How did the conversation for making The Sims 4 begin? What prompted it?

Well I think a lot of it reaches back to where we want to take the franchise and what we want to do with our sims. Realistically, when you look at it, being a life simulation, it’s all about injecting life back into our characters. So you see a lot of that come through in the main things that we’re talking about at Gamescom, so the way thay emotions drive a sims behavior really brings them to life in realistic ways.

Our new technology that we’re calling ‘SmartSim’, it allows us to do a lot of things that make them act realistically that we simply couldn’t do in the past. Stuff like multitasking, things like being able to have real group dynamics where you can have a conversation and it looks believable and we just couldn’t accomplish that in the past. I think some of it almost seems subtle, but when you see it all brought to life within the game, you instantly get we’re delivering a life simulator that’s better that any that we’ve ever built before.

So is it a case of now the technology is at the point where you can incorporate these things? Was that the driving factor behind making The Sims 4 now?

That’s a big part of it. Technology is constantly marching along and just as a studio, we want to be able to deliver these new experiences. I think developers are ultimately their biggest critics. We can look at a game and say ‘this worked really well’, ‘this is something we can do better, ‘here’s something we want to scrap and re-imagine completely’ and we use those internal metrics to say, ‘okay, we’re at a point now where we can do cool things that just where not possible and let’s give it to players because we know they’re going to love it’.

What was one of the things fans were asking for The Sims 4, because I know you’ve got a huge, passionate fanbase, what was one of the things they were really asking for?

Well I think a real key part of that was getting back to what people really loved about the The Sims franchise as a whole. So we’re focusing back on the sims themselves and we have brand new sims, those emotions, the way they tie into things and really bring them to life.The way that you even create your sim with the direct manipulation and really tactile movement and management in create-a-sim. We compare it to building with clay, because it is so much more simple and intuitive than anything you’ve seen before.

I think in our past games, we had to rely on a lot of UI and menus and that doesn’t instantly register with people, especially if they’re not already a hardcore gamer. We wanted to make a lot of sense to people who just think, ‘why can’t I just click on my sim and directly manipulate?’. We’ve been trained to think about things a different way, but that’s how things should be.

There’s been a lot of coverage recently about fans on Twitter, Call of Duty fans and so on, and here you’ve got Sims Camp and it’s the quietest place I’ve seen at Gamescom. How do you think The Sims’ fanbase compares to the fanbases of other high profile games? They seem to be a lot calmer! 

You’re talking to the right guy about that because I have lots of opinions about fans and honestly, I love interacting with our fans.

It’s interesting that you bring that up because you do see those conversations in the industry, developers getting abused by people on Twitter and all the nasty comments thrown back and forth and I think as creators we have to understand people are going to throw out vitriol about things that they don’t like. But we need to be able to see what their message is and what they’re really saying and then execute on what it is that they’re really trying to get across. Somebody might frame it in a nasty message, but what they’re really saying is, ‘I’d like this game to work this way’, and what can we do to come to a middle ground and give them something that they want?

Sims fans in particular, I do think we get less of that! You’re mentioning first-person shooters, maybe those gamers are pretty agro, jacked up, but The Sims fans are fantastic. I love chatting with them. I’m always on Twitter interacting with them, I reach out to different Sims fan sites and on our official forums and everything.

I just like having discussion with them because I think it really informs a lot of the decisions that we can make internally and we should be so lucky to have that kind of feedback that’s just given to us. We don’t have to go out and run a focus test because we’ve got this huge fanbase across the world that want to connect with us, they want to talk to us and they know what they want. They’ve been with our franchise 15 years, they know what they want to see in the next iteration of The Sims. We can take a lot of that feedback, put it right into the game and they see their ideas come to life.

Do you think the wider problem with the industry at the moment is that it’s struggling to adapt to things like Twitter and really understanding how to deal with fans where communication is a lot more direct?

It’s hard to say because I’ve just made it a personal mission of my own to go out and be very open and transparent with our fans because I want to have those direct discussions because I think it makes me better at my job, frankly.

I think you’ll see more of that as time goes on. The internet is certainly not going away. People are going to have to learn how to relate to their fanbases and their communities, because they’re our consumers, they’re our players. I want to deliver a fantastic experience for them. I can’t do that if I’m not communicating with them.

