I realize that in the modern-day of what some may call “video game journalism,” writing what could be boiled down to as yet another “EA Bad” diatribe could either garnish me all of the upvotes (though with the praise of Fallen Order’s release, the Karma farms are seeing some drought) or it could be blown off as preaching to the choir. More often than not, EA plays the role of the bloated, belching feudal lord, stripping us of the hard-earned fruits of our labor in return for the plague corpses they have just lying around. And we keep allowing this because the corpses are all quite pretty, and now and again they don't violently burst when we poke them. I’m getting lost in my metaphor here but my point is, “EA Bad,” is a fairly accurate, if not grammatically horrifying assertion. However I don’t want to focus on them as a whole, but rather I want us to take a moment to think long and hard about The Sims franchise, specifically.
For those who are unaware, The Sims is a game in the simulation genre that finds its uniqueness in the fact that instead of managing the macro aspects of a thing, such as a whole city in SimCity, or a theme park in Roller Coaster Tycoon, the player manages the smaller scale life and minutiae of a single household of characters who are the titular Sims. It’s this seemingly simple, yet oddly rare premise that led me to rant a bit. Why is The Sims so singular, and is it as much our fault as it is EA’s?
Let’s say you’re a newcomer to the franchise, you decide to look up the latest title and see where it stands. You find that even though The Sims 4 was released originally in 2014, that there are soon to be new content packs released this year. Wow! Not many games stay relevant for that long, especially considering it’s in what's been considered a niche genre and is a single-player affair. People must be into this series to keep each game relevant for so long. But that also makes you wonder, if there are new content packs, then there must be previous ones you could get as well. Might as well price the whole deal, maybe there are some season passes or something.
Let’s see, this can’t be that ba- SEVENTEEN CONTENT PACKS?! $459.83 American for a single game?!
Seriously, you could buy two used Xbox Ones for that. Three used Nintendo Switches. A used Xbox and a Playstation 4. Two Switches and an Xbox, come on people the choice is clear. Now, that is full price, from the EA website. And it’s safe to say that not everyone will want every content pack (I would gladly buy Cat’s & Dogs twice if it was the only way to avoid Parenthood), and they do often have sales that bring the prices on each pack down, but you're talking about downloadable content packs that normally run about as much as the base game itself at this point. And even with everything on sale, you’re still dropping over $300.
But a big factor is that, despite all of this, we still keep buying them. The Sims 4 broke a billion dollars last year, seeing a 4.8 million jump in players between 2018 and 2019. Early numbers suggested that the average player had bought at least three of the main expansion packs, which are usually about $40, but offer a new town and some new gameplay elements. EA is asking us to shell out a ton of dough for this one title, and while we’re not all buying three Switches worth of expansions, we are buying enough to reward them for their practices. I mean, I’ve no choice but to have cats and to harass a Vampire detective, right? Then they have no choice but to charge me for each of those things.
“What about the previous title in the franchise? It must be less absurd,” your sweet naive voices ring out.
Oh, oh, no. The Sims 3 features nineteen content packs and runs you $399.80 total on Steam. This game is eleven years old now, mind you. This has been a problem, really, since The Sims 2, so if you invested in this title since the Windows 98 days, you may have spent what it would cost to get a VR headset these days. And a decent one too. Or like, a crappy one and a refurbished 3DS. You'd at least have more options than just four titles and a million hours sunk into mostly creating new characters when you got tired of torturing the four other families you’re currently juggling. And therein lies another bump in all of this.
These games fucking rule.
The Sims is still unrivaled in the gameplay loop it offers. These days, there are quite a few options for simulation games. If you love managing a regular city like SimCity, grab something like Cities: Skylines. Want to do that, but as a South American Dictator, Tropico is for you. You like the Tycoon series of games, well you can run an amusement park still, and even a Zoo. Two Point Hospital and Prison Architect can scratch your administrative itch, while Jurrasic Park: Evolution gives you the power to toss out the OSHA guidelines first chance you get. If you want to be a macro-management god, there are tons of choices out there worth looking at. There are even those rare titles that handle the design aspects, such as House Flipper, or even actual architecture design programs.
But they’re all missing that personal component. Taking a magnifying glass to only a handful of simulated homunculi.
If you watch many “Games Like The Sims” videos, you’ll find a lot of folks will suggest you get your personal micro-management fix from titles like My Time at Portia, Stardew Valley, Graveyard Keeper, and even Animal Crossing, but I would argue those don’t quite hit the mark. Now don’t get me wrong, those four games -Stardew in particular- are all title suggestions I would spew at fellow train commuters in the days before COVID, when my rants weren’t muffled by a mask, but the management loop isn’t the same. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend The Sims to someone who told me Harvest Moon was their favorite game. They are about tasks and schedules, but I would argue they don’t share the same goals or design philosophies
What makes The Sims stand out is the omniscience level. You are not playing the lowly farmer, working their way to the top. You are playing as an ever-present factor in a third party’s life. You may direct a Sim to do the things you want them to, but they do have personalities and minds of their own. They may not ever make the best decision if left unattended, but in theory they exist despite you, not because of you. You the player are taking the role of Inspiration and Drive personified, and there isn’t anything else out there that quite manages to do that on the potential one-on-one level The Sims can. And until we have an alternative, that is ultimately the crux of our burden.
Now, I would be foolish if I just went on and on about this and I didn’t take to time to point out one upcoming potential rival, and one current potential substitute. The latter is a title called Virtual Families, and it appears to be a very mobile style game that mimics the family-needs-balance of The Sims. I haven’t played it myself, but it doesn’t look quite like it would do it for me. I’m willing to be wrong, so if someone out there has an opinion on the title, I’d love to hear it. The former is a very fascinating looking upcoming title called Paralives. This game is completely funded through a Patreon (patreon.com/alexmasse) and looks like it might have potential. There is a whole character creation and management aspect and a very interesting design mode with lots of customization that is far less rigid than the snap-in-place system of The Sims. It already has nearly eight thousand Patrons and is bringing in around $25K a month. Which goes to show that there is a market out there for someone to truly compete with The Sims. I have no personal stake in this project, I must say, besides a desire myself for a little variety in this field of gaming.
In a time when games are charging us for individual cosmetic items, are we drawn to The Sims because they at least sell us packs of cosmetic items? It could be because they are simply the only option for this very specific type of gameplay. It’s strange to me that no one besides an indie developer seem to even be trying to compete. Is there a deep conspiracy designed by EA to eliminate anyone who dares decide to add a “need to poop” meter in their game?
Probably not that last one….
What I can say for certain, is that it doesn’t help that we continue to pay for new content packs despite complaining about their cost. That we get excited to give money for things that are probably already in the game code or were standard in past titles. We need to ask ourselves, is adding smog and new couches worth the ticket of admission, or should we just invest in a Costco pack of Nintendo Switches?