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For Simmers who are looking forward to Paralives...
waterywatermelon
Posts: 473 Member
Paralives is currently a hot topic nowadays, and it seems to be the only thing that can rival The Sims franchise. There are other life simulation games, actually, but very few of them is like The Sims, where you can construct your personal fantasy world with your own custom people. However, we should remember that Paralives is still in early development. If you take a look at the "Credits" of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 and The Sims 4, then you can find a long list of workers. You see game engineers and designers, modellers and animators, music directors, and more. And the development period for those games may take about half a decade. Now, if you look at the development team of Paralives, it's quite small (only 4 people!), so expect twice as long for the release, or if they do manage to release in half a decade, then expect that it may not be as detailed or extensive as The Sims. 1-2 people working on animations, for example, may have a limited skill set, so players who expect more from Paralives because they have played The Sims may become disappointed with Paralives. Some Simmers also love supernaturals and non-human creatures in The Sims, so they may be disappointed with Paralives as well as Paralives will be a realistic life simulation. When The Sims Team made an expansion pack to The Sims 2, they had a person on staff that was already a pool player, so that person designed the pool table realistically in The Sims 2, and the walk-through video highlighted that worker's creation. Whatever Paralives will have would really depend on the skill set by each Paralives employee and how each person contributes to the software.
Furthermore, brand loyalty will also play a big role among consumers. Some people may just have brand loyalty to The Sims and EA. They may have enjoyed playing The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and even The Sims 4. I know one member from The Sims 2 days, and this guy is a long-time Sims fan since The Sims 1. He is pretty well-known in the community, and now with The Sims 4, he has become a modder in his own right: Simvasion.
EA - being a huge corporation that it is - has previously bought out smaller indie developers before, so I won't be surprised if EA decides to buy out Paralives and have the Paralives team working side by side with The Sims team. Personally, I think it would be cool if that ever did happen. Maybe the Paralives team may be given permanent, relatively stable jobs by EA, so they don't need to receive crowdfunding anymore. Crowdfunding kind of depends on public trust, and they need to get as many financial supporters as possible. That is the reason why they are being so transparent about everything. If they had investors like EA, then they will worry about what their investors think, which may be based on consumer projections (what consumers want) or brand marketing (other companies may cooperate if they think their brand is being sold by the life simulation game).
Anyway, I just want to say that Paralives has huge potential, and I can't wait to see the finished result . . . maybe in a decade or so. By then, Paralives may be the only competitor of The Sims 5.
Furthermore, brand loyalty will also play a big role among consumers. Some people may just have brand loyalty to The Sims and EA. They may have enjoyed playing The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and even The Sims 4. I know one member from The Sims 2 days, and this guy is a long-time Sims fan since The Sims 1. He is pretty well-known in the community, and now with The Sims 4, he has become a modder in his own right: Simvasion.
EA - being a huge corporation that it is - has previously bought out smaller indie developers before, so I won't be surprised if EA decides to buy out Paralives and have the Paralives team working side by side with The Sims team. Personally, I think it would be cool if that ever did happen. Maybe the Paralives team may be given permanent, relatively stable jobs by EA, so they don't need to receive crowdfunding anymore. Crowdfunding kind of depends on public trust, and they need to get as many financial supporters as possible. That is the reason why they are being so transparent about everything. If they had investors like EA, then they will worry about what their investors think, which may be based on consumer projections (what consumers want) or brand marketing (other companies may cooperate if they think their brand is being sold by the life simulation game).
Anyway, I just want to say that Paralives has huge potential, and I can't wait to see the finished result . . . maybe in a decade or so. By then, Paralives may be the only competitor of The Sims 5.
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Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
Yeah... I have taken a look just now.
But if you look at The Sims Team in the making of The Sims 2, that team had a couple of software engineers, modellers, animators and designers. Plus, The Sims Team tends to make its own game engine, from the very beginnings of The Sims 1 days, allowing greater control in game development and copyright. In contrast, the Paralives team has one lead game developer Alex Massé, a handful of programmers and some artists, using the Unity game engine. Though, the Paralives team is "still hiring" local developers of the Montreal area, so an extra team member on board would always be useful.
I like to think that what they lack in manpower, they make up for with grit, creativity, passion, and transparency. Plus they're not bogged down by tons of corporate red tape, and the overhead that comes with coordinating a large team. Time will tell if that will be enough to carry the project, but I have high hopes
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
- I think The Sims Team has been hard-working, creative and passionate ever since The Sims 1, especially Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. At the time, there was some doubt whether the game would ever sell well, because it was like a dollhouse with simulated people, but The Sims became an overnight success, which later spawned 3 sequels. It's really just The Sims 4 attracting a lot of criticism and disappointment because it was supposed to be an online game, and a quick change of events forced The Sims Team to make an offline, single-player version that had to be released so soon instead of being delayed a bit like in The Sims 2.
- I don't see transparency as much of an advantage, except maybe better public relations, and the Paralives team - being as small as it is - needs all the public trust and good public relations it can get. EA - being a billion-dollar corporation - has a stockpile of money, so a little bit of decrease in PR doesn't hurt the business too much.
