Perhaps surprising to no one, but EA appear to have received promising results from making Sims 4 free to play and are hiring for a “Head of Monetization & Marketplace”, which describes the next...
Perhaps surprising to no one, but EA appear to have received promising results from making Sims 4 free to play and are hiring for a “Head of Monetization & Marketplace”, which describes the next title as “free to enter”.
The ongoing trend of making games “pay to have fun” is ruining the experience for me, personally. I get limited time to play games as an adult and have bills to pay, the last thing I want in a game is having to spend real money on virtual goods. But I have to admit, I’m probably not the target market!
The level of customization in Paralives looks pretty impressive, I think I could easily get lost in the weeds there. But for those with a strong sense of design I could see that being an absolute...
The level of customization in Paralives looks pretty impressive, I think I could easily get lost in the weeds there. But for those with a strong sense of design I could see that being an absolute delight.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Life by You is actually like. It's by a Paradox team and seems more focused on the people than the design element (based on their one video on the Steam page) and very Sims-like in that way. It's coming out for early access this September, so we should start to get a better sense of what it is/will be in a couple of months. Mostly I'm just glad to see other games picking up in this space so that hopefully the Sims series might be a little less predatory in its pricing.
See that makes me a little sad about life by you. The one sims game I really enjoyed I enjoyed more for designing the house then messing with the sims. But, that being said I hate how...
See that makes me a little sad about life by you. The one sims game I really enjoyed I enjoyed more for designing the house then messing with the sims.
But, that being said I hate how micromanaging you have to be in sims. When I first heard sims I thought it would be more like you set up their house/stuff and affected them through their environment but they acted on their own. I don't really want to control them directly. I want to see what happens if I fuck around with their environment and push them that way.
I've been following the development of Paralives for years and it appears that the game is nowhere close to a playable alpha release at this point. I honestly can't believe anyone is still...
I've been following the development of Paralives for years and it appears that the game is nowhere close to a playable alpha release at this point. I honestly can't believe anyone is still following it after this long. I only stay in the Discord at this point to see whatever announcements they post they @ everyone.
You probably know this, but the entire Sims community has been foaming at the mouth for years in eager anticipation of any possible alternative to the Sims, since it generally became a piece of...
I honestly can't believe anyone is still following it after this long.
You probably know this, but the entire Sims community has been foaming at the mouth for years in eager anticipation of any possible alternative to the Sims, since it generally became a piece of garbage to play. Yet people are addicted to the life sim of it all. I feel like it could be years and people would still be interested in Paralives.
Personally, I just packed away the part of my heart that loves the Sims, and gave up. EA will never improve, and it will be a long, long time before any game can emulate what people are looking for, if ever.
I was excited for it early on, but from watching their road map, they seem to have a serious issue with scope creep, and I'm concerned that it's never going to be ready. They would have been...
I was excited for it early on, but from watching their road map, they seem to have a serious issue with scope creep, and I'm concerned that it's never going to be ready.
They would have been better off trying to do a more MVP style of delivery and get a game out, than trying to have half the Sims features in existence on launch.
Freemium games always evoke a sense of dread as I now expect it to be an incredibly barebones game, with the good content locked behind paywalls. I don’t play any sims but I’m sad to see it become...
Freemium games always evoke a sense of dread as I now expect it to be an incredibly barebones game, with the good content locked behind paywalls. I don’t play any sims but I’m sad to see it become more and more common of a practice.
If we're being honest, Sims 4 has always been a "free to play + microtransaction" style game. They just convinced everyone to pay $40 for the base game, then slapped a free to play model on top of...
If we're being honest, Sims 4 has always been a "free to play + microtransaction" style game. They just convinced everyone to pay $40 for the base game, then slapped a free to play model on top of it. From there, it costs anywhere from $20-$100+ just to buy enough add-ons to have a decent version of the game (sims 4 base game doesn't have seasons, for example, and many people consider seasons to be a very basic, almost necessary part of the game.)
It's genuinely sad what has happened to that franchise. But as far as things are now, it's probably better that they're basically being transparent about the model moving forward, and offering the base game for free. It should've been free this whole time.
I was thinking the same thing. The freemium model might actually be an improvement in some ways; the expansions were always way too expensive for me to justify; it feels like joining EA Play with...
I was thinking the same thing. The freemium model might actually be an improvement in some ways; the expansions were always way too expensive for me to justify; it feels like joining EA Play with it's monthly fees is basically the only way to get into The Sims 4 right now because of all the expansion packs and how much they can affect the gameplay. With this model if I want to buy a dog, I could (theoretically) just buy a dog and not have to buy a whole pack with 20 different animals, extra outfits, furniture, etc.
