ten years old, we'd play sims 2 with maturity themes and watched family guy! Stay up late watching Cartoon Network at night and knowing full well we probably shouldn't!" or "Back in my day, Sims 2 used to have a mature themes rather than it just being eating, sleeping, and dying". I actually remembered it being a slight maturity. It had a spin the bottle game on one of the sims 2.

tweedle

@Nushnushganay I guess I didn't clarify that point well. Sorry about that! Despite being only available for adults, the Juice Kegs in the Sims 4 resemble actual punch and juices, while the kegs and drinks in TS3 university looked liked it could be beer. They both feature fruit on the barrels but TS4 design is less ambiguous. This is just a nitpick on my part but do think the design change was intentional.