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EA reveals SimAnimals for DS, Wii
While everyone was distracted by EA's ongoing press conference, EA went and uploaded a bunch or screenshots and some basic information about a bunch of games, including a new one called SimAnimals for the DS. According to EA's Web page, the game lets players "control more than 60 animals" with an "on-screen animated hand that allows you to reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the game from foxes and bears to trees and flowers." Animals will grow to like or dislike this disembodied, manual overlord based on how it treats them. Remind you of any other popular simulation game? Look for SimAnimals in January of 2009, and more about the project as we hear it.Update: An official press release includes a few more details and some enthusiastic quotes from EA execs. Fun!%Gallery-27603%%Gallery-27604%
Sims 2 Store live today, microtransactions abound
Hagimona pana! Guranda epska tali tari ta. Eska, eska, esti toni wa?*turns on Simlish to English translator*Better? Good! EA announced that its Sims 2 Store is now live for US and Canadian shoppers. The online retail location practices the fine art of micro transactions by offering items available in Sims 2 expansion packs and "all-new exclusive" content.The store works by converting real money into "SimPoints" at an exchange rate of $1 for 100 SimPoints, and most items we saw appear to be between 75 - 100 SimPoints. Sims 2 fans can decide for themselves if it's worth micro-transactioning through the Sims 2 Store or picking up the full expansions at retail. The store seems like the type of thing that's perfect if your Sim just needs to have that new shower head and nothing else.[Via BigDownload]
Sims Carnival is now in open beta
In the future, there will be no game developers. Well, to be more accurate, there will be no paid videogame developers, just a legion of unpaid game slaves, toiling away for a chance at e-stardom. Today, the inevitable future looms just a bit closer with The Sims Carnival going into open beta.Right now, you can play some of the offerings from closed beta folks, who've come up with some really bizarre entries like this terrible take on Mario Kart and this brûlée caramelizing sim. You can also design your own games for the general populace to partake of, enjoy and never, ever pay you for.
Cinemassively: Leet Str33t
While this machinima isn't made with an MMO, the subject matter of the video, leet speak, is something we've all encountered in online games. Leet Str33t is a trip down memory lane, to the old days of AOL, shown to us through two neighbors greeting each other for the first time. While this was made with The Sims, it could have easily be made in a virtual world!If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
MySims Kingdom: The Home of Princess Butter
In a press release sent out this morning, EA revealed some details of the new MySims sequel, MySims Kingdom. Fascinatingly, Kingdom is designed as more of an adventure than its predecessor, with things like a story and goals other than "build stuff and make friends." That's still the basic gameplay, but this time you're building (medieval) stuff and making (ye olde) friends at the behest of King Roland (and his daughter, the amusingly-named Princess Butter), who charges you with improving his kingdom. As you build and achieve goals, you'll unlock new building capabilities including bridge-building (or at least bridge repair). These will allow you both to increase the size of your kingdom and to expand into other kingdoms, each with their own unique inhabitants.Surprisingly, given the setting, you'll also be able to create electrical devices. We assume you will then be run out of town by a frightened mob.%Gallery-22830%
EA spills the beans on MySims Kingdom for DS
Ever since MySims Kingdom was revealed, we've been patiently awaiting details regarding the title. Now, we've got a bit more to go on, as EA lets us know what this game is all about. It is "a story of adventure, discovery and exploration to help King Roland and his subjects revitalize the Kingdom." Okay, sounds simple enough.The DS version of this game, specifically, will offer several different mini-games and very much resembles Animal Crossing. EA's Rod Humble (is that not an awesome name?), whom heads up The Sims division, said MySims Kingdom will contain "rewarding quests, building houses, bridges or even making contraptions powered by electricity or water." It sounds like the title will have a lot of customization options, however we wonder if it won't be the simple little game that EA promised it would be back at launch. Is this not getting to be a bit too big for a casual title?Be sure to hit up our gallery below for first screens from the game.%Gallery-22825%[Via Joystiq]
EA details MySims Kingdom for Wii, DS
While we'll admit that The Sims was never more than a stone's throw away from being an all-out casual series anyway, EA will continue to dress the franchise in casual attire in MySims Kingdom, the sequel to last year's 3 million unit selling MySims. Shipping this fall worldwide for the Wii and DS, the game was first announced earlier this year as one of a handful of new dumbed down casual-themed takes on The Sims. However, EA today released the first details about the game, calling MySims Kingdom "a story of adventure, discovery and exploration to help King Roland and his subjects revitalize the Kingdom."The gameplay, which once again sounds more than a little like Animal Crossing, will center on exploring and developing a kingdom through The Sims-style customization, with the DS version adding emphasis on mini-games as players try to turn aside a rival evil king. Adds The Sims studio head Rod Humble, MySims Kingdom will include "rewarding quests, building houses, bridges or even making contraptions powered by electricity or water." The game eschews much of the larger franchise's sandbox appeal for backstory, leaving us waiting for until next year's The Sims 3 before we can know the joy of deleting the ladder from the neighborhood pool.