Speaking of fans,  The Sims fans are famous for creating somewhat depraved scenes in The Sims, like walling a certain sim into a room and seeing what happens. Is that still possible in The Sims 4, that sort of behaviour?

Yeah, of course. We’re going to support all the classic, traditional stuff that players love. I can’t really go off the beaten path too much beyond what we’re showing at Gamescom, but if you’re more of a deviant player, we’re going to have a lot of fun things in there for you to be able to mess with other sims, control their lives, manipulate them, make them have a miserable existence. If you want to do that, it’s going to be there for you.

What’s the strangest story you’ve heard about what a sim’s been through?

I’m trying to think of one that I can frame that’s appropriate in terms of The Sims 4. I think a lot of it comes out of how sims die because people really like to mess with sims and their lives and have them just die in horrible ways.

It’s funny because then we go back and we add tools later on that give them more abilities. One example from the Sims 3, we added this meteor that could fall out of the sky onto a sim and it would kill them and people loved that. It came on early in the sims, it was extremely rare, and you heard the most incredible stories come out about it. One person was holding this outdoor wedding and both of the families had come over the wedding, they were actually under the wedding arch about to kiss, and the meteor fell on top of this hold crowd of people, wiped out both families. It was the most awful thing! We didn’t program anything especially for this, but this kind of emergent gameplay comes out. Somebody had it at their school graduation on the steps of City Hall. Bam! Meteor. Took them all out.

The most recent one I heard, this poor player, they were throwing a holiday gift party – we added these festivals and parties you could have in Sims 3 Seasons – and they had this party, it was outside, they’re opening their gifts. Bam! Meteor! We love when those stories came out, so we’ve actually gone back and added more functionality – you can actually trigger your own meteor strikes now. It’s part of that fan feedback.

People love that stuff, but sometimes it was so rare that they could just never see it in their game, so why not give them the tools to have that sandbox to experience? If they want to generate stuff and make situations happen, we want to put those tools in their hand to have that kind of experience that they want.

Will there still be those rare events that can’t be triggered?

Oh yeah, absolutely. You’ll see some of that. A lot of that goes in terms of gameplay and things will just come about through emergent gameplay, situations that you don’t expect and we’ll full support that. Being a life simulation, I think you have to have some of that.

In a game where you can build the kind of game you want to make, where your imagination is the driving factor, how hard is it to give the player freedom, but at the same time define some sort of boundary so that it still works as a game?

It’s an interesting topic. Actually, just one week before coming out to Gamescom, I was reaching out to our fans and I was very curious in terms of what they felt about a sandbox experience between more kind of linear gameplay where it’s scripted or sending you down a path. I was curious because I hear various feedback from them. Some people really want that sandbox experience, some people are more into deeper gameplay options that they progress through. I wanted to know, how do they think a sandbox experience collaborates with this gameplay that you have to progress through, and people started sending me all sorts of feedback immediately.

What I found out is that the way we think of sandbox – you know, this open world filled with tools that you can go in, manipulate, play with, set up scenarios exactly how you want – that’s different than how our players think of a sandbox. Really, to them, sandbox is another word for life simulation and what they want is more tools, more freedom to play out their lives in any variety of ways that they want. They think sandbox, they just want more gameplay options, more ways to do the same thing. It’s really about going back there, adding more depth into the gameplay, giving them the ability to tell stories in ways that relate to them.

During development of The Sims – obviously expansion packs for Sims 3 were released such as Sims 3 Pets and various others – did the feedback from any of those expansion packs help inform development of Sims 4 in terms of how they were received?

Yeah, there’s a very good example of that actually, that we are showing here at Gamescom. We’ve shown off some of our new build mode tools and one of the things that we’re doing is called magazine mode where you’re able to get these fully furnished rooms out of a catalogue where you’re looking through, like you might see in a magazine. You grab the room, you can place it on your lot, pick it up, move it, pull it along, drag it. All the furniture comes with you and as you’re rearranging stuff the furniture will actually move to help form with the shape of the room.

