Slashdot Mirror
EA Considering Sims TV Show
Reuters is carrying the news that Electronic Arts is considering creating a television show based on 'The Sims'. The show would allow viewers to vote on what the avatars in the show would do. From the article: "One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show."
Viewers could tell the Sims when to work 80 hr weeks with no overtime pay!
Why can't Reality TV just die already? Plus, it's not reality, waking up at 3am to get first post on Slashdot is what the TRUTH is.
"One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom,
If they leave the bedroom option in there, I think I can see the future of this show already.
The coolest voice ever.
... but then fake.
Who will watch that once the new of it is over?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Don't they already have one?
It won't get past the FCC, especially if they let them buy the vibrating bed...
So basically this is a daily 30 minute infomercial sponsored by the evil alliance?
EA has signed an exclusive contract with humans stating that only EA is able to makes games involving such.
The coolest voice ever.
If people get to "vote" on what the sims do, they might end up playing like me and just force feed them coffee and never let them sleep or go to the bathroom.
and i say that as an ardent Sims fan (hell, I bought a new video card just so I could PLAY sims 2). The demands of today's TV entertainment are such that any TV show that's true to the game will BOMB MASSIVELY. TV is about 6-minute chucks of instant gratification and resolving every problem within a half hour. The Sims is about neither of these. If this gets off the ground it will become just another Hanna-Barbara-ish cookie cutter cartoon show, where the only similarity it has to the Sims is in the name (I Robot anyone?) and the characters go through the same tired, demographically neutered plot contrivances as on every other show.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
That is by far the dumbest thing I have ever heard. There is something worse than reality tv!
Wow! With this new TV show, I can turn on the TV and watch the Sims watch TV!
(Apologies to Penny Arcade)
Omnes stulti sunt.
A "virtual" reality TV show? How desperate for entertainment are we?
-- Nic
Wouldn't this be like:
... well I just don't understand why anyone would spend their time on it.
a) playing a game with terrible latency and / or controls
b) watching someone with multiple personality disorder play the game
In either case I really don't think it'll fly. The Sims was popular ( well , I didn't like it ) because of the fact that you control it. If you don't have control , or are only one vote of thousands
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
The Sims have sex.
The Sims have sex.
Out pops a baby.
The Sims, ignoring their baby, have sex.
Seriously, is a show controlled by the masses through voting a really good idea? In this instance I am suddenly reminded why the Founding Fathers(tm) of America didn't want the majority of people to vote.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
There are formats, there are formulas, and then there are gimmicks. This TV show idea is a gimmick, and gimmicks rarely last more than a few installments before the public sighs a big "ho hum" and the idea goes, as Douglas Adams might put it, "to the big golden spike in the sky, baby."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I think what people really need is interactive Discovery Channel
Now THAT would be news...
If you use a Tivo, you can cut their work week to 40hrs.
So in addition to "Reality TV" we're going to have "Non-Reality TV" as well?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
If there making a Sims TV show, it's not going to last too long. The Entire cast will be dead by the first episode either by Fire or drowning or some other Darwin Award like way.
I've always said that everybody who plays The Sims has an uncanny facination with death. Dont believe me? Ask anyone who plays The Sims their most favorite moment. I can almost guarantee it has death involved in one form or another.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
"COP's, Interactive".
And many, many more.
well, if its succesful, it will be the definite proof that shit can indeed be turned into gold.
Will the audience be able to decide if the Sim takes a toilet break or soils himself? If the option is there we all know what will be chosen...
---- Take the Space Quiz!
This could be really quite interesting.
Especially if they really let the players vote on what the Sims would do. But I guess they wouldn't really let, as people would cause all sorts of "wierd plagues" to hit the characters.
-- SouNerd.com
Remember all those giant EA genesis carts? Remember how all the games sucked? They lacked any style, visually...unless chunky and ugly is a style. The choppily animated EA logo was a sure sign of a forgettable experience ahead. At best.