EA-Land to be shut down in August
Yeesh, that was quick. Just around two months after it was put before the public, EA announced via a blog post that EA-Land (which was The Sims Online rebranded) would be closing up shop on August 1. Current subscribers can get $15 off a game at the EA Store or a three-month membership to Pogo. Unsurprisingly, that hasn't satisfied most fans, who were able to spend real-world money to improve their EA-Land experience. Threads (here and here) were flooded with comments from users like:"Well. I'm SO freaking glad that I put so much REAL LIFE money into this game. Thank you for letting us ALL down.""Did I mention I just payed $150 last night for the founders account I've always dreamed of. Way to go... Perhaps you could have told someone sooner.""I really just can't believe it's going to be over.....and I really can't believe they think a few months of POGO can make up what we're losing here."Some of the comments were more conciliatory, some even began plans to buy the game outright. But it was clear that even if the world itself may be dying it leaves behind an impassioned, angry populace.[Via Eurogamer]
The Sims surpasses 100 million units sold worldwide
The top-selling video game of all time has just surpassed another milestone, as EA announced that The Sims, which has been released in more than 20 different languages, has now sold 100 million copies the world over since it sprang from the mind of super-developer Will Wright in 2000. The first game's expansion-laden release was followed by The Sims 2 in the fall of 2004, while the recently announced The Sims 3 will drop sometime in 2009, for the first time letting sims venture beyond their front doors and into the neighborhood. The idea of 100 million of anything is difficult for us to wrap our brains around, so we cornered Rod Humble, the brand's studio head, to pick his noodle on The Sims, particularly with regards to the franchise's expansion-heavy history. So, with pets, night-life, and even magic tricks to pick from, what add-ons do players continue to ask for that's not yet available? Says Humble, "Right now our players are keen to playing an expansion pack that focuses on living in a big city...other ideas I've seen in the community include a rave/party pack and science fiction pack." Little green sims? We can support that.Look for the complete interview with the EA exec on The Sims franchise, expansions, and where it goes from here later today.
