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Sims 2 Goes Gold
Dan Farina writes "The long awaited 'The Sims 2' has gone Gold, as seen on the latest posting on Maxis' The Sims 2 updates page. It appears that it will be on time after all, an unusual occurrence in this industry." I'm already having a strange obsessive twitching in my left leg. I think I might need to use up some vacation time in September.
It appears that it will be on time after all, an unusual occurrence in this industry.
I'm sorry what did you say? I was busy playing Half Life 2.
Wil Wright has just finished work on his Money Printer 2.0 (TM). Much like his original Money Printer, this will allow Wright access to enormous sums of money, and all he has to do is insert the monthly "expansion pack" to print even more!
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
Great...just in time for the next semester. That means one of two things: either I get addicted and fail the semester, or I wait till my next work term. What a dilemma.
Anyone else ever thought that the sims was a glorified doll house game?
Probably why I never play it... dolls and doll houses don't interest me. I'm not saying it shouldn't interest you, it just doesn't interest me.
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
http://thesims2.ea.com/images/screenshots/screensh ot_91.jpg I hope we finally get to see some ACTION! Or at least make an adult patch..pleeeasee ;)
So we have a chance at having a life.
Right inside our computer!
You don't need to call off, you only have to go to work every other day to not get fired. I always hate when the boss calls to yell during the middle of my nap after a long morning of weight lifting, doesn't he know that's only going to make me skip work the day after tomorrow too?
Seriously, it looks like they did a great job with this game. Don't know if I'll like having my sims age and die on me but we'll see.
Also gamespy has a brand new interview with Will Wright about the game.
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
I played The Sims when it first came out. First, I loved it. Then, I ended up realizing that I was neglecting my real life chores in order to make sure that I played the game and got my Sims to do their chores.
I'd like to play The Sims I some more, but what I want is a way to get the base game + all the expansions in one easy box. I don't want to buy a $30 game plus 5 or 6 expansion packs at $20 a piece. If I can plop down $50 for everything, I'd do it (on my Mac, Aspyr). There is "The Sims Mega Deluxe", but that only has 3/7 of the expansion packs.
I don't need a prettier version, I enjoyed the game play of the first one a great deal.
Sequels by wal-mart style developers (like EA) usually are on time when you consider the main part of the game has already been made.
It would be far more poignant to ask how late the first one was!
Anyone know when, if, there will be a Linux / Mac whatever version.
They could have paied monkey boy for the year they were late to do a port and ship the binaries on the release disk.
That's probably about a extra 10% to the market, or mabe upto 20% if you look at the minimum specs.
Mac and Linux have less games so they get more bang for the advertising buck, so they could possibly end up shipping 25% to Linux and Mac.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Damn Sims, people who play this sucky game are the same fancies who watch Survivors and cry when their favourite drops out. Or watch Queer Eye For Idiots to get tips on how to dress. Real men play Doom3 and Half-Life 2, when they are not training to become better ninjas.
Only way for The Sims to become playable for us Real Men, would be to include ninjas and pirates ( also replace all relationshipstuff with killing, and "build your own house" should be changed to "destroy your neighbours house").
I've had it with you linux-loving, Sims playing fairies, I will no longer read any other website than the best page in the universe. You can keep on discussing about the latest Barbie's Pony game and when it's linux port is coming out.
( I don't need to include the smiley, now do I? )
IMO The Sims are not marketed to the same age group as Barbies. Have you played this game or seen the commercials? If anything, its marketed towards lonely males (hmmm, good forum for discussion). In fact, I've played the Sims before and I really hope that a lot of Barbie aged girls are not playing, there is a lot of suggestive humor that is probably not appropriate for young children.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Sims2 was due out in _MARCH_ originally.
Not only that, it was supposed to have precursor tools/applications out in Nov 2003.
The project in fact is about 6 months overdue.
PLD.
Best part of the original Sims game. I hope they kept it.
