There are very fewer series with the staying power of The Sims. Just as the first The Sims is at the cusp of its 25th anniversary, the most fresh The Sims 4 has surpassed an equally awesome milestone: It’s 10 years old as of Sept. 2. The Sims 4 stands among very fewer another games that are just as popular — possibly even more so — a decade into their lifespan. The world, even, is so different now than it was 10 years ago. The Sims 4 is not without its method problems, but it persists.
“We realize and know that we’re in a very unique space, and we gotta actually pave that way for another products and games to come,” The Sims franchise vice president Kate Gorman Revelli told Polygon.
So, why has Electronic Arts not yet abandoned The Sims 4 for something new? The answer is that it just makes sense. People have built up a decade’s worth of past in The Sims 4, be it generations of Sims families or hundreds of dollars’ worth of add-on content. alternatively of wiping all that distant with the next sequential game, Electronic Arts is building out fresh Sims experiences in parallel with each other: its mysterious task Rene, a recently announced beta realm of sorts called The Sims Labs, and the continuing evolution and expansion of The Sims 4.
“So much of the way people play The Sims is about expressing themselves and their creativity and uncovering their own set of goals to prosecute within the game, but what brings them back is their attachment to those small people that they’ve built,” Gorman Revelli said. “We besides know that we’re not going to go to a linear model, due to the fact that we have so much with The Sims 4. What we’re truly looking at is, how do we proceed to work with our community, work with our players, and not have you have this minute in time where you’re going to reset all your advancement and lose those amazing memories, characters, and things that you’ve built within those 10 years of your gameplay, potentially?”
With The Sims 4 now 10 years old, Electronic Arts has outlined the future of the Sims franchise both within The Sims 4 and outside of it. The publisher posted a news release on Tuesday to its website to share what’s next: The Sims Labs, a tiny multiplayer task Rene playtest, a recommitment to addressing The Sims 4’s “core game experience” and its method issues, and a fresh way for The Sims’ customized content creators to get their work published officially in The Sims 4. Gorman Revelli spoke to Polygon on Monday to dig into Electronic Arts’ continued support of The Sims 4, and what these changes mean for the future of the brand.
This interview has been edited for dimension and clarity.
Polygon: The Sims has been a franchise that’s sustained itself for 25 years. The Sims 4 has had this engaged community for 10 years now. Why are Electronic Arts and Maxis inactive supporting The Sims 4? It’s very uncommon for that to happen.
Kate Gorman Revelli: It’s incredibly rare. We realize and know that we’re in a very unique space, and we gotta actually pave that way for another products and games to come. We know our community is so crucial to us, and so while we proceed to keep what our players want, we inactive are trying to make a large experience for people coming into the franchise fresh as well. And so what you’re seeing is we’re working on all those parts of it. We have different parallel tracks at any given time.
We’re reasoning about different players, their experience, their journey, and what they’re going to want in the game. We know we have an incredible amount of content, and we’ve built so many DLCs at this point in time that are live. You’re seeing even fresh experiences beyond DLCs that we’re integrating, like our login events. And fundamentally, what that means is that we’re just reasoning about all the different ways our players are playing and how to proceed to engage them. We know so much of the way people play The Sims is about expressing themselves and their creativity and uncovering their own set of goals to prosecute within the game, but what brings them back is their attachment to those small people that they’ve built. And there’s so much emotional attachment, and you put so much of yourself into your gameplay.
Playing with life means that you’re truly reflecting the world. You’re putting through actions and seeing what reactions come out, and you’re looking at all the different possibilities through this whimsical lens. And so life evolves, and I think the instinct to want to play with that life and experimentation continues on. What that means for The Sims 4 is that we are fundamentally inactive at this place in time where our players have grown with us. We have so much that we’re offering. It’s a complex strategy that we’re working on. We besides know that we’re not going to go to a linear model, due to the fact that we have so much with The Sims 4. What we’re truly looking at is, how do we proceed to work with our community, work with our players, and not have you have this minute in time where you’re going to reset all your advancement and lose those amazing memories, characters, and things that you’ve built within those 10 years of your gameplay, potentially?
It’s so unique to The Sims that you can have that gameplay proceed for a decade. 10 years is so long to be in a single save file. It’s sad to decision on from it!
That’s not what we’re going to do. As a player with many generations of a save file, the last thing you want is all this new, large stuff, but you can’t access it. And so that’s our attitude around The Sims 4: It’s become specified a part of so many people’s lives that we gotta proceed making it even better. There isn’t a request to go and start over completely, throw everything out, and bring you what’s supposedly better. Why is it better if you gotta quit the things you love? And so we don’t want you to quit those experiences you’ve created in The Sims 4. We want to just keep adding to that.
That’s our franchise approach: Keeping The Sims 4 to be the place that you can play generational gameplay, you do in-depth building, you work with all your mods and CC. We want to proceed to extend, so if you want to play that kind of multiplayer experience, that’ll be what you look for in the things we’ve talked about about task Rene. There’s another things that we’re talking about in the works that will address another types of the ways people want to play, from different age groups, platforms, play styles, play dimension sessions. There are quite a few different ways people want to play with The Sims, and so we’re knowing that it’s not a one-size-fits-all. What you’re going to see is simply quite a few different types of experiences within our planet and franchise that let you to have that and fulfill those needs that you have, and fulfill the needs of your Sims in various ways, too.
Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts
Has the approach to improvement over — I was going to say 10 years, but I can say over the past 25 years, besides — the decades evolved? I’m speaking to both the linear nature of games, but besides in learning what the community wants. How has the squad changed and adapted to meet the changing needs of the community?
