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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.
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.
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.
Funny, because that was actually the original name of the Sims (Doll House that is, minus the "glorified"). They decided to change it because they wanted a wider appeal for the game, and they felt that boys would have issues playing with dolls.
But there is definite gender attraction to this...My wife's been chomping at the bit to get ahold of this since it was announced...She already has a Best Buy gift card set aside just for its purchase.
How Jaded Are You?
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.
Given that one of the favorite past times of a number of people with the first Sims game has been killing off their Sims in a variety of ways, I think the "sinister and creepy" line was reached quite awhile ago. One of the favorite methods seems to be drowning, as Sims can't get out of a pool if there's no ladder.
On a related note, one of the people working on Sims 2 posts on another message board that I'm on. He created a serial killer character who lures women back to his house and then paints their deaths, as Sims will now paint pictures of what they actually see. He did have to use a cheat though to make the painter keep painting instead of reacting to the death itself.
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/
The timeliness of The Sims 2 probably has more to do with the fact that EA was able to buy enough time to develop the game properly by releasing the last couple of expansions (can anything seriously argue that The Sims Makin' Magic was anything other than a cynical attempt to milk two fads at once?) and The Sims Online. It's a lot easier to bring a project in on time if you don't have Marketing saying "Three years is too long, finish it in two years!"
It also helps a lot that they do know how late the first one was, and more importantly, why. Remember Fred Brooks' motto, "Plan to throw one away."
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
It was orginally named Doll House because that actually was the genesis of the game. It wasn't a game at all, but an architechtural/interior design program with the advancement that you could populate it with people and pets so you could see a more natural rendition of your design rather than just a static image.
After working it up they realized they had something that could be sold for entertainment.
Frankly, I have no gender aversion to dolls or doll houses. They really are valuable tools for design and I like designing. Being able to animate them is a major plus. Call them "models" if you get all weirded out by names.
They're also fun to play with. Sue me.
But I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the game.
KFG
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.
Parent is modded 'Funny' but that hits close to home.
I used to date a highly intelligent, but emotionally needy software designer. She bought the first Sims when it came out, and played it daily. I did notice many nights where the television wouldn't get turned on, meals went uncooked. Laundry remained dirty and friends and family didn't get phone calls. I could care less about all these things, but I did notice her obsession with the game.
One day out of sheer curiosity I fired up her PC, logged in as her, and loaded up her saved game. Sure enough, there was our place, right on the monitor. She had gone to painstaking detail to make sure everything was as close the reality as possible - nevermind the fact she'd been ignoring reality for a month solid.
I think folks with control issues get a kick out of this game, as they can do whatever they want to the charcters, their enviornment,etc.
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
I just find it amazing that, after all of the space games, fantasy games, action/adventure games, sports games, etc... all people really wanted was a game that attempts to simulate real life in all of its monotonous glory.
>If I was an exec presented with this game, I would have sent them packing.
Actually, that's exactly what happened. The Sims was turned down by multiple (don't remember how many) publishers. It was MIA for years, and Wil Wright had to fight for it. And after a while no one watching the development really expected it to succede (I'm a Simcity fan, so I was kinda half-interested). Funny, cos' I remember thinking "man, this looks like Batttlecruiser 3000AD all over again" (for the three people who don't know what I'm talking about, it was the WORST vapourware joke, and latter bug-riddled crap joke in recent memory - Daikatana doesn't even come close). Shows what I know.
RsG
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.
Close. The virtual people in the original design weren't just for looks. The idea was that you would have no direct control over them, but you'd indirectly control their lives via furniture placement, architecture, and the like. The overall goal of the game was still the same as it is now -- make your Sims happy.
I actually liked the original design better, but I can definitely understand why they chose to give you more direct control. Not only does it work around the AI limitations, but it adds more of a virtual-pet kinda element to it. (Train them to wash their hands after using the bathroom, etc.)
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
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.