There’s a The Sims movie in the works, and it’s already signed up some major star-power in the form of Margot ‘Barbie’ Robbie’s production company and the director behind Marvel show Loki and the upcoming second season of The Last of Us. EA’s on board, too.
]]>Start at the beginning, right? When faced with a self-imposed task as massive and daunting as writing a retrospective on The Sims franchise, going back to the very first game was the obvious launchpad. The original The Sims — now sometimes called The Sims 1 for the sake of clarity — was released in February 2000, and received regular updates via expansion packs through to October 2003. The game was the brainchild of Will Wright, the designer behind the SimCity series, who had decided to approach the world of his popular city-building franchise from a new angle. Switching from macro- to micro-management, Wright's new spin-off project aimed to focus on the architectural design of individual houses. As time went on, his creative interests would shift again, to also take in the lives of the people inside the buildings.
]]>I'm aware that I talk about The Sims a lot; in fact, that's kind of how I ended up in this job. So rather than go into detail here about the original game itself (although if you want to hear more about it, I've got something pretty cool in the pipeline for you, so watch this space!), I've decided to use this HYP to talk about the brilliant TV adverts that first brought it to my attention.
]]>Earlier this week the social medias went wild over pictures of Justin Bieber's giant plastic mansion-hole. People were saying it looked like the Marvel Avengers HQ. This is the most incorrect thing I have ever heard. It clearly looks like something you'd see made out of empty Müller Corners and Fairy Liquid bottles on three successive episodes of Blue Peter.
Look at it. That's the long lens shot of it everyone is rinsing, in the header there. You can just imagine painting that circular bit on the left in white acrylic paint, and your mum putting it on the shelf with all the spaghetti so it would dry, except you couldn't be that patient so you started painting it silver too soon and that bit ended up being streaky compared to the rest. Anyway, turns out I'm also wrong and that what it actually is, is a base building from a 90s PC game.
]]>Happy Birthday the 'The Sims' series! You’re 20 years old today, which means you’re finally old enough to throw an old boot full of soup right at a cop’s head, and be totally immune to prosecution (seriously, it’s true! If you didn’t know about that lil trick, you should try it). You’re also old enough, apparently, to have released an unfeasible number of spinoffs, ports, add-ons and DLC packs over the years: I just checked out your wikipedia page to remind myself how many games had been released under the name, and had to have a little shout because I was so surprised.
I never really played you much, if I’m honest. I had some fun with your original instalment in 2000, but the only thing I remember doing is making a bloke called something like “Pete Strongman” or “Grief Wellington” or whatever, who lived in a grey cube just large enough for him to lift weights in 24 hours a day, while occasionally bursting into fits of racking sobs, or thinking about the army. Now I think about it, I basically delivered the definitive roast on incel culture, years ahead of time. Anyway, even though my only experience of the series was unwittingly creating Jordan Peterson’s soul 20 years ago, here I come with 10 ideas - one for every two years of your beautiful life - for what form the much-discussed Sims 5 should take.
]]>Earlier this week, EA revealed the new Tiny Living Stuff Pack for The Sims 4. It allows players to build cosy little homes, limited to just 100 floor tiles in size, and adds new little home items like a bookshelf that has an inbuilt TV. Plus: cosy knits! All very lovely. But the creativity of The Sims' community has never been confined by size - people already build beautiful, functional homes in 3x3 squares! And, conversely, some of the most innovative builds are a little more... grand.
I love Grand Designs. I can't help it. There is something soothing about watching people with more money than sense trying to build a mansion fit for the Hollywood Hills half underground in North London, forced to come to terms with the limits of their own ambition. Kevin McCloud bears witness to crumbling foundations, wrecked marriages, and the declaration of bankruptcies. Above all else, Grand Designs is a grand display of perseverance. And so, I wondered, "What are the Grandest Designs of The Sims?"
]]>When half the town was gone, an interloper appeared in an empty house. His name was Whitely and I still don't know where he came from -- he just arrived. Perhaps he saw an advert in the local paper for a house sitting vacant: "Previous tenant spontaneously combusted. Ready for immediate move-in. No questions asked." He needed to be dealt with.
This is the final instalment of Simento Mori, an exploration into the limits and meaning of death in The Sims by letting a whole neighbourhood waste away into nothingness. This is when it wastes away into nothingness. For those who want a refresher, check out parts one and two.