Or proof that EA can turn gold (the sims, which is actually quite a good game) can be turned into shit. Although juding by the number of "chavs" I see walking down the streets ever day, Argos appear to have already achieved turning gold into shit :)
I'm surprised nobody (at my threshold?) has mentioned Rooster Teeth Productions' The Strangerhood, an online series done using The Sims 2.
Personally, however, I prefer their Red vs. Blue, a series done using Halo, and more recently Halo 2.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
I believe that was known as "Blade Runner".
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington
I can not possibly over-emphasize the lameness of this idea. Of course, reality tv in general must die (though I will admit a fondness for The Mole when hosted by Anderson Cooper...Celebrity Mole can be tossed in the same flaming pile as everything else).
Interactive TV is an intriguing concept, but even if they could make it work in a reasonable manner, it would be difficult to make the world's fastest plunge to the lowest common denominator interesting.
Dave
This is EXACTLY what Montag's ditzy wife Mildred in Farenheit 451 was addicted to, for those of you that have read that particular book. The full-screen televisions mounted on the parlor walls beamed in images of people referred to as "relatives", and the viewers could vote on what these virtual people would do in each episode.
I seem to remember a similar article mentioning maxis working with tri-star to release a sims tv show. I wonder if this is just a follow-up by EA?
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Link is here: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/15
How can they run this show without getting into trouble from the censors?
It seems pretty obvious to me that people will be voting for the protagonist to screw the pooch rather than bake a cake or read a book.
Did I miss it? I don't think it necessarily said that the show would have computer Sims in it. It could be real actors...
But didn't some cable channel (FX?) already have a show where the main character controlled by the viewers?
"What are you doing?"
"I'm watching him watch his Sims watch TV."
Now it's going to be:
"I'm watching him watch TV to watch the Sims so he can vote for what the Sims watch on TV."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Just let the Red VS Blue guys take their current Sims 2 series on TV? Yes, that one.
Derive Politics
Hey, I liked King's Bounty.
Especially amusing was when the cartridge would heat up and start hosing the quantities of critters defending the keeps. Just a bit frightening heading into a castle and seeing that it's now defended by approximately "1KK" peasants.
...I joked long before Sims came out that one day they would make a game on the PC that required people to do laundry or dishes, tasks that no one likes doing in real life and people would love it. Then it became a reality.
Most reality television shows have been awful, this one appears to be the next step in the de-evolution of the human species. This show just perpetuates my theory: Most humans do not want to think, they just want to be told what to do. This removes their need for personal responsibility and accountability.
Fellow slashdotters excluded, of course....
I think Will Wright had batted an idea similar to this after The Sims came out, and before EA's name became nearly synonomous with Microsoft.
Of course, I always liked his other TV show idea which was to record people's interacttions with robots... such as a tennis ball pitching one (going about 60 mph on the delivery). That would make better tv IMHO.
Insert Sig Here
Playing The Sims is already boring as hell. Watching The Sims being run by the kind of people who vote for things on reality TV...
You must think in Russian.
Well, I thought the batchelor/fear factor/apprentice/survivor was a bad idea, but this takes the cake. People will now watch ANYTHING on TV. I think Gerry Springer is more wholesome than a Sims show. :-(
Anyone familiar with the exploits of LUE members on the gamefaqs forums knows that a well organized group of gamers can be very dangerous/hilarious. The Aimbot "smarterchild" was influeced to say weird stuff by LUEers, and I can see the same thing happening here: The Sims TV Show is a big hit until the FCC fines the network it's featured after some unnamed viewers vote en masse to make the characters say "George Bush is a W4NG" eight hundred times on primetime TV.
Will they be speaking simlish in the show or will we finally be able to understand them?
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
I think what people really need is interactive Discovery Channel
Interactive Steve Irwin! I like it!