That being said, the devil is always in the details.
Not surprising really in this day and age, gettem in for free and waggle those expansion 'contents' in their face as they login....ohhhh why not let me grab my wallet for that cool sofa pack.
Not surprising really in this day and age, gettem in for free and waggle those expansion 'contents' in their face as they login....ohhhh why not let me grab my wallet for that cool sofa pack.
Sims has been this bad since the early 2000s. They have more DLC then train stimulators. Switching to a free to play model might be cheaper with more content for the average player considering how...
Sims has been this bad since the early 2000s. They have more DLC then train stimulators. Switching to a free to play model might be cheaper with more content for the average player considering how bad they monetize everything.
I have it on good authority that it'll also be multiplayer. I know I'm just some schmuck on the internet, so take that information with whatever grain of salt you want.
I have it on good authority that it'll also be multiplayer. I know I'm just some schmuck on the internet, so take that information with whatever grain of salt you want.
I believe you. There was a write up a while back that there had been an effort to make Sims 4 online only, but that it had been shelved after the debacle with Simcity 5. If I recall, that's why...
I believe you. There was a write up a while back that there had been an effort to make Sims 4 online only, but that it had been shelved after the debacle with Simcity 5. If I recall, that's why they went with the more cartoonist, less detailed art style than TS3, and such a huge step backwards to tiny maps from TS3 loading the whole map with no loading screens after.
You're correct. One of my favorite YouTubers made a great, in-depth video about this, for anyone who is interested in the bizarre and chaotic history of development of the Sims 4.
You're correct. One of my favorite YouTubers made a great, in-depth video about this, for anyone who is interested in the bizarre and chaotic history of development of the Sims 4.
I hate it but I think it will work for them. While I hope Life By You is a good competitor and Paralives continues the developement, Sims right now is has absolutely no competition. There is no...
I hate it but I think it will work for them. While I hope Life By You is a good competitor and Paralives continues the developement, Sims right now is has absolutely no competition. There is no other game like it (and for good reason, making life simulator games is incredibly complex, especially considering the level of customizability and elements that Sims has) and it has a massive loyal base. There are players out there who only play the Sims and nothing else. There are players who will buy absolutely every DLC that comes out. They keep releasing the lowest tier shit and people still buy it enough for them to justify doing it over and over again. Of course there will be many of them who would pay to play Sims 5 DLC. I'm not a big fan of the move of charging subscription to play what would've been previously packs you could buy, but I can see a lot of people being fine with a monthly payment service model, especially if it's bundled with EA's version of game pass, which is something they've already tested with some exclusive content earlier this year..
I don't know how this is going to impact the quality of the game considering the quality of the newer Sims 4 DLCs (which also could be lower if the best people are working on Sims 5) but I'm skeptical about it considering how much the game relies on the mod community to fix some of the more persistent and annoying game elements and their recent move to use Curseforge as the "official" mod platform.
When done right, I think the "fremium" business model can be a net positive for competitive multiplayer games. There are clear benefits for multiplayer games to have an ongoing stable revenue...
When done right, I think the "fremium" business model can be a net positive for competitive multiplayer games. There are clear benefits for multiplayer games to have an ongoing stable revenue stream. When you limit transactions to cosmetics, you can fund ongoing production of new maps, modes, and other content without having to split the playerbase with paid expansions or DLC map packs.
The math doesn't translate well to single player games, however.
For starters, solo games don't have the "fractured playerbase" problem. When I picked up Hot Date for The Sims 20 years ago, it wasn't an issue that my friends did not also have the expansion. I was still able to play it just fine, to my heart's content. It wasn't like the time I bought the Special Forces expansion for Battlefield 2 only for all the servers running the new maps to be ghost towns within a few months.
Then, there is the fact that cosmetics do not mean as much in single player. This, I think, leads to developers needing to put actual gameplay content behind paywalls. We start seeing things like time-gated progression or grindy gameplay that can be skipped with money, which seriously messes with the moment to moment flow of gameplay.
Suffice it to say, this news doesn't give me any faith that The Sims 5 will be worth my time or money. Though I haven't really had any interest in the franchise since 3 came out 14 years ago.
I mean the Sims 4 dlc has a cluster fuck of problems, ranging from removing features that was part of the Sims for years to just being really bad or really broken on release. And it is really sad...