]]>While playing through this second instalment of Simento Mori, an exploration into the limits and meaning of death in The Sims, I nearly swallowed a fly. I had casually taken a sip of my drink, only to feel the sensation of some foreign object (decidedly solid) making contact with the inside of my teeth. I had to extract its carcass from my mouth with my thumb and forefinger. I'm not sure I will ever be able to drink rosé again. This comical brush with death, drowning in pink wine -- arguably, the most middle-class beverage to drown in -- perfectly exemplifies how ludicrous the whole thing is. Welcome to Simento Mori.
Simento Mori is my experiment to let a neighbourhood waste away into nothingness. Here, we continue into part two. For those who want a refresher, check out part one here. Oh, and there's spontaneous combustion in this one.
]]>Six months ago, The Sims inspired an existential crisis. I say this with no particular gravitas, but to say it: The Sims is an undeniably powerful force. You can read about that existential crisis here, but suffice it to say that I have both a deep admiration for, and significant vendetta against, Maxis property The Sims. Perhaps sensing this rage/respect combo for The Sims, I’ve been gifted the opportunity to write monthly about the game. I hope to take this column a variety of different places: Simmer communities, the game’s strange quirks, and emotional roller coaster rides. But I begin with a challenge.
In my recent thinking about The Sims, I decided that the only way forward in a game so dedicated to unending simulated experience, or a “ghostly perseverance,” is through either exhaustion or death. I figured, why not? And I built an entire neighbourhood in The Sims, full of randomised chimeric people, and waited for all of them to die one by one just to see what would happen.
]]>A year ago or so, I re-downloaded The Sims. My partner and I wanted a low-effort game to play together, and I introduced them to the life-changing videogame craze: “Make yourself in The Sims and live the life you’ve always wanted!!!” We made ourselves, built a beautiful little home, and adopted a cat. I became a professional writer or something, and they went into the “Music Industry.” We sputtered and blustered when our Sims declared to us, through the magic of in-game whims, that they wanted to get married. I quickly red-X ousted those desires from our Sims’ minds. Instead of acknowledging their desire for wedding bells, I had our Sims adopt a dog. That sinking feeling remained, however, and much like the incisive qualities of predictive text and pre-cog algorithms, I began to question how serious our relationship was. Let me repeat: The Sims made me reevaluate the seriousness of my very happy and committed long term relationship with its terrifying-yet-compelling simulacra. Y’all. This game is haunted.
]]>Videogames were a presence throughout my childhood, thanks to my dad having a PC for work. When he didn’t need to use it, I was allowed to tinker and explore. The games built into the computer like Solitaire, SkiFree and Fuji Golf, as well as the CD-ROM games we got from stores like Office Max and Borders, quickly became second nature to me.
Now, looking back at publications and exhibitions intended to showcase gaming history I realize that some of my own experiences are often missing. While many influential PC games are well known and we can trace their influence on videogames today, there are more blind spots when it comes to the CD-ROM boom of the mid-90s. These games were built for an audience that was familiar with PC software but perhaps not with games, and even in their own time they ignored the conventions of game design. This led to types of experimentation videogames of today can still learn from.
]]>The planet is full of aimless people. Dozens of non-descript robots silently going to and fro, with no discernable purpose or meaning. Yes, I’m at Gamescom, the annual gaming conference in Germany, but I’m not talking about the visitors on the show floor. I’m talking about the on-screen player bots of Dual Universe [official site], a sci-fi survival MMO making big promises about player numbers and control.
“This is going to be unlike anything else you’ve ever seen before,” says Jean-Christophe Baillie, founder of studio NovaQuark, “because it’s a giant sandbox shared by everyone at the same time where they can build everything they want.”
Like nothing I've ever seen before. That’s something I’m hearing a lot these days.
]]>Virginia never imagined she'd be telling a Black woman it was okay to wear Black clothes.
As an African with lighter skin, Virginia had feared accusations of cultural appropriation when she first started making traditional African outfits for The Sims 4. Though she had spent the first 12 years of her life in West Africa, her mixed-race origins marked her as an outsider, and she worried people might see her creations as inauthentic. That only made the response she received to one of her West-African wedding dresses all the more surprising.
'I'm African-American, I'm Black, but I don't feel strong ties to Africa,' read the email. 'Would it be cultural appropriation if my Sim wears it?'
]]>The Advertising Standards Agency publishes rulings every Wednesday on everything from psychic hotlines to videogames. I'm incredibly fond of their rulings. I think it's mostly because of the language the companies use to defend themselves, breaking videogame concepts down and presenting them in what's intended to be a neutral manner.