It’s a very intelligent system and what that really is, is building off a feature that we added in Sims 3. We added the blueprints in, I believe, the eighth expansion pack, Sims 3 Seasons, and blueprints were kind of a rudimentary idea that we took and fully shaped in The Sims 4 based on a lot of positive feedback from fans. They loved the blueprints. It gave people who weren’t as familiar with our build tools the ability to go in there and actually create something without just being starstruck when they look at the tools and they don’t know what to do. We really want to make our tools more accessible and that’s a direct example of how what we did previously influenced things in Sims 4 to make them much better.

Even though we’re only on Sims 4, the series has been going for quite a while.  How do you think the average Sims player has changed during that time?

That’s a very interesting question because our audience ages with us. I think with a lot of other games you see people age out of a franchise and I don’t think we suffer from that problem. Really, we bring in new players as they age into the franchise. It’s kind of interesting because you start to see the mix of people amongst the community. The people who have been there since The Sims 1 are a lot different and have different opinions on what The Sims 4 should be compared to people who’ve just started The Sims 3.

As they continue through life – we have middle-aged players, we have older senior players – they don’t leave us, they just add another wrinkle into what we’re thinking about when we’re developing the game.

When the original Sims was made, it was like nothing else anyone had ever seen. Now with Sims 4, there’s a lot more competition in terms of games that, don’t necessarily copy The Sims, but have those similar elements. How do you think The Sims can stand out now? Where’s its place in the gaming world versus increased competition?

Well I think the challenge for us is really in terms of messaging because there’s so much going on behind the scenes in the game engine and the life simulation that we’re driving that it can be difficult to see those subtle changes on the surface. But I think when you really get in there and start to see the gameplay, see how the sims are interacting, how they’re moving around their home, how they’re conversing with other sims, for players who have been with the series it becomes instantly apparent what we’ve changed and how we’re bringing them to life in much more believable ways. When we talk about stuff like the SmartSim technology, we say our sims are going to have these realistic group dynamics now where we can be sitting and conversing and then if Nicole joined in the conversation, I can turn to look to her, I’m addressing her and if she starts talking we both turn and look at her.

We have these great dynamics where we simply couldn’t do that in past Sims games, the technology base wasn’t there for us. Bringing those realistic interactions to life, it makes for such a compelling experience in a life simulator because you want your characters to be believable. Just being able to do things like that or being able to multitask, so you can sit and eat a meal and converse at the same time, its so much better for a life simulation. We really just need to drive across the point that, ‘hey! We’re doing things that are amazingly new, let us tell you how it’s awesome!’

Maxis had Sim City recently as well and although that’s not a one-to-one comparison with The Sims, there are similar elements. Was there anything in Sim City in terms of how it was received, or the design, or the tech that helped with the design of The Sims 4 and how you guys went about that?

It’s actually entirely separate and I know that a lot of people went into The Sims 4 announcement with this assumption that we were using Glassbox technology and we’re not. We’re on our own completely separate proprietary engine that we built just for The Sims 4. So in terms of what we’re taking from that project, there really isn’t a whole lot there. As a studio we have a collective knowledge as we release things, collect feedback, see how things are done and so one of the important things we say is,‘hey! We’ve got a very compelling single player offline experience’, and we know that’s important for our sims fans. We’re going to deliver a fantastic single player title for them.

Article Link

We unveiled The Sims 4 at our gamescom press briefing – to give you an insider’s look, we sat down with producer Ryan Vaughn to tell us a little more about this PC favorite and what the Sims team will be doing this week here at gamescom.

Q: What is the biggest difference in The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 3?

A: It all starts with the biggest innovation in The Sims 4, the Sims themselves. Our Sims have evolved into emotionally aware beings whose every action is affected by what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. Now you get to play with the mind, body and heart of the Sims.

Our second big feature is a new set of technologies we’re calling SmartSim. This has allowed us to make the most intelligent and relatable life simulation ever.

And finally, we’ve completely rebuilt our creative tools to be more intuitive, more powerful, and much more fun to play with. For the first time you reach into the world and shape your Sims by hand and build your homes room-by-room with ease.