I mean the Sims 4 dlc has a cluster fuck of problems, ranging from removing features that was part of the Sims for years to just being really bad or really broken on release. And it is really sad that 3 is considered better than 4 because of optimization issues that 4 has, bugs that 4 has, broken features that 4 has. Like 3 does have some optimization issues, down to the fact that it is a 14 year old game and the amount of dlcs it has, but there is a mod that fixes the optimization issue that 3 has with all of the dlc installed.
And making Sims 4 and 5 free, is really fucking stupid to begin with. And like you had said, freeium games can be good in the multiplayer world, with it being limited to cosmetics and nothing else. But Sims being a single player experience, it really makes no sense at all. And coupled that to buy all of the dlcs for 4, because EA had made it free to play for some reason, would literally cost you thousands of dollars in one go.
Of the single-player games, the Sims is probably the one I'd expect that would thrive best with a freemium model since they've always had the expansion pack model. The expansion packs aren't just...
Of the single-player games, the Sims is probably the one I'd expect that would thrive best with a freemium model since they've always had the expansion pack model. The expansion packs aren't just cosmetics, but have new features that can radically alter gameplay. Even with purely cosmetics, they matter a lot more in the Sims than most other games since one of the primary appeals is decorating/building houses and dressing up Sims. The franchise is also massive enough to guarantee a steady flow of players and sales based purely on the past games, so they're not taking the same risks as other freemium games.
My main cause for wariness is just how the Sims 4 has been handled. It's just so bland compared to the past Sims games. I played a friend's copy a bit at release, and likely wouldn't have bothered with it again if it wasn't made free recently. While I can't say I haven't been tempted to buy expansion packs to get more stuff and features, the expansion packs are all so bare-bones and bland compared to the previous games (seriously, Cottage Living? Snowy Escape?). They're also blatantly designed and split up to maximize sales, particularly don't like game packs since they introduce gameplay features rather than just cosmetics, and several could be merged together.
Basically, while the Sims could work on a freemium model (and already kinda does as shown by the Sims 4), I don't trust them to make the Sims 5's base game feel complete and like a standalone game. I feel like it will be an empty shell meant to give players a taste of its potential. Especially since they'd have to release something paid pretty soon after release to start making a profit off it.
I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, the Sims is probably the best franchise to use a freemium model since it's always had expansion packs. Of all the games to add microtransactions,...
I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, the Sims is probably the best franchise to use a freemium model since it's always had expansion packs. Of all the games to add microtransactions, the Sims has been the most logical one to me. And I will say, the Sims 4 base game (the only one I own at the moment because it's free) is pretty enjoyable on its own... Now. At its initial release, I remember it had a lot of issues and felt incomplete (I still can't get over that they didn't even have pools). And the rest of the games have made me wary of it.
While the Sims has always had expansion packs, EA's somehow gotten even more predatory with them. The expansion packs for the Sims 4 are just... bland. A lot of the themes of the big expansion packs don't feel like they'd merit a full expansion pack (Cottage Living? Snowy Escape? Get Together?), and then it feels like they broke up stuff that could be an expansion pack into those "game" and "stuff" packs. (Seriously, should've had Werewolves, Vampires and Magic in one supernatural pack.)
Just looking at the list of expansion, game and stuff packs (not even going to mention the kits) does nothing to really excite me the way that it did for previous games, because they all feel so blatantly like cash-grabs. And it makes me question how "complete" the base game of the Sims 5 will be.
Also, I recently realized how dull the Sims 4 is compared to the older games. They used to be zany and anything could happen. Now with Sims 4, you need to mod it to have burglars because they were apparently deemed too scary. They've focused too much on realism and "comfortable" gameplay, they forgot part of the fun was the potential for chaos.
Perhaps surprising to no one, but EA appear to have received promising results from making Sims 4 free to play and are hiring for a “Head of Monetization & Marketplace”, which describes the next title as “free to enter”.
The ongoing trend of making games “pay to have fun” is ruining the experience for me, personally. I get limited time to play games as an adult and have bills to pay, the last thing I want in a game is having to spend real money on virtual goods. But I have to admit, I’m probably not the target market!
Has anyone tried Paralives? It looks like an interesting take on the Sims.
The level of customization in Paralives looks pretty impressive, I think I could easily get lost in the weeds there. But for those with a strong sense of design I could see that being an absolute delight.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Life by You is actually like. It's by a Paradox team and seems more focused on the people than the design element (based on their one video on the Steam page) and very Sims-like in that way. It's coming out for early access this September, so we should start to get a better sense of what it is/will be in a couple of months. Mostly I'm just glad to see other games picking up in this space so that hopefully the Sims series might be a little less predatory in its pricing.
