Lately, a
news article surfaced from the Sims Community fansite speculating that there might be a
possibility of having a multiplayer game for the next sequel of the franchise. The article is short on concrete evidence and with enough critical thinking, it is not short on
clickbait. Whilst Andrew Wilson (EA CEO) did answer questions in regards to The Sims franchise, this doesn't necessarily mean that what he said fully explained the future of the game.
Let's dissect it.
Andrew Wilson's statement:
"Great question on The Sims! The Sims will be 20 next week. That Maxis team and the team that’s been a part of Maxis over the years continue to deliver unbelievably innovative and creative content for a constantly growing Sims community globally. As we think about The Sims – again, I reference the motivations of why we play the games – inspiration, escape, social interaction, creation, self-improvement, competition. Typically what The Sims has done is really focus on fulfilling the motivations and inspiration, escape, creation, self-improvement and not necessarily focus as much as on social interaction and competition.
But a few things are in fact true over the years. One is that the Sims community continues to grow and with the broad of social platforms continue to connect with each other and share what they do – in and around the game they play. And we’ve seen that manifest in The Sims Online which was a more social experience for us. And we’re also seeing that the competitive nature of The Sims is also rising and we’re seeing people compare and contrast. Not competition in an original sports sense but how they create and what they create and how they use their imaginations and what they’re able to build inside of these Sims universes.
As Maxis continues to think about The Sims for a new generation – cross-platforms and a cloud of a neighborhood world, you should imagine while we will always stay true to our inspiration, escape, creation, self-improvement, motivations – that this notion of social interactions and competition like the kind of things that were actually present in The Sims Online many many years ago – that they will start to become a part of The Sims experience in the years to come.
We are very excited. This is a game that really doesn’t have any competition in its category for delivering and fulfilling these motivations for players and we think of the tremendous growth opportunities for us for many many years to come."
The first two paragraphs were lengthy explanations about the entirety of the franchise and a filler per se so that this section of the interview seemed long. It is a PR tactic and commonly used with anyone who is most likely under some form of confidentiality contract OR they simply are not fully sure on the project and they would not like to speak wrongly on behalf.
"this notion of social interactions and competition like the kind of things that were actually present in The Sims Online many many years ago – that they will start to become a part of The Sims experience in the years to come."
This is the crucial part of the interview that raised many eyebrows and speculations about an online/multiplayer version of The Sims. It is cited in an
article that The Sims Online and its “successors” (SimCity Social & The Sims Social) shut down due to
how low the player base was. Would EA Games make the same mistake and go down that path again with a possibility of the online multiplayer resource to be left unused by the community? Well, it depends.
For the past several years, EA Games have attempted to push out games in the sense that they will be a success because they are multiplayer AND
EA Games made a statement that Single Player games are obsolete. Unfortunately for the company, this was proven wrong multiple times by consistent failure in sales and popularity of their current generation multiplayer games:
Anthem,
Star Wars: Battlefront 1 & 2, and
Battlefield V.
Should the possibility of a multiplayer Sims game in the future be of concern? Maybe, but not as much as it should be.
As Maxis continues to think about The Sims for a new generation – cross-platforms and a cloud of a neighborhood world
The cross-platform reference could be related to how the gallery works between consoles and PCs now. Furthermore, the "cloud", which is most likely related to the gallery. They
might have the future Sims to be cross-platform, to begin with. Seeing as how closely related the console x PC version of The Sims 4 is. Although, if that is the case... I have my own personal doubts on how well the future of The Sims will be if it will become a "true cross-platform" game (possibly playing wherever you want or no matter what device you have), which I will save for another thread in the future. My concerns are not about an always-online game, but the limitations and gameplay potential on a fully-fledged PC version vs a console version of The Sims.
Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Proves EA Wrong, Sells 8 Million Units In Just 1.5 Monthshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK1w8K5SuuM
Comments
I did the same thing after seeing that post. If the game went mulitplayer/online, I would have gotten to that point anyway but that post happened first. I couldn't continue buying a game from a company that obviously take their most loyal customers for granted.
Your concerns are my concerns. Technology is moving forward and i can imagine what a single player game could be, made for pc as it used to be. We could go back to open world, sliders for almost everything, and a lot of other incredible things that we lost. Without performance issues. I believe that the last 10 years could make it possible. I can only think that greed of being everywhere, in all platforms and whatever, is the only obstacle in the way of having by now, 2020, an almost perfect sims game. So, although this interview says nothing, i do believe they'll go multiplayer multi-platform road. For me, Im staying with sims 3 and im not buying any more dlc for 4 unless there's a big change on the chore on the sims themselves.
Wow i didn't know about this! Everything explained then. So, the plans are making the game shallow, having characters always smiling (to get the younger audience without rating issues), no consequences... and so on... basically what made sims 4 so light and empty...
Wow if i knew this before i would have stoped a long time ago buying those money grabs aka packs, that have zero meaningfull gameplay but awesome graphics!
But, please, EA. Keep pushing your "vision" for the game. Why believe that people have fallen in love with this game for what it always WAS instead of whatever crazy online multiplayer bs you wanna turn it into. One thing is for sure. EA still cares more about its shareholders and abstract metrics than its players.
If EA are looking to do the same with Maxis as with Respawn Entertainment, then they are fine with them making a single player game (Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order) as long as they will make a successful multiplayer game as well (Apex Legends).
Maxis success with the sims mobile could be enough for EA to let Maxis do what they want, which means that they will not force Maxis to do a multiplayer game. But that remains to be seen. Maxis are really silent about what they are working on.
I wish they could tell us more what they are working on and what is next for the sims. I do not understand this secrecy with everything. Other game developer studios are perfectly fine with announcing what they are working on years before they will release their game.