You’re going to be able to see this in action during The Sims Live Broadcast so check it out! [Airs at 8am Pacific on Thursday, August 22 at www.TheSims.com/live]

Q: Sims have now been around for over a decade. How do you keep it interesting for (very passionate!) fans?

A: It’s funny you ask that, because it’s actually the fans that continue to drive our excitement about The Sims. It is their undying passion that energizes us, and their continued devotion that inspires us to create the kinds of games and content that we want to play. We’re constantly surfing the forums, checking in with them on Twitter via our @SimGuru accounts and looking for their feedback so that we can deliver the experiences they’re looking for. Keep it up, guys, we’re listening!

Q: So, what’s going on at SimsCamp this week? Tell us more!

A: We’ve invited top fans of The Sims from around the world to converge at SimsCamp to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at The Sims 4. In addition to being amongst the first people in the world to play with Create A Sim, they’re the first to go behind the curtain to see how all of the pieces of our game come together.

Q: What is the feature you’ve waited for the most to show off while at gamescom?

A: The Sims themselves. These are revolutionary new Sims with emotional centers that behave and react more naturally than ever before. Every one of their actions is affected by their emotional states that lead to richer, more meaningful gameplay.

Q: How long have you been a Simmer yourself and what makes you love this franchise?

A: I started working on The Sims in 2007 when I was lucky enough to land on The Sims 2 team, but I’ve been a Simmer since the beginning. My favorite part about The Sims is that it’s a blank canvas. We give players all of these creative tools and they use them to tell their own unique stories.

For me, I love to build homes. So it actually really excites me that we’ve completely revamped our Build tool. It has all of the power that I want, but it’s tactile and flexible so that I can make great homes with ease.

POST LINK

Source: BeyondSims

ALL LEAKS FROM THIS POST ARE CONFIRMED TO BE TRUE!

CHECK OUT THIS PAGE THAT INCLUDES FULL THE SIMS 4 REVEAL!

SimsDomination and ModTheSims found something very, VERY INTERESTING on thesims.com servers. As some of you may know, thesims.com was down for maitenance yesterday, and after 5-6 hours, it came back. There were no new info’s/material, but luckily, SimsDomination dug into The Sims Servers, finding some interesting screens and info of The Sims 4.

*NOTE*: There is less than a week until Gamescom, so please, don’t be dissapointed if these screens aren’t real. Besides, we will get more info @ Gamescom, including more pics, screens and possibly a Trailer! These pics are from a developer blog, so they probably won’t be seen on the Gamescom Press Conference.

UPDATE: The renders are REAL! One of the renders are featured on the Australian Gaming Magazine called PC PowerPlay!

UPDATE: The Sims 4 trailer WILL BE SHOWN on 20th/22th of August, including the first gameplay footage!

UPDATE: Description for The Sims 4 is HERE!

The Sims 4 is the highly anticipated life simulation game that lets you play with life like never before. Create new Sims with intelligence and emotion, whose every action is informed and affected by their interactions and emotional states. Experience all new intuitive and fun creative tools. Sculpt your Sims in Create A Sim and construct unique homes with the tactile room-based Build Mode. Control the mind, body, and heart of your Sims with dynamic, emotion-rich gameplay, and bring your stories to life.

New Sims – Create and control more intelligent, more relatable, and emotionally rich Sims.
Intelligence – Your Sims move and act more naturally than ever before, from multitasking to expressing their emotions by the way they walk. Choose the personalities of your Sims, select their aspirations, and explore the depth of their lifelong goals through your Sims’ thoughts, social skills, careers, and memories.
Emotional Depth – For the first time, Sims feel and express emotions. Your Sims can experience a diverse range and depth of emotional states and are influenced through other Sims, actions, events, memories, or even by the clothing and objects you choose. Emotions offer you more choice by giving you the opportunity to create richer stories with even more possibilities.
New Creative Tools – Create A Sim and Build are more powerful, intuitive, and fun than ever before. You have the freedom to sculpt Sims with tactile precision. Effortlessly construct the home of your dreams with the all new room-based Build Mode.
Vibrant Neighborhoods – Chose among brilliant and diverse lots for your Sims to live in. Vivid visuals bring your Sim’s home to life.
Rich Rewards – Earn new objects, outfits, and traits by completing events, discovering collectables, and unlocking achievements.
Share Your Creations – Share your Sims’ households with your friends and the community. Download community creations for an all-new look.