Right, user created content. The expansion packs are bought less for the extra content but for the extra capabilties given to content creators. New type of chairs, new types of clothing. It may sound strange but the original game had some severe limitations on what kinda seating you could have. You could create a low seat but any sim sitting on it would float.
So why are Mac and to a lesser extent Linux versions important? I think it is save to say that the Mac crowd has a higher percentage of people who like to create artwork. Linux has a higher percentage of coders.
It is telling that a lot of the free content sites I visited had very clear instructions for how to use their content on the mac version.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Sims Franchise Celebrates Three Years at the Top (feb. 2003)
The Sims franchise has shipped over 24 million units, including more than eight million units of the core product, The Sims.
Since the launch in 2000, The Sims franchise has spawned five expansion packs and a deluxe, console, and online version. The Sims has been translated into more than 17 languages and is sold worldwide.
According to The NPD Group, The Sims base product was the number one selling PC game in 2000, 2001, and 2002.
The Sims franchise games held five of the top ten spots on the 2002 best-selling PC games in North America chart, released by The NPD Group.
The game's long list of honors has included being selected "Game of the Year" for 2000 by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and by numerous other publications in the United States and abroad. The creator of The Sims, Will Wright, was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in February 2002, joining such industry legends as Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto. Will Wright has also been recognized by ISDA in 2002 for his extraordinary body of work and enduring legacy he has established in the interactive entertainment industry.
Real life.
"I think I might need to use up some vacation time in September."
That's just sad, because you know he isn't joking.
Are they doing the merchandise yet?
I want to get one of those green diamond things above my head!
It is also one of the best selling games of all time. Any game company with a brain would love to have a game like this. It is like having a money press in the basement. Just keep pumping out tiny little version improvements (the expansion packs) and reap the money. Just check the sales charts of the last few years. Not bad for a game engine wich even at launch wasn't that hot.
The most amazing story about The Sims is that no-one seems to have tried to copy it. You got the recent "Singles" and that is it. There seems to be a market for a non-violent, non-competitive game yet all we get is more FPS with extra-gore. Don't get me wrong I LOVE GORE. Just not all the time. Sometimes I want to play a nice game where I can control a households of lesbian teenage girls and get them to pee their pants in sync. Is that really so much to ask?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ulrik
But ofcourse this is possible. In Sims 1, there were numerous ways to send you Sims to Sim-graveyard:
- Lock them inside a room with a nice flaming fire, near some combustable furniture.
- Make them swim, then take the ladder away.
- Starve them in a room.
- Give them a guinea pig for a present - guaranteed fun !
Heck, if there ever was proper modding for the Sims 1 (creating objects yourself, it never arrived...), I bet people would even find ways to generate some attributes that would make this more 'easier'.
But somehow I got the feeling that Sims blazing around the house with uzi's, bazooka's and the ever-so-funny boobytrap behind the new door was not the intention of the original Sims creators.
However, now the Sims 2 is out, perhaps they put out some more of those long-promised development tools for Sims 1 ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I played the game for a while, but it did start to feel exactly like that. It seemed I was spending all of the time performing minutia for the Sims instead of ever actually doing anything with it.
I guess maybe that complete immersion into making sure your Sim puts away the dishes might be fun for a while, but eventually you spend your day clicking on the housework and it feels like that's all you do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I bought the original Sims when it first came out, more interested in the actual concept and implementation than the gameplay. Anyway..my girlfriend at the time tries it out and gets hooked. The creepy part - she's built a model of my apartment with me and her as characters. One day she comes into the room crying - apparently my character spontaneously combusted. We didn't last much longer after that :)
My favorite thing to do in the first Sims was to get my Sims addicted to Linux. Then I would switch them all to Windows and watch them slowly die. Good times.
Sigh, guess I'll be sacrificing my own health, hygeine, career, love life, and 'round the house duties in the coming weeks in favor of the same for a set of pixilated poppets. Why would I do this? SIMS express a greater range of emotions and reward me better than my girlfriend, family, co-workers, and neighborhood police tend to do. I like rewards. Ring the bell Pavlov, its salivating time!