Exactly this.
EA doesn't announce things in advance. At least Maxis doesn't. The fastest they're announced is the fiscal quarter things are being released -- it's why we get radio silence until a few weeks beforehand. I think they may announce EPs the fiscal quarter before release, actually, but GPs and SPs are now announced same quarter.
This is a fairly recent change -- within the past five years anyways.
The main reason people are taking this seriously is because Andrew Wilson has been quite vocal about making all EA games live services with lots of microtransactions. His hints are 100% deliberate. If this were a dev, it would be easier to just brush off.
1) servers are expensive and difficult to maintain. we saw that with simcity, we see that with the gallery. the hosting costs alone will be expensive, microtransitions would have to come back just to support the dang thing.
2) moderation costs money. imagine the gallery but 10000x worse. if its online there's going to be trolls, there's going to be incitation with racist, sexist, and transphobic remarks. there's going to be adults preying on children (do we really need what happened to sim guru kate to happen 1000x over and over and over again in an online game aimed for kids?). there would be theft of buildings and claiming of sims as their own, which happens already on the gallery but my god, would it just increase tenfold.
3) multiplayer has been attempted with sims 4, it almost killed the franchise alongside simcity, they attempted to fix what they could within a year but there was STILL backlash because basics like toddlers, ghosts, and pools were gone. sims 5 never went into development because maxis was barely hanging on as a studio, employees left because of the work conditions (it's better now, apparently, but back in the early 2010s maxis was a hot mess). maxis is ONLY NOW, since 2019, recuperating. do they REALLY want to try this again?
they'd be ridiculously stupid to make sims 5 a multiplayer game. focus on what made the sims last for 20 🐸🐸🐸🐸 years. we want to escape from other people and play by ourselves and create our own worlds. stop trying to get other players to intrude.
i already answered to this in another thread, why does it need repeating in an echo chamber on a new thread?
i already stated that it was clickbait the further in it gets, it is speculation until EA says it themselves and thinking about something isn't the same as confirming it. I wished Kaechan never brought that flamebait sims media blog up! I'm a bit triggered how the community is reacting and no one is bothering to see the details in the middle as already pointed out.
There is no multiplayer in TS5 until EA say it themselves, if it comes you can worry, but what if there is no multiplayer? Don't make any choices before you have hard facts in hand and not this destructive nonsense. it is just that though, nonsense as there is nothing to it.
I know you're fairly confident about this, but please look into who Andrew Wilson is and his goals for EA games. He IS EA, and he does want everything to be a live service, on line game. Him floating little hints is testing the waters, like it or not. Sims 4 had to do an abrupt 180 when SimCity failed, but that doesn't mean that they've given up on the idea.
I can see them incorporating multi by having it be a separate option in the Menu section where it takes your Sim to a cloud world (as mentioned by Andrew Wilson) on a server to play with others. But then...what is there to do once you get there? Just talk to other Sims? I don't play to "become" my Sim. Although, if it's optional, it wouldn't be invasive. They could also incorporate an in-game chat, like if your Sim sits at a computer to "go online", there is a built-in feature to connect with other players. So that could be a thing.
The competitions he mentioned I could see be more about build types and challenges, like what the community kind of does anyway. And the in-game challenges like 100 Baby, Woohoo challenges, completing collections, etc. So essentially, multi-player in itself wouldn't necessarily be invasive.
Now. That said, here's what fills me with trepidation:
The "next generation" thinking. This is one of the things that changed the series drastically with Sims 4. The whole "safe space" thinking, lack of consequences and real danger, making the Sims a Utopian paradise instead of a dramatic Soap Opera, focusing on emotions instead of Traits and skewing them in favor of positivity, lack of crime and obstacles... this all, in my opinion, contributes to dumbing down the game and making it boring in order to avoid "offending" the younger player base, rather than allowing the player base to make those decisions on their own. It's kind of insulting. It's like saying players can't handle reality or failure or life obstacles or things happening out of their control in a video game and putting developers in a position to parent us. It's patronizing and it's not their job to coddle people, it's their job to make a good, solid game.
Second, referring again to the mistakes of Sims 4, which was originally built as a multiplayer, the worlds are most likely going to be static. Now, I personally don't mind the loading screens, but the fact that we can't change the environment or place lots or alter lot size or any of that is because, in my perception, an online game kind of has to be that way in order to accommodate so many players. So even if they plan to keep the online aspect separate in Sims 5, it means they are still going to build an engine and base game in a specific way that supports it. This could mean that the single player game will still have its limitations, some that are similar to Sims 4, because it has to work a certain way for the multi to function properly. Terrifying.
Lastly, I am apprehensive about EA's obsession with "new and innovative". This is what brought in the Emotion system and changed the basic needs and disrupted the individuality of Traits. They keep tampering with a formula that already worked beautifully and they change for the sake of change instead of expanding and adding. I feel like the game is going to be unrecognizable when Sims 5 is complete because they keep branching further and further from the things that made Sims 1 and 2 so special, immersive, and engaging.
From what I've read myself in the quarterly reports, "live-service gaming" is something that is often praised and mentioned. Andrew Wilson wants to branch out all of EA's games as much as possible to bring in as many players as possible because that means making as much money as possible. EA is a huge, corporate business with shareholders who want to see revenue. I have no doubt that this is more than the CEO just speculating.
(You'll probably have to crank the volume.)
https://youtu.be/XVBKoUeMO0U
Wow the audacity, I'm flabbergasted. Thanks for sharing, it gives me more strengh not to buy anything considering I haven't buy anything since IL.
This has been my opinion. It would save me money for sure. I play one online game and that is primarily to spend time with my dad. Sims is my escape from everything - including real people.