The upheld complaints are generally less entertaining for obvious reasons – the concerns have been, in some sense, valid. But the *not upheld* complaints often have an air of the ridiculous about them. Through the formal structure of the rulings you get a sense of raised eyebrows or rolled eyes, of overblown sincerity. I've also learned some unexpected things, like how many sugar puffs are in a portion...
Here are some of my favourites from the last few years:
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Later Sims games were probably better games, in terms of how they fleshed out the fantasy (and accidentally gave it more than the intended degree of consumerism critique subtext with all those expansion packs and DLC), but Will Wright's original people simulator remains unsurpassed, I think. It has this detached, sciency atmosphere, far more interested in people as behaviours than people as people - like an experiment which coalesced into entertainment.
]]>The Sims 4 [official site] has received a major patch and, true to form, the notes that accompany it are a delightful mix of the comic and the Weird. It's easy to imagine a Thomas Ligotti or Robert Aickman spinning some of the confusion within the code into individual tales of domestic horror. There are no garbled telephonic hauntings to match the unnerving dimensions of Your Tiny Hand is Frozen - none that have been discovered and purged, at least - but upon reading the entries below can anyone doubt that the suburbs that house our Sims have been infected with some uncanny disorder of the nerves?
]]>Note - this was originally published a month ago as part of the RPS Supporter program, hence the reference to our now-finished Survival Week.
It's Survival Week here at RPS, so I decided that I'd write about my earliest experiences with The Sims, a survival game like no other. Left to their own devices, Sims are just about smart enough to struggle through life but they're not quite intelligent enough to live. They need to be coaxed into improving their lot, and influenced by the click and the cursor. Without either clicks or cursors, I first encountered The Sims when I was struggling to build my own place in the world. Let's take a trip down the memory cul-de-sac.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam explores his own gaming history to understand why he plays and why he writes.
This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>Smile is a morose game. It's The Sims stripped back until you can see the white of its skull, a few beads of blood spoiling the perfection of bone like the piss-burned holes in a field of fresh snow. Your little computer person has needs, just as a Sim or an actual human does, and the entire purpose of life is to ensure that those needs are fulfilled. In Smile, this means that every day is a struggle to survive, as cooking a meal takes valuable time that could have been used playing a game, which would have been fine if you'd been able to have a shower at the same time. Smile is free (donations accepted through itch.io) and was created during the Ruin Jam.
]]>Hurible badda flabber? Wibble durble booby. Fasherk! Yes, you don't need to speak Simlish to know The Sims 4 is now out and ready to let you spend your precious life ensuring little computer people have far sexier and more successful ones. Only now you can't drown them in your pool. Does the rest have what it takes to compensate for that shocking omission? Here's Wot I Think...
]]>The on-stage presentation for The Sims 4 at E3 was a sinister piece of work. Forget your survival horror games and your gore-tastic third-person monster-choppers, this is the most disturbing video shown at the entire event. It begins with simple marketing buzz-speak - "In previous games you controlled the mind and body of your Sims. In the Sims 4, for the first time, you control their hearts." This is demonstrated by showing what look like canned animations linked to personality traits. So far, so Sims 3. Then, toward the end of the video, the presenter really takes control of a poor jock's heart.
]]>I like The Sims. Quite what that says about me I don't know but there it is. Actually, I can be more specific - I like the idea of The Sims far more than I like what the series has become. The third game seemed to be going in the right direction, simulating the lives of neighbours, workmates and friends, but without extensive modding those lives were empty. As is no doubt increasingly obvious to anyone who reads my wittering in a regular basis, I'm fascinated by the things that a game simulates while I'm not looking. I want those trees to make a sound even if I'm not there to hear it. I sense that The Sims 4 will be a step back from its prequel in that regard but the new 'Build' trailer is handsome.
]]>EA's recently-announced The Sims 4 may in fact be a new Sims game, sources have revealed to RPS.
The source, who did not wished to be named but who purports to have strong ties to the press release-reading community, claimed exclusively to this website that The Sims 4 is in fact the fourth in the Sims series.
]]>This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>Update: The memo we saw is now publicly posted here.
EA have announced tonight they're planning to sue Zynga, over the similarities between the recently released The Ville, and Maxis' The Sims Social. It's not the first time that Zynga has released a game that looks astonishingly similar to another company's game, but it's the first time they've met an opponent big enough to fight back. We've seen an internal EA memo that tells staff that while they are pursuing this because they believe they're legally in the right, they're also doing it because they believe it's time to be "taking a stand". It says that even if they were to lose, "we will have made a point."