We could tell him which dangerous animals to poke (and then declare "grumpy"), and which poisonous snakes to put on his head!
I'd even watch THAT on pay-per-view!
You can't take the sky from me...
Just imagine all the teens watching the show after 22:00... It will be a lesbian family having sex in the pool 24/7. I wonder how it differs from adulttv :)
Lone Gunmen crew.
Think about it. Remember the "walls"?. People sat around watching virtual families in the walls instead of thinking or reading books.
We already have a great deal of oppression towards some aspects of free thinking, what, with the Patriot Act and the hostile attitudes some Americans have developed over the past 4 years. Burning books can't be that far off at this rate. Thinking just has to be labelled as terrorism essentially. That could be the road we're headed down.
Now, we're going to help this process along by giving people yet another way to waste their time instead of paying attention to the real world and real events going on around them. Even worse, Ray Bradbury almost prophesized this in a way. All we need now is "Surround-Vision" to go with our surround sound. Put 4 LCD projectors or flat panels on each wall, and watch EA's show 24/7 and you've got the same thing as Fahrenheit 451 predicted years ago.
Isn't this yet another example of broadcasters and writers failing to come up with something new, showing yet again that the next big film is going to be yet another re-hash of an old film with better graphics. *groan* Even worse is this another game trying to do the Resident Evil jump and come across (not that I've got anything against Resident Evil) to invade our TV's. Admittedly the first film was very good but the second stank.. Enough of that though, I doubt this "film" will get near our TV screens but I'm still horrified to see they thought of it.
Last year we had a show like this (can't remember if it was broadcast or just Webcast)... a family lived in a 'glass house' with a bunch of cameras, and people could give them commands on what to do via the Internet. It only ran for a week; I think it was not really intended as a serious soap, but more an art experiment. It generated quite a bit of publicity when it was announced, but I've not heard anyone talk about the show when it was actually on.
And yes, the orders where screened before they were passed down to the family.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Fear Factor does some controversial stuff, if only controversial to the major networks. There are several shows that they only aired once and won't air again on network TV because it crossed a line (at least according to the VH1 "Inside Fear Factor" show, which was surprisingly informative, I thought). Not quite what you were after, but as close as you'll get.
The Sims, sponsored Juan Valdez and Toto Toilets.
Hrm...
A reality TV show based on a game that's based on real life that's based on a TV show, based on a game, based on real life, TV show.... *head explodes*
Play the Sims, or watch the Sims?
Play the Sims, or watch the Sims?
On the one hand, the Sims is designed as interactive entertainment from the get go, and (while I don't care for it) it is quite successful at that for a lot of people.
On the other hand... uhhh... on the other hand... uhhh... isn't there always an "other hand"?
(Sometimes the issue really is black and white. Next up on Reality Television, a Quake 3 Tournament where you, the viewer, get to vote on what key Thresh will push next!)
... is that the EA employees working on this lame TV project are probably putting in 80 hour weeks.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Even if they do ,being the commercial suckers they are the last thing EA would want is get gamers hooked on to the 'idiot box'.har har.
Lord of the Binges.
Forget Penny Arcade.
A certain VGCats comic has an even deeper insight here...
Do you think Sims feel pain...?
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show.
On Belgian tv you have these "tv games" in dead idle time. You sms to a 4digit number, 1 Euro will be reducted and some action will happen on screen. (like a rocketguy will be fired to blow up a planet, or whatever game there's playing). It's fun, if you feel like paying 1 Euro for a 'keypress' or like to remotely play a game like that cause you're bored in the night. (there are SMS-chatrooms like that as well on the tv, or teletext) which are sortof popular.
Money bomb for the channel, but not my monnies. (there will be people who cannot contain themselves, specially teens and what not.)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I've already played this type of thing before however only one person get a vote. It's called my life.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
It'd be just like late night UK Sky babecast stuff, only without boobs and jiggling. In that sense I suppose SimsTV has less to offer me. Having said that, it'd be more likely that Sims on SimsTV would do what you tell them. No matter how many times I text in, the girls on babewatch never cover each other with peach yoghurt and enact my script for lesbo-yoghurt-monsters.
