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Why EA is collecting our data and the woohoo challenge
Cyron43
Posts: 8,055 Member
You heard about the woohoo challenge? You guys are supposed to let your Sims woohoo the whole weekend and IF the goal is reached you get an ugly gnome and a hairdo for your Sims. Am I the only one who finds this utterly ridiculous?
BTW the data is evaluated by activating "share user data" in the game options. Does that ring a bell?
BTW the data is evaluated by activating "share user data" in the game options. Does that ring a bell?
This space is for rent.
Post edited by Cyron43 on
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Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Oh me and my bad mouth. Shame on you Cyron.
Even if I was still playing ts4 my game tracking would be staying well and truly off. The sims is my personal business, not for prying eyes to take and make decisions from. Use surveys-at least then you know your sample is more likely to be representative. Plenty of simmers turn tracking data off so it skews the data they collect.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
@sparkfairy1 I agree, I am sure that a mother of kids that are playing this game are not to happy about this. Mother's talk to other mothers, and if the word gets around that this game is not right for kids to be playing they will not buy it. I don't think that a mother of a child in RL would consent to their child doing this kind of challenge. This is tacky and uncalled for. Where are they heading, everything seems to be on whoo hooing. Like it is something new, it has been in existence since the beginning of time. This does send the wrong message.
By the way what is the tracking tool you are talking about and how do you turn it off. Is it when you play online.
I will not be participating in this challenge for many reasons.
Last time I read anything about Valentine days is was about romance. Did something change in the last year and I missed it. Is Valentines day about all the sex you can get in a weekend now?
As for the Data collecting. Since it is still unknown just what data is being collected that isn't happening through Origin with me. No phoning home to HQ on my computer. Origin isn't allowed to start on my computer at all. I haven't played TS$4 in almost 2 months. I believe they are trying to get more suckers computers connected for more data to sell. The bad part is it''s people who support Woohoo Valentines day the data will be coming from so the future of TS$4 is bleak if they use that data for future improvements to the game. It isn't worth risking the data from my computer being sent to EA just in the hopes it will help TS$4 IMHO. It states in the TOS that they collect more than just game data.
Yes I think so too. It seems so weird and not at all the image that the sims has held for all these years.
I mean I worried about my parents seeing the 'hot date' box when I was a young teen but if they had heard about this challenge that would be it, I'd have been banned from playing the sims.
It also seems odd given that many of us who have played since the start have grown with the game and we are the ages to be parents now-so it will inevitably get heard by parents through those players who are parents discussing it.
I find it puzzling given the devs saying they don't have a problem with their kids playing it-then we get this challenge. It seems so contradictory.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Teens with 13 years old play GTA and you are worried they might see you doing this challenge? Please...give me a break...
I'm sure there are lots of diferent people some more conservative then others, but you can't expect that the whole world will react like this, because it won't, it's really no big deal.
Excuse me but that's very rude. I'd suggest you alter that out of your comment before I address that comment.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to edit the rude personal comment out.
It's all to do with the parents isn't it @Sigzy05 ? It's up to them what they feel comfortable with and I can see why some would take issue with a challenge just based on the 'act'. People from all sorts of backgrounds, belief systems and cultures play the sims. You may think certain ways about it but there are others with strong beliefs when it comes to this.
What bothers me is some children play the sims-for those of us who knew the older games I don't think there is much you would worry about with supervision. But if you have a challenge just focusing on that it's giving a message from EA that I know plenty of parents would worry about-and I know that because I've been discussing it with a lot of my friends who are parents.
I'm actually pretty liberal in my beliefs, but this makes me feel uncomfortable and as we are allowed our own opinions here that's fine isn't it? I'm not telling anyone else how to think-I'm talking about my thoughts and feelings.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Oh Dear I am have a EWWWW moment with that image! Watching EWWWW!
Yeah that's what it looks like
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I'm sorry if I ofended you kind of having a bad day, but the fact that younger teens play worse games is true, I'm not saying your opinion wrong, you can see that I said that nowhere, but I think there are far worse things you should worry. Also they made a challenge, make our sims woohoo 5 million times in 2 days (it's not like you have to make them woohoo these many times all players numbers added together need to make that number), also they don't make you make your sims woohoo all the time, plus nothing is stoping you from making your sims have romance before they woohoo.
In my point of view you are taking this challenge the wrong way.
I don't think origin streams lol it just shares the data from your computer to their servers like files saying the times your sim woohooed.
@Sigzy05 no problem, it's why I asked for the change so I didn't have to report it and I do appreciate that. We all have bad days
I know-but I think EA should have made it count for all romantic interactions-that would feel far less 'icky' to me.
I understand what you are saying and I get your point but I think companies like EA need to be really sensitive when it comes to issues like this. By making it so specific it seems pretty tacky and I think there's enough obsession about that in entertainment already lol.
Like I say a better way to approach it would have been '5 million romantic interactions' or kisses-those are less loaded in their meaning. Do you get what I'm trying to say?
I do take issue with kids playing age inappropriate games but I can't do much about that. What I can do is say to EA perhaps they want to think carefully when they do these sorts of challenges because they know children and young teens play the game whereas those other games are made age inappropriate and are clearly marked that way.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I can unserstand that, and I agree.
