EA Tuesday Exclusive: Behind the scenes of The Sims 4 Audio!

The Sims 4 is launching in just one month, featuring all new Sims with really big personalities driven up a whole new emotional center. A key part of the development process to bring the emotion to life is the game’s audio and this week’s EA Tuesday Exclusive brings you behind the scenes of this important facet of the game.

In the new Create A Sim and Build Modes, each audio track has eight levels of intensity. As your attention changes from less detailed to more detailed (or the other way around), the music changes dynamically to immerse you into the experience for the first time.

Listen to this Sims 4-inspired track from Maxis on SoundCloud to get a feel for the new audio in the game.

Q: What are the main influences for audio in The Sims 4?

A: There are two major influences. The first is making sure that we don’t mess up. Our fans love the music in our games so we want to make sure we deliver a soundtrack that will meet their expectations. The second is a drive for a more physical presence in the game, something that would connect the sound and the world more tightly than before.

Just one small example is making a Sim’s voice who is turned away sound different then the Sim who is facing you – directional filtering, essentially. Every time we made something, be it voice, SFX or music, we were constantly thinking: how does this feel? Where is the emotional tie? What will this mean in the big picture?

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