During The Sims Team’s latest Inside Maxis Livestream SimGuruAzure and SimGuruBat got to talk a little bit more about the future of The Sims 4 and what The Sims Team is planning.
In their Sims 411 segment both developers answered a “When will you add…?” Frequently Asked Question. The two developers acknowledged highly suggested features and packs such as Generations type of Pack and Cars and that currently it’s among their top priority to release these features. They’ve also reassured fans that The Sims 4 will definitely STILL have many more years of new content!
You can check out the full transcript of their answer from the official livestream that I’ve written down below.
SimGuruAzure: We’ve seen a lot of questions from you guys about specific pack themes and features such as Generations Packs and Cars and here’s what we want you to know. We love your ideas, first of all, and I personally really enjoy having those things in my game too. What we can say is that these suggested packs and highly, highly requested features are always at the top of our mind. Especially when we think about what we want to do next. As soon as these things become more real we’ll update you right here at Inside Maxis. What do we need to make it more real?
Just to give you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what we do; to bring new content to the game it involves many, many processes. We have to take important steps that are a part of the game development process and often that takes a lot of time. This time is needed to ensure that we meet your expectations and that we’re delivering the best quality to you guys. Sometimes there’s also foundational technology that we need to work on and sometimes we have to dig into the designs very deeply that make these things happen.
SimGuruBat: We’ve read a lot of your feedback and our goal is for you to be as excited about packs and features as we are. We put a lot of heart into what we do and we try to make as many people as happy as we can but we also know it’s kind of impossible to meet everyone’s expectations. The great thing is as our game continues to grow and we look forward to delivering more stuff as the game goes on…for many, many more years to come.
SimGuruAzure: Many more years to come!
Super excited that The Sims 4 will still have many more years to come. In theory, it never has to end. I’m convinced that if we ever get a Sims 5, this and that one will be co-developed.
they better find some gorilla glue to fix the crumbling base if they want to continue for years to come, because TS4 is turning into Jenga.
The gurus aren’t able to say anything unless it’s been green lighted by the EA marketing team. They mentioned that before. Usually they instead hint at things with objects in the game as they’ve done in the past with seasons, toddlers, cats and dogs, snowy escape, knitting etc so that it doesn’t violate the rules set for them. No community is worth saying something sooner just to get people off your back and endangering your income. So while the questions and wants are very valid expecting a black and white answer is unlikely to happen unless it’s preplanned like with bunk beds before the official reveal.
This is much deeper than just “hints” this is EA essentially having the final say on anything that is being produced for the game. They recently (last month i think?) announced that they are “supposedly” letting their producers and devs be more independent with their engagement and content production for their games, however I personally don’t trust that it’s true…only time will tell.
I’m very dissatisfied with the way TS4 has been handled and treated by EA. The worst part is that the gurus most likely have no say on what they’ll be working and at the same time are usually the ones under fire by the community, while in reality it’s the higher ups behind the scenes that should be blamed.
Most of the Simgurus are producers. They’re department heads, essentially. I can’t think of a single Simguru who is a low-ranking programmer who also gets flak from the community. Whenever the community has beef, it’s *always* directed where it should, since the producers are the ones who make these decisions in the first place.
That’s false, many gurus are just concept artists, game and quality designers, communication managers etc. I’m not saying they’re not at fault, but unfortunately the final say on what content will see the light of day depends on EA which in this case are the “higher ups” of The Sims studios (aka Maxis studios)
A great example of that is that terrible star wars pack ad, that was released a while ago. It’s clear as day EA was completely behind that monstrosity of a pack, proving once again what a money hungry company it is, teaming up with Disney completely disregarding customer demand.
I’m not trying to paint the producers and the people on the team as saints, in fact I found some to be the complete opposite (cough cough grant cough) but they are definitely talented and capable enough to create a product that is a thousand times better than what TS4 is. Unfortunately over the years EA has gotten in the way, taking shortcuts and deals that have nothing to do with what the community wants and as a result we are where we are today,
So, the same PR speak they always say. Cool. That was worth writing an article about.
all in due time, i am sure.
Are there anymore plans for Occults? It’s one of the few core features Sims 4 is currently lacking.
Hopefully they bring back werewolves and fairies. They need to do the same power/weakness gains that vampires had which is something mermaids really lacked. That is a pack they need to go back to because it’s such a glaring failure considering it was such a selling feature for the pack itself.
and then we will get again something nobody asked about lmao