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Special thanks to SimsVIP for this announcement

Source:  The Sims 3 Greek Fan Club via SimsVIP

Via The Sims 3 Italian Facebook Page – Special thanks to OS Games EA

If you’ve followed the Sims series for some time, then Grant Rodiek’s name should be familiar to you.  Outside of his daily job, he’s been working on a separate personal project and I’d like to take a moment and give him a hand to let you guys know about it.  It’s called Farmaggedon, a card game in which you plant and grow crops for money.  Watch the video below for how it works:

Being as this is a self-published game, it’s on Kickstarter right now, hoping to become a reality. They are hoping to reach a goal of $5000 by March 4, and currently (as of this post) they are $1600 in. If you have a couple of dollars and want to help Mr. Rodiek out, please consider pitching in a few extra dollars – even buy the game. Already put my donation in, hope you’ll do the same – Let’s show what the Sims community can really do, please spread the news around on your Sims site, forums, facebook page, twitter and any other means. Just be sure to note that it is NOT involved in any way with EA (legal issues, and all that fun stuff)

link here

In relation with the development process of this game, what is the most difficult part and what is the part that you most enjoy doing as a producer?

You’re asking some really good questions! And King likes it too, he’s happy that your asking me difficult questions. The most difficult part of development… I would say that’s the part when you’ve decided what you’re going to do, you know what you want to build, but you don’t have it in your hands yet so it’s in the stage were people are building things. Sometimes what you are expecting to see is exactly what you get, and sometimes is not because you come across a technical difficulty. So I think is that waiting period were you don’t know what’s going to happen.
But it’s the unknown part where I’m like: how is it gonna be? What is it going to really look like when you get in the game? For me that’s the most complex part. I think also the most difficult thing too is when we get an unexpected bug when we first put this in the game. Say you have a dresser, it’s a dresser, we know how those are going to act in the game. Every once in a while the way it’s built, it might be a litte bit too small, it might be too large and it’s going to cause this problem you never expected to see and that’s also kind of fun trying to figure that out and get that fix. Why is this happening, that’s very interesting for me.

The most fun part is when I finally get to play with everything and test things and work with the team. My favorite part of development is working with other members of the team because as a producer I’m no longer building this stuff it’s the team and being able to work with them and see them build this stuff… The people on the team are just amazing, I can’t begin to tell you how talented and good people they are. That’s my favorite part of working on the team is being able to work with this people together.

read the rest of this interview over at ActualidadSims!

You can jump to their manual here

Link here

I’ve been pretty much out of the loop for these past couple of weeks while The Black Scorpion does most of the updates and an occasional post from the other staff members.  As many of you know, there is a beta going on for The Sims 3 Showtime that certain folks are participating in.  Well, long story short – and I’m not sure who – somebody broke their NDA and ended up posting stuff to the exchange that they shouldn’t have.  Then fan sites picked up on it, and well, apparently it got nasty.  Not with us though, thankfully.

However, with all this taking place and discussions back and forth, I think it’s time for an apology to the SimGuru’s.  You see, I know that I (myself, as an individual) am more than likely blacklisted from anything EA related – beta testing, studio visits, etc. due to my personal opinions on some things within the company.  I can’t apologies for my opinions (i.e. The Store prices, the way some things are handled over at the official forums/community, etc), but I can apologies for my rudeness and overall behavior towards them.

In the past, I posted leaked stuff (but I did not sign anything) – back then, all responsibility was on me.  But I have to remember – others post here now, so that my own opinion/behavior/posts do not represent just myself – but the overall site and everyone who is a part of it.  I have to be careful with this from now on.  Due to my actions, not only have I jeopardized my relations with EA and The Sims Team, but it’s very possible that I may have dragged The Black Scorpion and the rest of the staff with me.  I never thought of that, and to me, it’s just wrong.  So to the Guru’s reading this, while you’re more than welcome to have your own personal bad opinions about me, please DON’T let that reflect to the rest of the staff.

From now on, we’re going to be a lot more careful in what we post, and we shall avoid posting internal leaks from within EA as well as any leaks that may have came from broken NDA’s through beta testing.  In fact, we actually should be thankful for the beta testing, because…well, the keyword is testing, and even though some folks are drooling to get as much info as they can from the next expansion pack, we at least know that The Sims Team is actually letting some folks in the community point out bugs and try to get them fixed before the game, which personally, I would like to have more of in the future and I hope that this did not ruin any potential upcoming betas.

Thanks.

-Jud

What do you think about The Sims Team bringing back the Cowplant?

• Looks cool, but I wish it was added to an Expansion and not the store. (37%, 542 Votes)
• If it was a free store item it would be cool to have. (35%, 509 Votes)
• OMG COWPLANT!!! (12%, 176 Votes)
• I love it! (7%, 95 Votes)
• That thing scares me!!! (5%, 76 Votes)
• I hate it! (4%, 58 Votes)

Total Voters: 1,456

Via Sim Dunyasi (thanks, Burkay for the email!)

link here

If you’ve ever been to the official forums, you know for a fact that the CM’s (community managers) are doing a poor, poor job on moderating their forums.  Trolls everywhere, porn at random places (even on various Sims 3 pages).  It’s disgusting.  But no, the CM’s would rather promote their store, or post LOLsims or some other non-sense.  Sure, they can do that…but really, they should also pay attention to what’s going on.

So instead, they decide to put moderators in place to help them out.  Again, understandable.  Of course, when you are a moderator – especially on an EA forum, it means jack squat as you have no control or power.  Nope – just a title is all you get.  One such moderator – bob007 was simply doing his job…trying to stop the trolls.  Apparently EA had enough of the complaining…and got rid of him.  No, not the troll(s)…rather, Bob – as a moderator.

I wanted to post this as a run-in to another topic – The Sims 3 Boycott Week.  There are a number of reasons why people are angered with EA.  Buggy games, poor patch support, overpriced items in The Sims Store, past value of their games, the way the series is heading in terms of gameplay.  While there are some on that list that I agree with, for the most part it’s how they are handling their fans and treating us like crap.  They got our money, that’s all they care about…They don’t care about bonding with the community.  In some regions – like The Sims 3 UK Team, or the Dutch team and other areas, they have an awesome PR team that do a fantastic job with communicating with their fanbase.  Here, in the US?  Nope.  No – instead, they send out take-down notices, axing our YouTube profiles for publishing videos that they themselves leaked and so on.  It’s just…depressing.

/end rant.

………………. US Release – January 24, 2012 ……………………….. UK Release – January 27, 2012

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US Release Date Countdown Clock Embed Code

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