What is The Sims?
The Sims 4 is the highly anticipated life simulation game that lets you play with life like never before. Create and control new Sims with mind, body, and heart. Build their unique worlds. Direct and explore the stories of your Sims and experience delightful and exciting results.

Create Your Sims
Create and control the most intelligent and relatable Sims ever with new, intuitive design tools. Customize your Sims’ appearances, personalities, aspirations, walk styles, and even their relationship to others.

Build Their World
Select from diverse environments for your Sims to live in and build their home with fun, intuitive design tools that allow you to effortlessly create the homes of your dreams.

Play with Life
Play with life like never before in The Sims 4. The choices you make influence your Sims and everyone and everything around them. These moments create delightful and exciting results throughout gameplay.

Ways to Play
How you play The Sims 4 is up to you. Help your Sims start a new career, find love, and start their family. Construct and design the homes of your dreams. Fulfill your Sims’ needs, explore their aspirations, and experience how they respond to life’s moments. The Sims 4 allows you to play with life like never before. The Sims live with rich physical and emotional characteristics and their worlds and stories are influenced by your choices and creativity. Welcome to The Sims 4!

UPDATE: The new FAQ info is here!

Frequently Asked Questions

Does The Sims 4 require the Origin™ client to play?
You will need an EA/Origin account in install the game. Once installed, you don’t need to connect to the internet again if you don’t want to.

Will I be able to bring any of my Sims or content from The Sims 3 into The Sims 4?
The Sims 4 is built upon an entirely new foundation. The content from The Sims 3 will not be transferable to The Sims 4.

How do I stay up to date with the latest info on The Sims 4?
To stay up to date on all the latest The Sims 4 news, keep visiting our official website at www.TheSims.com, Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSims, and sign up for our VIP Newsletter atwww.TheSims.com.
Will The Sims 4 require a persistent online connection?
You will not require a persistent online connection to play The Sims 4.
What are the minimum hardware requirements for The Sims 4?
We are working to make the game accessible to as many players as possible. We will let you know once we’ve locked in the specs.

Who are some of the people that are making The Sims 4?
The Sims 4 is currently in development at The Sims Studio in Redwood City, and the team making the game is comprised by veterans whose experience dates back to the inception of the franchise. We have folks like Robi Kauker, Lyndsay Pearson and Kevin Gibson who have been with the series since the beginning. We will continue to introduce you to more of the team throughout the development process.

Box Art (Placeholder)

Limited Edition (Placeholder)

Digital Deluxe (Placeholder)

Pre-Order Bonus

Store Content/Registration Content

Screen in HQ

Screens

Create a Sim

Renders

UPDATE: Gothicans added more The Sims 4 Photos from the Magazine called GAMES! Be sure to thank her on the forum!

Pics by nasTdude 

Text

Your sim can go to the gym and you can have your Sim hop on the treadmill and then watch the home and garden channel on the TV – so she’s gaining a little gardening skill and getting fit on the treadmill.

We’re also giving players control over groups of Sims. You can now tell Sims when they’re in groups to do things together. ‘Go over there together,’ or click on a basketball hoop and select ‘shoot hoops together’.

Within each of the handful of emotional states – including happy, sad, inspired and depressed, among others – are a range of nuances that will unlock contextual actions

Furniture can be purchased through an Ikea-like catalogue, offering a range of items that directly influence how a Sim feels within the environment – for an example, an inspirational painting could boost the creativity of a Sim.

This offers the possibility of soul mates – couples that max out bother metres – while the balance could be swayed so that, in theory, you have a friend-with-woo-hoo-benefits deal with someone you know.

Via McNum

Well the Danish magazine “gameplay” is out for subscribers and it also has a Sims 4 feature.

There’s not much new that hasn’t been seen already, the screenshots all look pretty familiar, well, maybe except the one from the gym with the new treadmills, but there are a few clarifications and minor tidbits.

