You’ve probably been wondering ”What’s taking EA so long to announce EP3?!”. There are multiple factors behind their announcements for The Sims 4, and Lyndsay Pearson and Rachel Franklin explained all of them during Gamescom on their Sims Panel.
The quote down below has been provided by JulyVee:
Of course we as simmers want all the information at once – when will we finally get toddlers, seasons and pets, huh? But after this panel, I’ve realised it’s not that easy. Especially with the team wanting to keep things interesting with new ideas rather than just warm up the usual expansions. But in terms of announcing here are a few key points that show why they don’t announce a pack as soon as it goes into planning.
- Things might not work out. If the team realises they have to change important things in the pack due to technical reasons or add other stuff to replace it, many fans might be disappointed. Retracting statements is never good. So they decide to show a pack when it’s clear that no considerable changes have to be made and that things work out the way they are supposed to.
- Be able to show stuff. If a pack would be announced just when the sims team starts planning it, there would be nothing to show – no animations, no items, no art. As long as that is the case, it’s just words. So the teams decides to announce packs when they have something real to show us. At this point they also said they don’t want to make fans wait too long between the announcement and the release.
- Keeping track. If the team would communicate every step of development to the fans, their heads would be spinning. Since there are so many projects at once it might be hard to keep track. So the policy is quality over quantity.
- The perfect timing. This means that, e.g. a tropical island pack would rather be announced and released in the summer rather than winter (though Rachel said it almost never happens that finished packs are held off because of this). It’s also about the feature space on origin – EA has other games too and they have to make sure to find a good time to talk about the sims. So announcing a new expansion when they just launched a new battlefield game might not be a good idea.
Who the hell wrote this?
Some fan who obviously still hopes deep in their hearts, the Sims will finally get their heads out of their banks and actually pay attention to what the fans want?
Honestly, if EA can’t announce packs enough, that’s their problem.Especially when you announce a pack like “Backyard Stuff” which was the EXACT thing as Outdoor Retreat, to be honest, the only new things that were added were a picket fence, water slides, and a windmill. So with this in mind, you’re telling us that EA took that much time (6 Months) to decide that they were basically going to take elements of Outdoor Retreat and add three new things?? BULLSHIT. It shouldn’t take that long. Seriously, this type of thinking is what makes EA think “Well, since they think it’s that AMAZING we should keep refreshing packs!!!” No, no, no. That is not how you run a company. Sorry.
no negativity on this site thank u
I wrote this and I simply summarized what the sims team told us, nothing more. These are the sims team’s opinions and views.
I’d rather be “disappointed” because of some removed items from the EP. I’d be completely happy with just “word” announcement, fans will know the theme and be satisfied that the team communicates. E.g. saying “get ready for the toddlers” would be enough, leaving fans wondering which features the update will have. I am currently quite disappointed with the state TS4 is in, so I’ll probably just have to wait till it’s done.
Nothing exactly new, though it’s always nice to talk about this kind of stuff. Those factors are pretty obvious ones when it comes to announcements. Get Together is a prime example, it was announced too early. Then we had to wait for development to be further along until we heard anything, which just made people mad. Though it’s not like people being mad is any surprise. You see a lot of people who are always ridiculously irrational and sit back and whine, complain, and go above and beyond hostile towards the game, the devs, and other players no matter what’s going on.
This actually makes so much sense though, SO many people have complained about the bad quality of the sims 4 and how it’s not the sims 3 blahblahblah, but yet, when they take their time to bring us something new to the sims it gets ridiculed profusely by a ton of players. As for the part where they have to space out their releases due to EA putting other games on the market, that’s business and marketing right there, The Sims team works under Electronic Arts and Origin, it’s not its own company anymore so they have to follow those rules. Also taking into account of how many other games that EA actually has and the player base of those games, they have to be careful when they put out their games to not overwhelm consumers. Their reasoning really does make perfect sense to me.
I agree Maks you nailed it there!!
People are impatient with games, that’s only a chunk of the community not the community as a whole. Those people that complain about the time it takes to get content are the same people impatiently waiting in the drive through. Rush rush, I demand service now. They’ll never get it and never will.
However, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be informed or have questions answered straight forward. Okay you’re working on a bunch of great things, and that’s fantastic, why not tell us just a bit to kill speculation and grand disappointment when the speculation is wrong. Working on Seasons? Awesome can’t wait thanks for sharing. Not working on seasons? Okay at least my hopes aren’t up, looking forward to whats next.
I don’t think that’s unfair to expect, a lot of games in past and present have kept their audience aware of what is to come. When Warcraft announces an expansion they show us things that aren’t even in the game yet, sketches, concepts, share ideas that they DON’T have visuals for. And that is perfectly fine, it keeps us hyped and excited still. The people that want to know are the long time fans that purchase everything sim related. We’re the ones who care and spend the money. We’ve been loyal for years, why do they keep such distance? People can be understanding and those who aren’t weren’t ever going to be anyways.
I think the biggest issue is, a lot of us have invested lots of time and money into this franchise and it feels like we can never get just a straight answer and we’re kept in the dark about a lot of things. A straight yes or no on occasion would be great. It seems as whenever they have a representative answering questions it’s met with a lot of vague answers. Can’t they just say things like “Eventually there will be Seasons/Pets in this series. It is not the current project we’re working on but it is in the plans down the line” Or “No, we have no intention of ever adding toddlers to the game.” Or just honesty. A lot has been left out of 4 and we weren’t given good reasons why, only we can speculate. I just really don’t get the constant shadiness, I don’t feel like the franchise has any competition. There are no major competing simulations close to the Sims.
I feel like, and no offense to who wrote this, but the reasons are ridiculous. Our heads would be spinning for too much information? There are games being developed or have been developed where people are informed constantly of whats being worked on. Compiled in lists like patch notes. Movies are announced before contracts are even signed and it doesn’t hurt who goes to see the film or last minute changes.”Timing” is also ridiculous excuse. People will buy an island expansion in the dead of winter. To vicariously escape the cold via their games or play in a different element to what they see outside, I know I do.
I completely understand not wanting to keep regurgitating the same things, but we were hardly given 1 tenth of what Sims 3 base game offered. This was a MAJOR step back in the franchise. This is 2.0. If you create something and you improved it greatly, why would you revert back and then not give plausible reason as to why you did? They can still give us new things we haven’t seen before while keeping some beloved staples or features that were new to the franchise in the previous series.
If they want to fix their reputation and relationship with the community, all we want is some honesty and less vagueness. Give us legitimate reasons, not a bunch of fluff like we cannot comprehend what goes into making a game. If teenage girls can churn out CC weekly that looks good and works on their little home computers, why can’t a whole development team get stuff packs, that have 2-3 new animations, out sooner?
It really feels like a lot of sims fan sites have biased reporting. You can be sympathetic to a companies plight but still hold them to a standard. This isn’t there first rodeo, yet each year they feel more and more disconnected from the consumers.
I feel the same way. Especially when I see modders doing better stuff than the developers. I love the Sims, I don’t feel like I’m gonna leave the franchise. But EA won’t see me buying anything more ’til I see some light at the end. If EP03 will be released as empty as GT was after all this time I’ll be very disappointed and I will lose my faith in 4 series.