]]>More from the archives, this time a 2007 piece on the dark eroticism inherent in The Sims, penned by the sorely-missed RPS co-founder and giant of words Kieron Gillen.
It was the phone calls that made me certain. The Sims was going to cross over, one way or another.
I worked in a cramped games magazine office for just shy of five years. There were only three times that we really knew the eye of a media mini-storm was circling somewhere above us. We knew we were being watched at those moments, because every time we answered the phone the same questions came from different missionaries from the Real World Media. The first and biggest spike in calls was part of the fallout of 9/11 when every journalist in the world needed to ask us whether Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear or Microsoft Flight Simulator could be used to train terrorists to take over commercial airliners. Majestic, prompting the second and smallest peak, was publisher Electronic Arts’ great failure – a reality-blurring attempt to commercialise the alternate-reality game before anyone really knew what an alternate-reality game was, which bombed in the States and was never released in Europe. The third was sparked by The Sims, Electronic Arts’ great success and one of the most popular and groundbreaking games of recent times.
]]>Oh no! It’s for girls! And not even the good type of girls. The bad ones. The ones who like Hollyoaks and reality TV, and feast on swirling and scurrilous rumours about Brangelina.
Except that’s a load of old rubbish, like claiming that games with guns only appeal to violent sociopaths or wargames only appeal to retired colonels. I have it on good authority that many current ranking members of the Armed Forces also like to play wargames. The Sims has long been a fascinating piece of software, in many ways experimental and exploratory, and supporting a type of creative play that is rare to find. Let’s mod it. Let’s really open it up.
]]>What's this? A press release has come tumbling through the RPS letterbox, bound in tattered leather and announcing the Spring 2011 release of The Sims Medieval. A full game of its own (presumably using the Sims 3 engine), The Sims Medieval will allow players to create their very own "Hero Sim (TM)" and then either head off on quests or focus on building up their kingdom. We're promised "drama, romance, conflict, and comedy" involving "characters from all walks of life, from Kings and Queens, to Knights and Wizards, Blacksmiths and Bards." Full press release, some screens and some thoughts after the break.
]]>College Humor gets it right pretty often, and this remarkably well produced Sims spoof is perfectly aimed. Sure, we've all told our own version of the time we made our Sims die in a puddle of their own urine, but CH realises those jokes with impressive production values and a superb horror movie vibe. In fact, it's because we're all so familiar with the themes that it works so well. Watch it below.
]]>Cleverman make cleverthinks! Fresh from the Web 2.0 expo earlier this month is this entertaining and educating half-hour talk with Will Wright about everything including but not limited to his career and games to date, what's next, lessons learned from Second Life, the intersect between games and reality and -ooh missus - Spore's controversial DRM and the business considerations around it: "These people have paid money for a game, and you don't want to be treating them basically as criminals". On Spore itself, he observes that he wanted it to be almost more of a toy than a game per se - something else for the game's many critics to chew on, then.
Also especially salient is an observation that gamers are basically narcissitic - "the more you can make the game about that person, the more interested, the more emotionally involved they will get." A theme which, clearly, has run through a number of his games. LET THE MAN SPEAK.
]]>We don't usually pay much attention to the charts, but I spotted the September 6th line up over on Shacknews and it amused me. And there's a mystery...
]]>Last week we brought you part one of our interview with EA’s Rod Humble. This week we bring you the second part, where we get down to talking about Rod’s day job: The Sims. When you’re sat down for dinner with the man in charge of one the biggest selling gaming franchise ever, and have a chance to find out more about the forthcoming The Sims 3, what do you ask about? Peeing. And then some slightly more practical questions. Along the way we discussed The Sims’ sociology on a wider scale, how Rod finds freezing to death endlessly funny, and why The Sims’ expansion packs deserve a better time than the gaming press gives them.
RPS: You said that you want Sims 3 to welcome back the hardcore.
RH: Yeah. We’re adding systems which add depth and longevity to the gameplay. In addition to being able to go up many different advancement tracks, such as gardening or hobbies. The game also gives you little tasks to do. The game has an added depth that I think we’ve learned from other games that have come out in the last four or five years. It adds that extra meat of challenge. I think a lot of current players love all the Sims games as creative tools, but quite often I think core gamers like challenge and depth, and we’re always trying to strike a balance. I hope Sims 3 adds a little bit more to that balance.
]]>An unimaginable number of little computer people have now been created and probably sent to work against their will by cackling human overlords.
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