- Yeah, corporate red tape may be the only advantage for small business owners like Alex Massé. He doesn't have to worry about upper management, because he is his own boss. He just has to listen to what crowdfunders want to see, most of whom will probably be disgruntled and disappointed Sims players.
Transparency is a double-edged sword, because locking in things too early before they're implemented can blow up in the devs' faces later on. If handled right, it can generate some good will from the fanbase
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
I think The Sims 5 is already in development at this point. The Sims Team has already announced that The Sims 4 will never have an open world, because of game engine limitations. Sure, there is an "open world" mod, but that's not really an open world. It's more like a super-large lot with rabbitholes. If The Sims 5 is already in development, then let's just hope that EA/Maxis has learned from SimCity and The Sims 4, and The Sims 5 will be a more complete game - just like in previous games (The Sims 1-3).
Working for a large billion-dollar corporation (Electronic Arts) does have its own perks. Large companies are able to give regular paychecks with nice compensation packages. Also, in a natural disaster or economic recession/depression scenario, people may spend more money on basic necessities than games and pleasure, so a small business may struggle and would depend a lot on crowdfunding and public donations. It's like working like a starving artist, essentially. With a steady paycheck, developers can worry less about money and put in more hours on the job, instead of relying on making another Twitter post or YouTube post or Reddit post to get people more interested in the game development and thus more crowdfunding.
Neither a small business nor a large company is better than the other. They have their own unique advantages and disadvantages, and for some people, they don't mind the upper management because they already have that steady paycheck coming in. Plus, upper management can help out with the advertisement and promotion, while small business owners have to do their own publishing.
i agree with you. the amount of bugs & glitches, the limited engine, the lack of gameplay elements, the amount of removed features from past games, the shallow packs with recycled and recolored content, the sudden change on marketing (from smarter sims weirder stories, to sims is a safe space), the many attempts of ea to attract customers with politics and fake promises rather than creating a worthy product that shines on its own, all speaks for itself. and it isn't devs fault, they are just employees following what ea says and working with the budget they are given. i also think they try their best cuz to be where they are they gotta have mad skills, some of them have been in Maxis since the sims 2 days, and also cuz the sims is a unique game and it surely needs a LOT of maintenance and care and i'm sure ea is the one not providing enough for it. the game needs more budget & more developers. anyways, it's kind of interesting to see how ea has managed to stretch such a flawed game to last more than past iterations, and has also managed to outsold them. no wonder they ain't changing their strategy if it's already working.
to not keep this off topic i'll comment a bit about paralives. for now, i think the game looks too good to be true lol. it do looks promising so far but i don't like to see how there are folks that are starting to spread toxicity on the sims community and are already praising paralives like it's the second coming of the lord. but i also don't like to see people invalidating paralives just because it's a new competitor to their so loved and worshipped ts4. some people is already putting very high expectations on an indie game.
Yeah, I agree. Some people place way too much expectations and demands on Paralives, and most of their ideas seem to stem from previous The Sims titles - open world, hands-on businesses from Open For Business EP, etc. And even the creator himself says that Paralives is inspired by The Sims, just as Will Wright's The Sims is inspired by Little Computer People (1985).
With EA's resources, EA can churn out a new Sims game in about half a decade, with DLCs between the base games to keep customers entertained and happy while they are developing the next Sims game.
Paralives has a small labor pool with huge expectations and demands from crowdfunders and supporters and Patreons, so I won't be surprised if it takes a decade for final release. They may finish it and release it earlier, but the finished product may not fulfill customer's expectations or satisfy customer's desires if they have played and enjoyed previous The Sims titles.
Electronic Arts has a habit of buying out indie game development companies before, and I won't be surprised if EA decides to buy out Paralives and make the Paralives team work for EA. One advantage of working for a large company would be the compensation package (salary + benefits). Can you imagine crowdfunders paying for a whole team's salary and benefits package, especially in a time of economic recession? A compensation package would be any seasoned developer's dream, because they would pay into social security, Medicare, health insurance, medical and dental plans and retirement plans; and that can help support a family and pay the bills. Paralives and the Paralives team may still exist, but they would have EA as the publisher, thus not really a competitor to The Sims. Money is still going towards EA in the end.
here i leave some interesting reads about this
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2811638/-the-sims---born-from-fire.html
https://www.pcgamer.com/will-wright-at-bafta-the-creator-of-the-sims-on-his-influences-and-hints-to-his-next-game/
and also found this
Question from MaxSteele: Will, did you ever play "Little Computer People Research Project" from Activision, and did it influence you at all?
Will Wright: Yes, a long time ago. I've since gotten to know several people who were involved with that project, and many of them gave valuable feedback on The Sims, especially Rich Gold.
http://edition.cnn.com/chat/transcripts/2000/1/wright/index.html
in regards of paralives i don't know what else to say, it will be whatever the creator feels that fits better his purposes. i'm not closely following the game's development and so i'm missing out on many things he may have stated about the game.
Me neither. I just got the inspiration information from Wikipedia.