Will this show have the nude patch installed?
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
Massively Schizophrenic TV Games ... just imagine hundreds of people trying to control one character...
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
So did Slashdot, nearly four years ago!
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
"One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show."
And suddenly you have a family jerking around like marionettes with a pair of five-year-olds fighting over the strings.
What about having a contest between groups of players based on geography, as an example. There would be four families: north, south, east coast and west coast. The object would be to get your house to be the largest/most expensive of the four in 22 minutes.
That's basically a live-action version of The Sims, to a large degree.
In fact, initially that was one of the main reasons why I used to play The Sims...I liked the concept of Big Brother, but I didn't like the confrontational idiots they normally got on there, or the foul subject matter that was typically used to lure viewers.
With The Sims 2 I get to mess around with architectural design, putting Sims together, and all the social networking stuff/intrigue that can go along with it...but I don't get the unwashed deadbeats and conversations centred around bodily functions that you typically got from Big Brother. Everything I do want, nothing I don't.
EA should probably do a partnership with Legion Interactive (I think that's who does BB in Australia, not sure about overseas) to come up perhaps with a version of that show that is more in line with The Sims' teen rating (ie cleaner) and while live action, they could use cheap CGI to incorporate some of the visual elements from the game. (the diamond mood indicator, etc)
Trying to make Big Brother cleaner and less negative/juvenile probably wouldn't work, though...from the point of view that the producers seem to really think that fart jokes/housemates fighting etc are a big drawcard with viewers.
For even thinking of this retarded idea. Good job EA, maybe if the Sims reality TV show is enough of a hit they might want to go back and make a Sim earth reality TV show. God will be the protagonist and satan will be the antagonist, WOOOHOOO!
Eat sleep die
Of course, the PSP gets a shout out.
and about it, they say..."I expect a lot from the PSP, It's stylish like an iPod and you don't look like a nerdy teenager using it."
[sarcasm]
oh yeah! designing things to be stylish "like an iPod" is the best way to sell it. quality doesn't matter. people like to buy small white things with a screen on them.
[/sarcasm]
This sig left blank for page turns.
While the details weren't given, Will Write did mention this pseudo-interactive show as one of the things on his project list last March at the Game Developer Conference. I may be a fan of his work, but I'm already guessing it a flop.
... and I'll never get modded up, but this could be pure genius. They could have bars on the screen showing the amount of votes for any given action and people could get addicted to watching these bars and voting on things. Just look at the popularity of:
1. TRL
2. The Presidential Elections
3. Home Shopping
4. Reality TV
People love these little competitions about nothing consequential.
Well IIRC, there is a nude patch for the Sims, and like Teen Pregnancy patch for Sims 2.
Would anyone honestly care about anything else?
Why can't Reality TV just die already?
Because no-one has started broadcasting an EQ channel where you can watch other people playing EQ.
And you thought home shopping network was dull...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
"It's Funny, Laugh" category?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Get A Life - Watch The Sims.
This would result in an instant flop. Dumb move for EA. The entire attration to the sims is that you completely control the lives of these characters. With a player controlled show, your vote would be lost in a sea of others, giving you an impression that you haven't any control. Much like the problem with national elections. People don't vote because they feel it doesn't really count. I think a show like this would be as much fun as watching my brother play a game of sims and not being able to direct anything myself.
But what happens when everyone gets tired of making the Sims get into bed together?
a) Vote to build a windowless/doorless room. Place the Sim inside. Watch and wait.
b) Vote to refrain from using the lavatory. Take a stroll over to your neighbor's house, and after nature calls, demand Simoleans to prevent future occurances.
c) Both a and b.
d) ???
e) Profit!!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere