I haven't seen bees and bee hives suggested anywhere. It could be a gameplay item where you have to collect the honey and wax. Make eco friendly candles and honey to sell. Maybe get some more plants/flowers, flowering trees to have a greater chance to get bees. It could also be added as a new self employment, beekeeper. You could get sick if you got stung while harvesting if you didn't protect yourself.
New lot trait could be bee friendly which would help with bees moving into your hive.
We could have two different bee houses to choose from, one cheap and one more expensive that would be better at attracting bees. I know bee keepers buy their bee colonies but I think it would be more of a challenge if we had to somehow make them appear.
Thoughts?
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oh sorry I must have missed it, thought I read everything. Great though, that means we're on the same page when it comes to voting
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/915712/ecological-living-a-pic-thread-for-inspiration#latest
That said, let me share a potential roadblock that might keep us from considering it within a Stuff Pack. If you look at the order of the upcoming votes, it'll give you an idea of why certain things can be difficult for the Stuff Pack team to accomplish. First we'll be voting on an art style, then we'll vote for individual objects and pieces of clothing, and then we'll vote on the actual features that the pack includes. On a Stuff Pack, those objects and pieces of clothing have their concept art created by our team here at Maxis, but the assets themselves are actually built by outsourced partners at a separate studio. (Note - this does work a bit differently on larger packs, where they use both outsourced partners and internal artists to create a pack's clothing.) Because they're a different group at a different location, we front load all of the work that's necessary to create the basic objects/clothing for the pack to allow time for communication, revisions, and asset delivery.
Sometimes we're caught off guard by our feature selection, especially if a Stuff Pack feature would benefit from a certain piece of clothing. Let me use Backyard Stuff as an example. Had we known we were going to make a water slide in that pack when its theme and clothing were selected, we certainly would have included some new swimwear in that pack for Sims to use while on the water slide. That feature was selected after our clothing was already locked in though, and because Stuff Packs don't have any internal Create a Sim Artist time allocated to our schedule, it wasn't possible to go back and add that in later.
So bringing it back to the current discussion, it'd likely be difficult to add a Beekeeper to this pack, because presumably you'd also want a beekeeper suit for your Sim to wear when handling the bees. A larger pack could tackle this better - they have access to both internal CAS Artists, as well as multiple rounds of outsourced art with our external partners where they could request such an outfit after features had been selected. With Stuff Packs being smaller packs that are developed in shorter spans of time, that just isn't an option for us. Occasionally we can identify a need for a piece of clothing and make a special request to get time from an internal CAS Artist. If a Development Director (the people who manage the schedules of individual employees across various disciplines) works with production to find some spare time, they can approve that request. That's how we were able to get a bowling glove added in Bowling Night for example.
Hopefully that gives some insight into why the decisions we make aren't as straightforward as they seem at first glance. Each feature can have dependencies on other disciplines that a Stuff Pack just doesn't typically have access to, or the decision may come when we're already at a point in the project where we're past when we can make changes without disrupting our schedule.
I don't think anyone expects even a quarter of the ideas being generated from this forum to make it into the final pack. With voting on Monday, I'm assuming you have the general style choices nearly (or already) fleshed out and ready to roll. But it doesn't hurt to talk about it. We never know what you might decide to incorporate later on in other packs. If we went with the smoke/feed/clean/gather animations for bees from TS3, that along with the possibility of laundry, probably wouldn't even fit into the scope. At least I wouldn't expect it to, depending on how involved you made each interaction.
But I do appreciate your explanations on how certain aspects are outsourced and where in the timeline they are decided. Very interesting to read.
In any case I enjoy reading about all different ideas. And what @SageRainWillow said, We never know what you might decide to incorporate later on in other packs.
If you don't know who Eddie Izzard is, he's a British comedian that used to do some of his stand up in drag. He has a hilarious skit about bee keepers and being covered in beeeeeessss. I totally read your comment on his voice.
Haha! I love Eddie Izzard! "I wanna be a beekeeper! I want to keep bees. Don't want them to get away, I want to keep them."
It's quite fascinating to hear about how things work in development. I, too, would have thought that the feature objects would have been the next thing decided on after theme and art style. I would have expected the CAS stuff to be a little simpler, and thus left for last. Interesting!
I love that we're getting some insight into development. This was a brilliant idea, thanks much for doing this!
I like my women like I like my coffee... covered in beeeeeesss!
Beehives were in Sims 3 Supernatural; the honey was used as an ingredient for some of the witch potions IIRC.
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)
May freak out/trigger those who aren't BEE-lievers.