Oh yeah. That is fun.
All games get old really fast. The trick is not to make the gameplay to varied. It is to make the basic gameplay so much fun that people want to do it again and again and again. Kinda like sex. Except is usually a lot easier to cheat in a maxis game.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My biggest hope for Sims 2 is that it won't take my Sim 15 in-game minutes to walk from the bedroom through the living room to the bathroom. I mean, I have my sluggish days, and my house is big, but...
Seriously, if there was a merchandise tie-in, what would they produce? Dolls?
--- blackironprison, where ignorance is bliss....
Don't worry, they're coming out with toys for the guys too: a virtual girlfriend for your cellphone and such. You can spend real money to buy virtual presents to keep her happy too. If I had one, I'd name her Tammy Gotcha.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We talked alot about the Sims and TS-Online in my philosophy class. We were having a discussion about human nature and virtual reality, and whether it would eventually lead us to a more enlightened era or if we would sink further into the dregs of humanity. I used The Sims to show that if there were no repercussions, people are generally going to do bad things - TSO is a haven for prostitution, crime and just all around deviance. Hence, we pretty much came to the conclusion that human nature is to do as much as you can get away with... So aside from spending hours on end playing the sims, you are also taking part in a really cool psychology and philosophy experiment. Check out the Second Life (formerly Alphaville) Herald for some more insight. http://www.alphavilleherald.com/
Bratz doesn't have suggestive humour? It's the marketing depts corrupting kids again!!!
Bullshit. All it means is that we keep getting more and more free time and we don't know what to do with ourselves.
And as far as Asian culture goes. The Japanese are addicted to dating simulators and who do you think MAKES anime. Not to mention the endless dramas on Japanese television. And an amazing number of video games come out of there too. Then we have Hong Kong. Come on. You've never seen a HK Action flik? Those are about as far out as you can get.
And I don't know the numbers, but Korea is, one of, if not the most wired country in the world. And do you know what they do with it? They have a computer in their homes, then go out to a PC Bang (PC room) to play Linage, Linage 2, or Starcraft for hours at a time, then decide which hotel to stay the night at with their boyfriend by which hotel has a computer in the room. How much more addicted and withdrawn from real life can you get? I know Japan isn't quite as bad, but they like their video games too.
I won't comment on the Arabic world, but I think they'll need to stop killing each other before they do much more than control a lot of oil.
I do agree that Asia will over take the western world, but I don't see the western world declining as you say, I just see their economy growing much faster than ours. We've just become laxidazical about staying out front.
Just a quick blurb on family and religion in Japan and Korea (these are the only countries that I can personally vouch for), but if you ask a Japanese person what religion they are over 90% of them would say none. And in both Japan and Korea the family is just what you call people you live with because you never see each other. The mom/wife is the only one that will see everyone. The husband will generally work all day, then go drinking with co-workers until late (several times a week) and MAYBE come home that night. Then you have the child that goes to school followed by cram schools (to learn everything else they should have learned in school if they were taking another 4 classes) followed by a couple hours of homework...I don't really see much of a family there.
Finally, I'd like you to name one city (anywhere in the world) that couldn't be hit by a well planned air strike by an extensively trained, well funded group that has no problems with knowing they won't live though the mission (Knowing you'll die doing this mission no matter what goes a long way in how far in you can push).
Disclaimer: All of this is very general and is not ever case or even close to it, but I've seen all this happen WAY too often not to mention. (Can you find the part that I've actually done?)
"Curiouser and Curiouser" - Alice
I think the success of games like the Sims and the near-inevitable success of its sequel point to the increasingly fragmented nature of the gaming demographic.
In the past, it was simple. You had PC gamers and console gamers. The former mainly played simulatorss, strategy games, fpses, "Western" RPGs and the more "highbrow" sports games. The latter had platform games, beat-em-ups, "Japanese" RPGs and the "arcade" sports games. There was a bit of crossover and plenty of people owned both a PC and a console.