See that makes me a little sad about life by you. The one sims game I really enjoyed I enjoyed more for designing the house then messing with the sims.
But, that being said I hate how micromanaging you have to be in sims. When I first heard sims I thought it would be more like you set up their house/stuff and affected them through their environment but they acted on their own. I don't really want to control them directly. I want to see what happens if I fuck around with their environment and push them that way.
I've been following the development of Paralives for years and it appears that the game is nowhere close to a playable alpha release at this point. I honestly can't believe anyone is still following it after this long. I only stay in the Discord at this point to see whatever announcements they post they @ everyone.
You probably know this, but the entire Sims community has been foaming at the mouth for years in eager anticipation of any possible alternative to the Sims, since it generally became a piece of garbage to play. Yet people are addicted to the life sim of it all. I feel like it could be years and people would still be interested in Paralives.
Personally, I just packed away the part of my heart that loves the Sims, and gave up. EA will never improve, and it will be a long, long time before any game can emulate what people are looking for, if ever.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Paralives. I’ll continue to follow progress, and hopefully it’s as great as everyone says it will be!
I was excited for it early on, but from watching their road map, they seem to have a serious issue with scope creep, and I'm concerned that it's never going to be ready.
They would have been better off trying to do a more MVP style of delivery and get a game out, than trying to have half the Sims features in existence on launch.
Freemium games always evoke a sense of dread as I now expect it to be an incredibly barebones game, with the good content locked behind paywalls. I don’t play any sims but I’m sad to see it become more and more common of a practice.
If we're being honest, Sims 4 has always been a "free to play + microtransaction" style game. They just convinced everyone to pay $40 for the base game, then slapped a free to play model on top of it. From there, it costs anywhere from $20-$100+ just to buy enough add-ons to have a decent version of the game (sims 4 base game doesn't have seasons, for example, and many people consider seasons to be a very basic, almost necessary part of the game.)
It's genuinely sad what has happened to that franchise. But as far as things are now, it's probably better that they're basically being transparent about the model moving forward, and offering the base game for free. It should've been free this whole time.
I was thinking the same thing. The freemium model might actually be an improvement in some ways; the expansions were always way too expensive for me to justify; it feels like joining EA Play with it's monthly fees is basically the only way to get into The Sims 4 right now because of all the expansion packs and how much they can affect the gameplay. With this model if I want to buy a dog, I could (theoretically) just buy a dog and not have to buy a whole pack with 20 different animals, extra outfits, furniture, etc.
That being said, the devil is always in the details.
Not surprising really in this day and age, gettem in for free and waggle those expansion 'contents' in their face as they login....ohhhh why not let me grab my wallet for that cool sofa pack.
Sims has been this bad since the early 2000s. They have more DLC then train stimulators. Switching to a free to play model might be cheaper with more content for the average player considering how bad they monetize everything.
Yep. Anyone familiar with the Sims saying this is a shock is engaging in some serious historical revisionism.
I have it on good authority that it'll also be multiplayer. I know I'm just some schmuck on the internet, so take that information with whatever grain of salt you want.
I believe you. There was a write up a while back that there had been an effort to make Sims 4 online only, but that it had been shelved after the debacle with Simcity 5. If I recall, that's why they went with the more cartoonist, less detailed art style than TS3, and such a huge step backwards to tiny maps from TS3 loading the whole map with no loading screens after.
You're correct. One of my favorite YouTubers made a great, in-depth video about this, for anyone who is interested in the bizarre and chaotic history of development of the Sims 4.
I hate it but I think it will work for them. While I hope Life By You is a good competitor and Paralives continues the developement, Sims right now is has absolutely no competition. There is no other game like it (and for good reason, making life simulator games is incredibly complex, especially considering the level of customizability and elements that Sims has) and it has a massive loyal base. There are players out there who only play the Sims and nothing else. There are players who will buy absolutely every DLC that comes out. They keep releasing the lowest tier shit and people still buy it enough for them to justify doing it over and over again. Of course there will be many of them who would pay to play Sims 5 DLC. I'm not a big fan of the move of charging subscription to play what would've been previously packs you could buy, but I can see a lot of people being fine with a monthly payment service model, especially if it's bundled with EA's version of game pass, which is something they've already tested with some exclusive content earlier this year..
I don't know how this is going to impact the quality of the game considering the quality of the newer Sims 4 DLCs (which also could be lower if the best people are working on Sims 5) but I'm skeptical about it considering how much the game relies on the mod community to fix some of the more persistent and annoying game elements and their recent move to use Curseforge as the "official" mod platform.