For example there’s an example of emotion furniture in a poster of a Sim version of Mr. T placed in a gym that increases a Sim’s inspiration when working out, or the obvious one with candles and similar in the bedroom to give a romantic boost.

The Build mode is also clarified a bit. It is still possible to build a home wall by wall like in the previous games. But once you make a room, you can grab the entire room, furniture and all, and move it around like one big object. That’s what the highlight lines on the screenshots mean. “Grab entire room.”

There’s also something about the sound design, which I haven’t seen mentioned yet. The game has over half a million sound files. Also the sound system has gotten a technical overhaul to allow sound to have a direction, so a Sim with his back facing the camera will sound a little muffled when he speaks, or a stereo being blocked by walls and sounding different depending on the shape of the room. Basically, we have acoustics.

And the answer to the usual silly bit that gameplay always asks is… To make the sounds for a Sim playing an instrument badly, in this case the violin, they ask the professional musicians to swap hands and try to play. Clever.

Well that’s pretty much it. There’s some concept art in black and white there, too, looks like The Sims 4 is going for a bit of idealized Southern USA feel here.

Member of Sims.Mixei.Ru Forum posted a new screen from a German magazine. Looks like trains in The Sims 4 are usable! Bottom 3 pics are probably just the concept art of trains, since they are black and white.

Via ModTheSims

myfoxla.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) – “The Sims” are getting in touch with their feelings.

The fourth edition of Maxis’ successful life-simulating game will include more emotional versions of the virtual people whose lives and homes players can manipulate. This time around, “The Sims 4” producer Lyndsay Pearson said the developers have focused on crafting more believable Sims who can perform multiple actions – like walking and talking – at once.

While the Sims have always been an emotional bunch, they’ll be guided by their moods even more in “The Sims 4,” set for release next year for PC. During a demonstration of the game at Electronic Arts’ offices last week, a Sim named Andre felt jealous when his pal Ollie began flirting with a female Sim. He intervened but became depressed once his advances were dismissed. He then opted to blow off steam by boxing.

“The key to ‘The Sims 4′ emotions is that there isn’t anything particularly better or worse,” said Pearson. “You have the ability of what to do with that emotion. If your Sim is furious, that may seem like a bad thing, but it actually means they can write a special book or paint a special painting or go for a really good run and have a really great workout.”

The sequel will also make it easier for players to build homes for their Sims by picking pre-designed rooms and plopping them together to create a house. The abodes can then be filled with furniture and other items that inspire different emotions in the Sims. Some items can only be earned when Sims meet certain goals, either personally and professionally.

“The Sims 4” includes 18 touch points on the Sims’ bodies, which can be sculpted to create custom faces and physiques. The developers have also added new locales for the virtual people to “WooHoo,” the franchise’s cheeky term for sexual intercourse. For example, Ollie eventually ended up getting it on with that female Sim in a rocket ship parked in his backyard.

“‘The Sims 4’ and ‘The Sims’ in general has always had a really good sense of humor,” said Pearson, who has worked on the franchise for 10 years. “For us, that’s an opportunity for new places for your Sims to have a little bit of fun and ‘WooHoo’ and maybe new ways to die. All of those things are funny parts of the game we’ve maintained in ‘The Sims 4.'”

Pearson said “The Sims” franchise has now sold more than 170 million copies worldwide, cementing the 13-year-old people simulator by Electronic Arts Inc. as the top-selling PC game franchise. “The Sims 3,” the previous installment launched in 2009, and 10 expansion packs, which add themed settings and features to the original game, have since been released.

“The Sims 4” follows the chaotic reboot of “SimCity” from EA and Maxis last March. The updated edition of the 24-year-old city-building franchise required gamers to play online even if they weren’t interacting with other players. Several gamers weren’t able to log on after the game debuted, prompting some retailers to stop selling the game.

Pearson declined to comment on what the developers learned from the botched launch of “SimCity,” which went on to sell 2 million copies, according to EA. She noted that “The Sims 4” would be an offline single-player experience, although players will still be able to exchange virtual creations much the same way they did in previous editions of “The Sims.”

Read more: http://www.myfoxla.com/story/23178841/the-sims-4-adds-emotional-multitasking-sims?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#ixzz2cUx4LT5e