EA releases first details, screens of Sims 3
click to enlarge If you're a Sims fan you've probably been obsessively counting down the days until March 19 when EA would reveal more details on the next iteration of their profit center popular series: Sims 3. The official site seems to be down at the moment [update: it's back up!], but we received some details from EA in a written statement we can pass on. Expect a new engine with a new, much more detailed Create-a-Sim feature. There are more physical and personality options for Sims, in fact, the release boasts over 700 million combinations. All of the objects in the world are going to be more customizable too. Also, as we already knew, your neighborhood is going to be a bigger factor in your gameplay. It all sounds promising, but don't get too excited just yet: There's no specific date, but EA says the game won't drop until 2009.%Gallery-18710%
The Sims 3 wants you to go outside (in the game)
We always found The Sims to be sort of depressing. While creating a virtual replica of your life may seem like an amusing activity at first, you -- like us -- may find the distant view through an LCD window to be both startling and uncomfortable. Yes, we can see our house from here. And we can see that it's an empty, meaningless shell bereft of human interaction outside of the occasional pizza delivery boy teleporting into the driveway. Having said that, we're definitely keen to try The Sims 3, as it'll enable us to virtually do something we've never done before. Venture "outside."You could visit different areas in earlier games, but according to 1UP, The Sims 3 will feature a large and seamless neighborhood where a step out of the door is a step into a "much bigger sandbox." The myriad of meters indicating your Sim's moods and motives will also see an overhaul, with players encouraged to be less anal about living and more focused on living it up. You can expect more information to be tucked within the April/May issue of the official Games for Windows Magazine. Don't forget to check back with on March 19th when the official Sims site stops teasing us.[Thanks, TechNick]
Sims 3 teaser posted, more info coming March 19
If there was any doubt that EA would continue to milk the lucrative cash cow that is Will Wright's Sims franchise, that doubt can now be officially expelled. EA has created an official page for the next title in the series -- titled, appropriately enough, The Sims 3.The site features little else besides the above image, which teases more details coming on March 19. Our Holmesian deductive reasoning lets us assume that this title will be a return to form for the Sims series, as opposed to another entry in the adorable but divergent MySims line. With work on Spore wrapping up after eight years, it's also possible that Mr. Wright himself may take an active role in the game's development. Guess we'll all have more information come March 19 (finally, something to anxiously look forward to besides Brawl).[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
GDC08: Will Wright talks the importance of worlds, community ownership
Tonight had a chance to attend a speech given by Will Wright at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. "This is the first time I've ever spoken to a drunk audience," he quipped. Before the speech, Electronic Arts PR Neil Young warned everyone that this would not be a speech about Spore. That's all subjective, of course -- Wright's talk, spanning everything from social science to pop culture, show an insight into his psyche and drive for Spore better than any video game session could.The point Wright started out was the negative connotation in the use of words such as franchise, brand and property, instead preferring the term "worlds" (though, we should note, he used franchise and brand a few times). Star Wars is presented as an example of a fractal timeline, with smaller iterative stories adding to fill in the gaps in between and around the major arc originally presented. Other successful worlds include LEGO, James Bond and Godzilla.%Gallery-16662%
Plenty of MySims to go around: two new titles announced
Apparently EA's strategy of releasing games with the word "Sims" in the title is paying off. Citing the success of the MySims games on DS and Wii -- to the tune of $100 million in revenue and 3 million copies -- EA Casual's Kathy Vrabeck revealed two more games in the spinoff franchise to be released on Nintendo systems. No details have been released for either game except the titles (MySims Kingdom and MySims Party) and release schedules. Kingdoms is planned for an October-December release, while Party is scheduled for early 2009. We're pretty sure we can guess what MySims Party is, but Kingdoms? We're hoping for a medieval-themed MySims. Wouldn't it be awesome to design your own cute lil' king and then outfit his castle with tapestries? Yes, it would.[Via Joystiq]
EA announces lots of Sim-branded casual titles
EA's Casual Entertainment division is ready to dilute expand the Sim franchise with a plethora of new titles over the next three years. The company also stated it plans to develop the "next generation" version of The Sims within three years. The MySims franchise -- after selling 3 million units for $100 million in revenue -- will receive two more titles in MySims Kingdom (Q4 '08) and MySims Party (Q1 '09).More Sims-branded games include SimAnimals and SimCity Creator. SimAnimals is expected by March '09 and SimCity Creator is part of EA's fiscal year 2011, meaning between March 2010 and February 2011. We doubt this is even the end of Sim announcements for this year -- gotta save something for E3.