When done right, I think the "fremium" business model can be a net positive for competitive multiplayer games. There are clear benefits for multiplayer games to have an ongoing stable revenue stream. When you limit transactions to cosmetics, you can fund ongoing production of new maps, modes, and other content without having to split the playerbase with paid expansions or DLC map packs.
The math doesn't translate well to single player games, however.
For starters, solo games don't have the "fractured playerbase" problem. When I picked up Hot Date for The Sims 20 years ago, it wasn't an issue that my friends did not also have the expansion. I was still able to play it just fine, to my heart's content. It wasn't like the time I bought the Special Forces expansion for Battlefield 2 only for all the servers running the new maps to be ghost towns within a few months.
Then, there is the fact that cosmetics do not mean as much in single player. This, I think, leads to developers needing to put actual gameplay content behind paywalls. We start seeing things like time-gated progression or grindy gameplay that can be skipped with money, which seriously messes with the moment to moment flow of gameplay.
Suffice it to say, this news doesn't give me any faith that The Sims 5 will be worth my time or money. Though I haven't really had any interest in the franchise since 3 came out 14 years ago.
I mean the Sims 4 dlc has a cluster fuck of problems, ranging from removing features that was part of the Sims for years to just being really bad or really broken on release. And it is really sad that 3 is considered better than 4 because of optimization issues that 4 has, bugs that 4 has, broken features that 4 has. Like 3 does have some optimization issues, down to the fact that it is a 14 year old game and the amount of dlcs it has, but there is a mod that fixes the optimization issue that 3 has with all of the dlc installed.
And making Sims 4 and 5 free, is really fucking stupid to begin with. And like you had said, freeium games can be good in the multiplayer world, with it being limited to cosmetics and nothing else. But Sims being a single player experience, it really makes no sense at all. And coupled that to buy all of the dlcs for 4, because EA had made it free to play for some reason, would literally cost you thousands of dollars in one go.
Of the single-player games, the Sims is probably the one I'd expect that would thrive best with a freemium model since they've always had the expansion pack model. The expansion packs aren't just cosmetics, but have new features that can radically alter gameplay. Even with purely cosmetics, they matter a lot more in the Sims than most other games since one of the primary appeals is decorating/building houses and dressing up Sims. The franchise is also massive enough to guarantee a steady flow of players and sales based purely on the past games, so they're not taking the same risks as other freemium games.
My main cause for wariness is just how the Sims 4 has been handled. It's just so bland compared to the past Sims games. I played a friend's copy a bit at release, and likely wouldn't have bothered with it again if it wasn't made free recently. While I can't say I haven't been tempted to buy expansion packs to get more stuff and features, the expansion packs are all so bare-bones and bland compared to the previous games (seriously, Cottage Living? Snowy Escape?). They're also blatantly designed and split up to maximize sales, particularly don't like game packs since they introduce gameplay features rather than just cosmetics, and several could be merged together.
Basically, while the Sims could work on a freemium model (and already kinda does as shown by the Sims 4), I don't trust them to make the Sims 5's base game feel complete and like a standalone game. I feel like it will be an empty shell meant to give players a taste of its potential. Especially since they'd have to release something paid pretty soon after release to start making a profit off it.
I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, the Sims is probably the best franchise to use a freemium model since it's always had expansion packs. Of all the games to add microtransactions, the Sims has been the most logical one to me. And I will say, the Sims 4 base game (the only one I own at the moment because it's free) is pretty enjoyable on its own... Now. At its initial release, I remember it had a lot of issues and felt incomplete (I still can't get over that they didn't even have pools). And the rest of the games have made me wary of it.
While the Sims has always had expansion packs, EA's somehow gotten even more predatory with them. The expansion packs for the Sims 4 are just... bland. A lot of the themes of the big expansion packs don't feel like they'd merit a full expansion pack (Cottage Living? Snowy Escape? Get Together?), and then it feels like they broke up stuff that could be an expansion pack into those "game" and "stuff" packs. (Seriously, should've had Werewolves, Vampires and Magic in one supernatural pack.)
Just looking at the list of expansion, game and stuff packs (not even going to mention the kits) does nothing to really excite me the way that it did for previous games, because they all feel so blatantly like cash-grabs. And it makes me question how "complete" the base game of the Sims 5 will be.
Also, I recently realized how dull the Sims 4 is compared to the older games. They used to be zany and anything could happen. Now with Sims 4, you need to mod it to have burglars because they were apparently deemed too scary. They've focused too much on realism and "comfortable" gameplay, they forgot part of the fun was the potential for chaos.
This ain't it.