Thank you @Sigzy05
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I'm trying to find out whether they collect past data. I don't think it's so bad if they only collect data from the opt-in period.
I have known for quite some time you have a very twisted sense of humor, but oh wow.This was truly bad!!lol lol lol
kim
Abraham Lincoln
I've seen a lot of pretty unpleasant things in my time, which isn't very long compared to some posters - I feel that people have become much too involved with gadgets, screens, games, the internet, etc and they don't engage as much with each other. People also seem to care a lot less about each other than they used to. I'll share a personal story about this. Nearly six years ago, I had surgery and radiation treatment for thyroid cancer. It's usually quite routine but in my case there were complications, and I was very sick for a long time after. That's how I discovered that most of my "friends" - people I had known most of my life - weren't really friends at all... after all those years of being there for them, they turned away when I needed support. My parents are well into their senior years, they still keep in touch with friends from high school and college. I assumed that this was the way friendship was meant to work. Turns out it just doesn't anymore, at least not where I live. The things I've experienced have heavily influenced the way I parent.
First and foremost, I want to raise my son to be people-centric. Not "easy come, easy go, oh well I'll find another friend if you leave." I want to teach him to value people and to really be able to know when he is or is not being properly valued by others. As such, I'm careful about what he is exposed to, because the fact is, the message that people are disposable/replaceable is all around us. It's in the movies, on TV, and yes, in video games. This is part of why I find a lot of the messages in The Sims 4 to be upsetting. They really do echo the "people are all the same" mentality, and they encourage a lot of immature frat boy behavior which I still see plenty of real people doing well into their 30s and 40s. Yes, it is just a game... but the messages that it sends are, in many ways, a reflection of a point of view. The Sims used to be more of a "play with life" scenario where you could play out many different lifestyles. Yeah, the frat boy was there, but the focus was much wider and more varied. It didn't revolve around single Sims and bar hopping and being mean to other Sims just to vary the monotony. I'm not that much of a prude but I do know what it's like to be sick, and I don't want him to develop this glorified image of drinking and carousing because lots of people these days take it to excess, and it makes them sick sooner or later. All parents want better for their children, at a bare minimum I want him to be healthy - as far as I can influence him, anyway. "Woohoo" as a sporting event... really doesn't support that. I mean maybe if they added realistic STDs, accidental pregnancy with real consequences, along with tangible social fallout... but the funny thing is, I think if they did, the game would be considered less appropriate. How funny is that? Sex as a sport is rated teen but the consequences are too mature. How does that make sense?
The save that my son and I play together in 3 shows that he actually has a very mature, considerate world view. He plays the way I do - he wants to find a wife for his Sim and have children, he wants his Sim to get promotions at work, and loves going to the festival and going fishing. He made his Sim friendly and good. We have been playing every day and nothing inappropriate has come up, even as a whim. In 4, it undoubtedly would have, and he would almost certainly have been as annoyed as I was by the bright loading screens and goofy Sims and lack of options. I hope I'm explaining this well enough. In ts3, he can make better choices. In 4, many of the choices are simply not healthy lifestyles, in my opinion. Having all bars and no eating venues, for example, and the other community lots being boring (museum) or the gym (and I take issue with the focus on physique and body image as well - I like being able to set the body type for my sim, but the difficulty in maintaining it and extreme focus on exercise hits way too close to home for me, having been close to people with eating disorders, which, yes, all involved excessive exercise). The parks are okay, but hardly fascinating enough to warrant a loading screen. Collecting and fishing are really monotonous. In 3, he can play through many different lifestyles, all of which are rich and varied, and if they include a trip to a club now and then, that's okay, because it's occasional, not a way of life, and not the only way to go out and have a good time.
As far as games like GTA go, I'm not really interested in teaching my son that extremely graphic violence is okay, because honestly, it bothers me, and I think it should. For some people, they're "just games," but for me personally, I couldn't play a fps game where you come face to face with someone (even a pixel person) and "shoot" them and watch their blood spray everywhere without feeling uncomfortable. That's my view, and if my son grows up not sharing it, that's okay. He will undoubtedly play it at his friends' houses and think it's cool, but I don't have to allow things I don't feel are appropriate into my home. These things are all around us, it's true. But when it becomes his choice, I hope to give him the right tools to make good choices. That's my job as his mom.
My values and feelings are unchanged by the fact that some parents think it's appropriate for young teens (and even younger kids) to play violent games. That's their decision, not mine. Even if I played it myself, what kind of message does that send, to tell him violence is bad but I'm going to take this controller and blow that guy's head off? If my parents had done that, I would have been very confused. Which isn't to say I think kids playing those games are going to think it's okay in reality. I just think there's a lot to be said for being the sort of person who sets healthy boundaries and practices what they preach. So I try to do that as best I can (nobody is perfect, and different people have different ways... I'm a very literal person, so this is mine). I want my son to have a solid foundation, from there he will go exploring, and if he needs me, I'll be there for him. And if he does something silly and someone says to him, "what would your mother say??" he will always know the answer. All any parent can do is try to teach their children well and hope they land on their feet.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1