These days, I follow what would once have been the "mainstream" games for both PC and consoles. The games I've been excited about include Doom 3, Half-Life 2, the next installment of the Final Fantasy series and pretty much anything from Bioware. However, in terms of games sales, I represent an increasingly insignificant force. The Sims and its expansions represent an entirely different gaming demographic all on their own, reaching out to a group which would never have been marketed to in the past, but who have brought a whole new level of purchasing power. Similarly, we've seen much-ridiculed genres such as the "deer hunter" games spring up and be largely ignored by the classic "mainstream" gamers, but go on to huge commercial success.
I don't think this is a bad thing; it's just an inevitable part of gaming moving further into mainstream society.
Development of a game like this just requires the adding of features. i.e. if they are behind schedule, they can release the game with 200 characters instead of 250. Half-Life 2 on the other hand, if the last level isn't working, then they have no choice but to delay the game. For The Sims they can always release cut off content in the inevitable expansion packs.
That news is freydushey!
(When my wife and I purchased The Sims, we found the language they were speaking, "Simlish" to be really funny. Every time one of the characters got excited about something, she'd use that word. Then we started using it. "Honey, this pie is freydushey!")
I don't want to knock it, and I probably will pick up a copy of the Sims 2 with the hope that the micromanagement tasks are optional.
www.lonseidman.com
...that you're NOT supposed to judge the market by yourself. If I was an exec presented with this game, I would have sent them packing. [Insert que of music exec turning down Beatles here] I tried it for a little while, and I must say I simply didn't get it. I still don't get it. I probably never will get it. It feels like a crappy DIY reality show. Then again, people play solitaire too. If I do, my mind goes "boring. Boring! BORING! B O R I N G ! ! !" Ah well, wouldn't be any fun if we were all alike anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What the hell was this all about?
i used to start my wives sims game and put heavy metal music and horror movies on and let it run all night. she hated that. the simes would have lost almost everything and were crazy as hell the next day. i can't wait to see what i can do with the new sims. lol.
Visit the Mother Site !
I didn't know people wanted to escape into H.P Lovecraft's worlds...
Why do people keep saying that The Sims 2 is being released on time? It was delayed AT LEAST once from its scheduled March release, and I think possibly once before then.
Why would I want to waste my time donating source to a closed source project?
(you must be new here)
I don't have a god complex!
I am God!
I was warned several months ago that my girlfriend will be disappearing once Sims 2 comes out. Hopefully the lack of social contact during her time of addiction will lead to plenty of sex later on.
Your opinion doesn't interest me. I'm not saying it shouldn't interest you, it just doesn't interest me.
It wasn't very funny, but after reading it a couple times, I think the parent post was meant as a joke
It was an interesting idea, and the execution was pretty brilliant, but it just wasn't fun for me. By the time I got the character done eating, shitting, cleaning up (usually in that order), it was time to go to bed again and go to work.
In other words, it was TOO MUCH like real life.
When I turn on a video game, I want powers beyond those of mortal men, epic struggles against a worthy foe or I want to see sexy dark elf babes in magical lingerie.
Sometimes I want to BE the sexy dark elf babe in magical lingerie, but that's a different thread.
--- Ban humanity.
Religion was the first form of escapism. Life sure feels better if you know that when you die and did nothing but work, at least in afterlife you'll reap the rewards. Yet I see you promote religion as advantageous. Family can be "escapism", too (well, depends on the definition, but I'd say we should go by the effect, not the way of archieving it), since it makes you feel better when you're not working.
I think the more and more sophisticated forms of escapism in the western world might be related to people adapting to the stimuli. There was a time when people became so emotional over books they killed themselves out of depression (Goethe - Die Leiden des jungen Werther was one of those). There was a time people became obsessed by playing a game where you deflect the dot with a line. Nowadays those stimuli would work on few.
We are adjusting to our drugs, now we need harder ones (okay, real drugs work for that purpose, too).