At its core, we’re inactive developing things people love, and we inactive have that simulation experience that sets us apart. You know, nobody does life like we do, and we know that we have 8 types of different generations within The Sims 4, and there’s just this breadth of gameplay that allows you to truly recreate what you want and fulfill anything you can think of. As we think about that, we agree and realize that there is so much more to offer in the future. And so as platforms have evolved, as play patterns have evolved, we know that fundamentally, the user motivations or player motivations, and what core people want in their lives, continues to stay the same. As technology comes about, that request for having this coming-of-age experience at a certain time of your life, or having a relaxing experience as you get older with quicker sessions, is something that’s going to be here forever, no substance what the platforms or technology looks like at any given time.
We realize that there’s this ever-persistent need, and that’s truly 1 of the things that’s made The Sims unique, is it’s something that all generation will want to play with, and we’ve seen now the impact of having so many people who grew up with The Sims, in their own worlds, and how they relate to those inherent experiences of learning about the world, learning about people through The Sims, and creating something they care about so much in this small space.
Understanding of this rite of passage to play The Sims is inactive there, and so we are continuing to evolve as our generations evolve too. We want to give people that experience that they had that was nostalgic, that they grew up with, while besides providing a space to play in the ways that different generations are playing now, which is very online and very social, and not sacrificing either 1 of those and making the best experience possible for the people who are playing it. So that has definitely evolved, due to the fact that we have more global players than ever, and that’s great, and people are playing games more than ever, and people are having fun and connecting socially through games more than they always have. That will not proceed to slow down. And so we gotta proceed to adapt and meet those needs while staying core to the actual of what Sims fans know and love.
You mentioned the mods and CC as specified a immense part of the Sims experience. How do Creator Kits add to what’s already there?
I’m so excited about our future around [user-generated content], mods, and CC. We realize and know that so much of what people love about The Sims is its flexibility and its endless possibilities. Our creators and our community have been a immense contributing origin to that. We want to make certain that as we go forward, we’re truly reasoning about that as a cohesive experience. We know present that the process of uncovering Creator Kits or uncovering CC online, to bring it into your game, is not precisely as smooth as it could be. This is the first step in a very comprehensive journey that we’re embarking on to truly bring that experience for the players closer to what we know that they want and how they would like to play The Sims.
There are so many amazing creators, so we’re very excited about those first Creator Kits. It’s a process for us to learn how to make this more scalable in the future and make that process easier for more people to learn how to make within The Sims’ world, and be able to aid those creators besides find their space and let them have an audience within The Sims’ world.
Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts
I want to shift to talk about The Sims Labs a bit. What is it? It sounds like it might be akin to the Overwatch Public Test Region or something like that. How does task Rene fit into that, too?
The way to think about The Sims Labs is, it’s going to be quite a few different types of experiences that are very circumstantial or possibly are not the full game experience at any given time. So for example, task Rene[’s playtest] will have any circumstantial set of features that we’re investigating at that time we’re developing that we’ll make available for playtesting within The Sims Labs. We besides have another experiences, things that we’re looking into, like how the search works in the gallery might be an experience that we test through The Sims Labs, or experimenting with how we integrate different types of external features, like all sorts of truly creative pieces.
Think about this as our way to aid evolve with the community, due to the fact that we know so much of that experience is impactful to how they play. It might be a fresh kind of experience on a fresh platform, or it could be something like a fresh feature within The Sims 4. Or it could be an improvement. It’ll truly be an umbrella for us getting our work side by side with our players in the environments they’re playing in, and seeing how they play to aid truly build on that space. We’re truly just saying we want the community to be a part of this. We want to open the curtain to what we’ve been working on, even if it’s not full baked and it’s not something that’s final. We’ve been doing that for a while, and so we want to take people with us and get their feedback and realize how they might usage these pieces.
It’s a large umbrella. We’re working on a lot that we haven’t truly even shared. The Sims Labs is the first time to even uncover that there’s so much more. Rene has been an umbrella for quite a few our experimental projects, and so now you can truly think of the Labs as the umbrella for all of that. And so we don’t gotta usage Rene as much as a catch-all for everything that we’ve been working on.
What can you share about the task Rene playtest that’s upcoming?
What we can tell you about task Rene is we’re inactive very excited for the space that we’re working on. Again, it’s a complementary experience to all the things — it’s not a linear experience. There’s a lot we’ll be seeing in the playtest, but the core part to know what Rene is we’re truly looking at a way to make The Sims playable together. That’s what we’ll be continuing to iterate on and learn with the community.
Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts
In May, Electronic Arts announced a core squad that’s working on the general experience and method issues with The Sims 4. How’s that going?
It should all feel very cohesive in the sense that we are dedicated to continuing The Sims 4. We’ve said it many times, and this is truly just another version of that. There are so many fresh ways that we are developing against it, whether that be those live events, which are fun, whether that be this dedicated pod. We know that the longevity of this very complex game is something that our community has been very vocal about, and we want to deliver the best-quality experiences. We’re dedicated to doing that.
Hopefully it’s clear from the way we’re working with the community and everything we’re announcing. We’ve been heads-down for a while working on all of these pieces, so it’s a large minute in time to give a preview. There’s inactive quite a few time before quite a few this comes to fruition, but we wanted to give a preview due to the fact that it does feel like we’re entering a fresh era of The Sims. I want everyone who plays The Sims, has played The Sims, or might play The Sims in the future to know that this is an experience that is part of the core coming-of-age journey. It’s part of being a curious individual in the world, to being yourself. It’s an incredibly valuable space for everyone, and it’s proven that over the last 25 years. We’re all very passionate and excited about our future, and we want to proceed delivering those experiences to our players.