Aspyr (not EA) releases Sims Pet Stories for Mac
Good news for you Sims completists out there (or anyone with a daughter on a MacBook): Aspyr Media has released Sims Pet Stories, the standalone Sims Pets game that lets you train, play with, and care for cats and dogs destined for the Pet Show. The reviews aren't exactly shining, but according to the user ratings at the bottom of the page, anyone who wants a cute and funny game that runs on a Mac should like it.Of course, the more cynical side of me notes that this is yet another Electronic Arts game being ported by Aspyr instead of being released directly by EA. What did they promise us at WWDC again? [via MacWorld]
Dailymotion releases iPhone site
Those wily mobileers at Engadget Mobile send a pointer to Dailymotion's new iPhone-specific site. No matter how you feel about iPhone-specific websites, watching videos on the iPhone is always fun, and since Dailymotion has taken the time to encode the content in Quicktime, it's actually possible here without a special player (unlike most other vid sites, which use Flash). Of course, if your iPhone is activated normally, you could just be watching YouTube, but for those of you running around without SIMs in your iPhones (ahem, Erica), this is an option for your video watching needs.Unfortunately, even though I wasn't able to browse around the site on an iPhone, I did browse it in my usual Safari browser, and while the content played fine, it looked as though it was sized incorrectly-- only part of the Quicktime video showed up. Some video is better than no video, I guess.
Breakfast Topic: What if WoW were more interactively social and lifelike?
Yesterday we talked about all those things we that strike us as unrealistic or odd in World of Warcraft. Your discussion of these different things got me thinking: what if Blizzard decided to make the game more interactively social? After all, players have often said that they want guild and player housing -- why stop there? Why have a house if you couldn't have more interactivity with your friends' characters, such as cooking various meals together, talking, hugging, playing music, or even playing a Warcraft version of chess or something -- all with new animations that looked right? Honestly, the way things look in WoW now, social interaction mostly involves standing there, repeating the same "talk" animation over and over as you chat. Imagine if there were a great deal more variety in what your characters could do together, just like -- and bear with me on this -- certain elements of The Sims. Some of you hate The Sims with a passion, and I respect that. And to be clear, I'm not really talking about making WoW into a "people simulator" like The Sims is. You and I both would play The Sims if we wanted to simulate people -- we play WoW for adventure! No, I'm talking about adding some optional elements to WoW, similar to roleplaying, which would add a sense of life and actual living to the game and don't get the way of your killing things at the same time, so that it doesn't feel like killing computer-generated mobs is all there is.If you do support adding more non-combative, socializing elements to the game, what sort of elements do you think would work? Mini-games such as WoW Chess, perhaps? Additional interactive animations, such as hugging, handshaking or even kissing? Perhaps even the ability to pick up objects and move them to a different location, such as moving chairs about or kicking a ball around? Would you even go to the extreme of including things like toilets, basic hunger and thirst needs, or other elements that we have in real life? Where would you draw the line where the similarity to real life should stop?
Bowling with The Sims game in iTunes Store
Get your iPods out and your gaming thumbs on boys and girls - the iTunes Store just added a new game: The Sims Bowling (iTunes link). From the preview trailer in the iTunes Store, it looks like a pretty decent bowling game; users are able to adjust their position and direction before throwing, and you can of course create your own Sim with which to hit the lanes. Reviews are also pouring in at the store, with an average rating of 4/5 stars.As with all other iPod games from the iTunes Store, The Sims Bowling costs $4.99 and only works on fifth-generation iPods with iPod Software 1.2 or later.Thanks, Gustaaf!
Friday Video: MySims is setting us up for months of addiction
Sure, we could have shown some other E3-centric videos here in our weekly spotlight, but we really wanted an excuse to talk a little more about the fun potential of MySims, which continues to bear a strong (though less anthropomorphic) resemblance to Animal Crossing. We even saw a little guy with a shovel in this trailer. Since there has been no real sign of Animal Crossing for the Wii, this looks ripe to tide us over while we wait. Who knows, we may even (gasp!) like it better.Also, splashing in a fountain sounds pretty good right about now. Oh, July, July ... how you make us long for December.