I don't see that as a sign for the downfall of a culture (why? Because everybody's slacking off? No, that has other reasons like labour laws and a social system tat doesn't let people starve on the street if they don't work twenty hours a day in sweatshops). I agree that the west will become less important unless some gov gets the idea that to uphold their domiance they need to declare a large scale war, but entirely for different reasons.
Gah, I have a feeling this is seriously off-topic.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Fredashay Duhkwy! Downarown ashay, prah sesst chi ola mana sey!
I thought this may have been posted seriously then ./ers moderated it as funny. There are a fightening number of people who actually believe in what you've posted as a joke. In these times, in this presidential race, I have been bombarded with opinions resulting from simplistic thinking. Blatent stupidity just isn't funny to me anymore
One day out of sheer curiosity I fired up her PC, logged in as her, and loaded up her saved game.
This act in and of itself speaks volumes about the disconnect in your relationship and the disconnect you have about judging control-freaks and seeing the same behavior in yourself.
I found it utterly tedious and a complete waste of my time. Watch them sleep! Watch them eat! Watch them... walk around! I'm just glad I got it second-hand, as I would have been very pissed off if I'd paid full price for it. I gave it a fair shot to see if it got any better as it went on. It didn't so I haven't touched it since.
I just can't see the appeal. Then again, I can't see the appeal of shows like Big Brother either
You must think in Russian.
Buy Singles. You get full nudity and it's pretty similar to Sims (minus the home building aspect)
It was originally due out in the beginning of the year, then was delayed by several months.
What EA marketing shill submitted this news post?
"It appears that it will be on time after all, an unusual occurrence in this industry."
Yeah sure. That's only true if you completely disregard the fact that it was originally scheduled for APRIL.
I wish I could find the article to link here, but I can't, I thought it was on gamesutra but I can't find it there either.
Anyway, I just wanted to comment that I read an article about how the game was designed a couple of months ago and I thought it was very interesting. Basically the objects have all the code, and the sims have minimal coding. The expansion packs (for the most part), just contained new objects with new code that the sims reacted too. I thought this was a really neat and insightful way to code the game.
I might pick this up at some point, though I'll probably wait for the price to come down first.
I was throughly addicted to the Sims 1 when it first came out (4 years ago or something?).. for a few weeks. After I played it more or less constantly for a few weeks, it suddenly got really old.. the first expansion was okay, but after that they didn't seem to be adding anything I was interested in. Ah well, there are obviously plenty of other people who like it.
One thing I noticed... with a lot of games, I'll play them a bunch, stop for months, and then start them up again and have just as much fun... but I've never been able to get back into the Sims.
But if this is a truly *new* game based on the old idea, I bet it'd be fun again.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
By "their" you mean "China's", right? Because that's not true of Japan and Korea anymore.
Not that China isn't in danger of recession, as I've heard some analysts say.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
It appears that it will be on time after all, an unusual occurrence in this industry.
You're used to anxiously awaiting software by Blizzard, etc. EA will cheerfully release incredibly buggy software "on time".
DEVO front man Mark Mothersbaugh is signed to do the in-game music.
If nothing else, perhaps the game will move away from the Leave It To Beaver sitcom earmunge. Duty now for the future!
...when they announce the next Simcity game. God, Will Wright is such a sell-out.
As a big Sims fan I have been waiting for Sims2 to come out ever since I saw it in PCGamer. I have continuously checked the release date and it has changed many times. Of course I think these were release dates from sources other than EA. EA never set a release date until a month before it came out. I find it funny that they are praising them for coming out on time, considering it has been a "done when it's done", project just like Doom3. I guess in that sense Doom3 came out on time too. WAY TO GO ID!
Yeah, this is really newsworthy. A game is done shortly before it's announced release date.
Can't wait for the "Sims 2 released, people buy" news story on Sept. 14th.
Being a sim isn't fun...
Gotta go... must go to the bathroom, cook dinner, get the mail, use computer to find a job, watch TV then sleep now.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Just abusing Karma to send a shoutout to my homie Alex Hutch who is probably reading this thread with a fine-toothed...####***METAPHOR BREAKDOWN
By the time you finish reading this sentence will end.
