Premades and Precepts

There is a two-part interview with Russell Arons, VP of marketing for EA Play (so that’s what it’s called now) up on Gamesindustry.biz. I like to read these ‘industry sources’ because you often get a totally different perspective from what press releases and official previews tell you, such as…

TS3′s REAL core audience

“The Sims 3 is looking at 16-24 year-old PC players .. [it] has been developed from the ground up specifically against those consumer audiences.”

“it’s not just about appealing to the current Sims fans – they’re critically important, but we know we have to bring new consumers in too.”

So the people complaining about unnecessary changes, and who aren’t in this nicely-segmented age bracket or are ‘old consumers’, have a point. It’s not “developed against” them.

More below about the delay, social networking and kids, and the surprising use of the Internet to market games.

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I’m not really a ‘news blogging’ person but Rod Humble (Head of Sims and EA Play, and the guy who wrote the no-DRM open letter) mentioned a few interesting things in this forum thread. I’m just picking out the interesting stuff that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

• “… we open up a whole bunch of the game to modders that I think will impress people. Not sure where this idea that [modding] was harder came from. Newer, yes, different yes but not harder.”
• “I assure you, there will be fully featured very large expansions.”
• “Similar to Sims 2, the new formats will start out hard and get easier as the team works with the modders and updates/releases tools.”
• “Meshes are at the high end of hard (as you would expect). I just went down and asked the (very tired) Sims 3 team leads. It is very high on their agenda.”
• “Making meshes to put in the game is not that hard, its getting everything to work perfectly throughout the game that is the tough part.”
• On availability of nude/no-censor mods: “Given the priorities of modders, learning the system, testing time, audience demand etc I would say ………. Day 1.”
  

That seems to confirm post-release tools (neighborhood editor FIRST please!) and technical support for modders.

Also, Rod Humble thinks Sims players are perverts. Aren’t we all? :)

As we approach the release of TS3 I’d like to give a shout out to all the sensationalist media outlets and moral crusaders. Your misinformed insights and biased reports bring joy to all gamers. I know that the game isn’t out yet, but if most ‘angry’ critics don’t bother to play the games they’re complaining about, why should I?

Here’s ten fresh controversies for the nutters with microphones. (Keep in mind some of my suggestions are actually saner than others. I needed ten things, OK?)

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This post is very emo and whiny about pirates getting stuff before honest folk, and the second half is really me railing against oppressive broadband quotas.

Regard this as your forewarning.

Well, it was 99% certain to happen early, but the Sims 3 (weighing in @ 4.94 GB) has leaked.

Edit I: SecuROM is BACK. Run.

Edit II: Whispers that it may be an early leak of the Download Edition (already confirmed to contain SecuROM). Jury is out on whether the disc version will have the Blight. Alternately, may be preview code, due to missing content. Smart to wait until retail version is up. Smarter to buy the freakin’ thing.

I’m angry at this. Two reasons.

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It took a while, but I’ve finished setting up installing WordPress on my own domain (for the fourth time!), setting up the blog, and importing the posts from my old Blogger site (now consigned to the Internet wastes).

I actually spent most of the time doing this tagging, categorising, and editing all of the older articles to look less like obsessively egocentric Sims fan ravings. Fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially while doing it all on a 64k connection.

Edit: If you’re looking for the careers in the full game, see this post

SimSocial, the so-called “free trial” of TS3 went live this weekend. I currently have horrendously slow internet but I did play it for about half an hour, and found the most interesting aspect of it the careers. We now have some information on career tracks that will probably make it into the final game! There’s probably a list elsewhere on the net, but here’s the one I’ve been compiling. As you may tell from the snarky comments, I’m not a big fan of them.

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Huge missed opportunity here. Here’s my list of suggested traits,
political correctness be damned. Almost all of them were derived from
the ‘opposite’ of the vanilla traits.

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With TS3′s story progression and simultaneous aging would it be harder to create an integrated economy. That is, one where taxes and fees go out, and money is used in a meaningful way. Even with appropriate mods and hacks, every other family is left ‘chaotic’, freely squandering their family funds without any player control over where the money goes. Even if there was some kind of automatic deduction hack, it still might be limited by an inability to pay at the right time. Further yet, families will autonomously move house, presumable with more money from nowhere…will the madness stop?

While it’s a blessing for those of us who hate micro-managing everybody, it doesn’t help players who want to keep records, levy fines and stop money coming from nowhere. If you want the degree of control back, you have to return to the TS2 static model. Well, it’s not clear how aging and story progression will be tied together, but I presume you’d need both on, otherwise you’d end up with families full of kids (no aging) or Sims growing old and dying alone without your input (no SP).

I imagine there will need to be some creative hacking of the game, plus the capabilities to allow it, before there could be a truly integrated ‘autonomous economy’ in TS3. Otherwise, players who wish to ‘integrate’ will need to return to meticulous micromanagement of each Sim. Bit of a bummer really. I really hate the giant promotion bonuses and 20K handouts.

From the interactive preview CD revealed in this thread:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=1b3acec347263a40b763308c4af2d0a2&directoryID;=225&startRow;=1&openItemID;=item.225,item.43,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

*Sigh* Will they ever learn…

I don’t know if I’ve expressed it elsewhere on this site, but I don’t like the whimsical nature of the TS3 careers. They should at least pay heed to the notion that the workplaces are visible, that the setting is a medium-size town/city, and that people in the real world don’t get paid for jobs that employers aren’t willing to pay them for. At least in TS2 the action happened offscreen. They could be a bit more imaginative with the settings.

Anyway, here’s my take on what was revealed career-wise.

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It seems overly philosophical, but if I were writing a Sims story, I would really try to evoke the sense that Sims live in a completely different universe, with different rules. If you think about the game in that way you don’t get hung up as much on the less realistic parts of their lives.

• Technology never changes.
• Sims have different physiologies. They are pregnant for a large chunk of their lives, they are all the same height, and they make blue pee (and they can ONLY pee.)
• No real-world references in general, especially branded stuff. I would probably go to pains to avoid using brand names, or even pixelate the stuff like a 90s hip-hip music video. Advertising truly bugs me when it gets subliminially inserted into Sims stories.
• There is no English in the Sims world, no real-life writing or signs.
• Sims are fully capable of driving, swimming, etc. without lessons.
• Sims are strictly non-religious except for the odd supernatural element (i.e. Grim Reaper).
• Sims are more relaxed about privacy – witness the TS2 telephone directory. Also, they’re generally more permissive with their children and teens (letting them go off on their own), even though they can NEVER be left at home alone.
• Education and professions work differently. There’s no such thing as professional qualifications: any entry-level bum can become a doctor or lawyer without a degree (despite TS2′s weird reference in the Paramedic description to ‘night school’). Uni was a bit of an aberration if you ask me.
• Llamas must pervade everything. (Hey, why haven’t there been actual, ownable llamas in The Sims yet? If you’re listening, EA, OWNABLE LLAMAS!!!!