Do the sofas burn faster than the wicker tables? I swear I think those wicker tables are on the verge of spontaneously combusting when no source of heat is nearby.
Toaster ovens are a fairly reliable ignition source with untrained cooks. I never even use them in a game where I'm not trying to kill.
First "Little computer people", then that Tamagotchi thing, and now Sims. I always fail to see the appeal for those games; but people here are already flipping over Sims 2 and asking me when we'll purchase it.
It's a crazy world eh.
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Sims was fun, but I liked Creatures series (1,2,3, etc) better. It always felt really fun to toy with the genetic code of the Norns, Grendels, and Ettins and see what sort of weirdness could be created, from creatures that lived only a few minutes, to creatures with silly walks, to creatures that were virtually born pregnant, or even crossbreads of species.
I'm looking forward to toying with the alleged genetic code in Sims2. I think it will be nice to move up to experimenting on pseudo-human subjects.
If you are reading this, then you are one of those people whom I just can't take seriously.
What about her makes him think "handcuffs" ?!
If there was ever something Sims need more of, it's action, but then, that might make the game *too* unlike the reality of it's players...
Someday, somebody will make bank by releasing an adults-only version. Some day... when I get a little more spare time...
caters to the slashdot crowd im sure...
h ot_big_31.jpg/
http://thesims2.ea.com/images/screenshots/screens
anyone else find that somewhat creepy?
-judging another only defines yourself
First off, sex can be bad... really bad. Second off, I think that, when it comes to games, it has less to do with "really fun" and more to do with minimalism. Include what's necessary and don't bog the game down with what's unnecessary. Look at CS, the sims, etc. They're all so perfectly simplistic. This, again, is very different from sex, where doing the bare minimum is likely to get obnoxious and tiring, quick. ;)
that's just my 2 cents, of course.
This story has been filed under 'games'.
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Instead of wasting man hours (and money!) on having cops doing vice patrol and embarassing people, why not instead have brothels registered with the county or state and pick up some vice taxes from the patrons? The only downside is that you lose the anonymity you have when it is only you and the callgirl... Plus prices would be higher because of health regulations and administration, but I think it's an idea worth looking in to.
An Ultimate Torture Chamber Simulator!
I'm already having a strange obsessive twitching in my left leg. I think I might need to use up some vacation time in September.
it's probably because the fungus growing in your REAL garbage needs to be taken outside. Why play a game that is the same as everyday life? Give me particle guns or a pirate ship or a fast car and a machine gun. and please don't buy your sims a video game so after work you can be playing a video game in which you make a person live a life in which they play video games when they come home from work. next thing you know you will be begging maxis for a slashdot patch for sims 2.1. go get a better job, go get better furniture, and go get more REAL friends. and Christ's sakes lad, don't pee on the floor. bladder... worst game feature ever!
no offense for the slashdot comment.
Which leaves, guess what... that other deeply mysterious human gender, Women. Huh, who woulda thunk it, a game popular with the ladies..., Gosh!, maybe they even deliberately designed it that way. Which is probably why, statistically speaking, most slashdotters don't get it.
My daughter (age 16), and freinds, loves the original Sims+Pack+++ and is eagerly awaiting the new game.
The Sims is a beautifully crafted and delivered fantasy AI world where players pretend absolute control over other peoples lives. To say nothing of the amazingly detailed, houses, landscaping, decoration, fashion and gizmo obsessions. The whole thing has a lightweight, easygoing ethic and experience that is light years from the dark and dangerous firefights guys enjoy.
Of course, what this fantasy may say about the real workings of the female psyche... I shudder to think, not something a guy/father can safely speculate about and stay politically correct, (or alive).
But what of it..., its fantasy, harmless entertainment liked by women, so EA found a winner, and a whole otherwise ignored market, so good luck to em I say.
Maybe we should all learn to write games and software that women as well as geek guys can like... Heck, I heard they were 50% of the random user base!
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
Didn't Killer have a brother? What was his name?