The Sims 3 Series

He has replied for a third time, and other SimGuru’s have been posting too. I’ve even gave my two cents somewhere in the forums, and most of you can probably predict what I said

I get the sense that people think I would slam EA if I got the opportunity to, but as a whole EA is quite supportive of The Sims. The Sims Studio has been a real highlight for EA over the years, and with that comes more trust from executives and upper management. Nobody here is forced to work extended hours for weeks on end, in fact I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that I had to work late or come in on a weekend. Generally speaking people are very self sufficient here. They know what work they’re responsible for and when they need to get it done by, and they’re trusted to manage their time in the way that works best for them. SimGuruMeatball mentioned how there are hundreds of people across different teams within The Sims Studio. I don’t have any hard numbers in front of me, but I’d say that the amount of people actively working on The Sims 3 at the moment is about the same if not more than what we had from the time we started making expansions with World Adventures. Regarding customer service, I’ve seen a couple of notes from them before that made me shake my head, but I think it’s really impressive that at pretty much any time you can almost instantly be speaking with a live person who will try and help you. I don’t know of any other company in the industry that provides that service for comparable products. I’m sure they’ll continue to improve through additional training and knowledge transfers with dev teams.

 

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SimsVIP has reported about another big post from SimGuruGraham where he speaks more about modding, and also mentions about the people who want Maxis back.

I don’t want to get in a tit for tat exchange; but I will talk about some of the broader topics that people have brought up in response to my post.

Perhaps most importantly is this perception that we pay more attention to the people on Twitter and Facebook than those of you on the forums. That simply isn’t true. Twitter is a great tool for quick communication and interaction with fans; it lets me chat with people and get immediate feedback, even have a real time conversation at times. What Twitter isn’t good for is getting in-depth information – for that I come to the forums. If I tried to talk to people on the forums the same way I do on Twitter, I simply wouldn’t get any work done. The talk about Facebook is intriguing as well; I have absolutely no idea where the perception comes from that we value our fans on there more than the ones here. Do people assume we implemented the new My Page and the in-game social stuff due to requests from Sims fans on Facebook? Realistically it’s something that EA is interested in implementing across all of our games. There’s stuff like Autolog in Need for Speed, Battlelog in Battlefield, and the new social features that got introduced in Showtime are part of that whole movement. It’s an effort to emphasize and build communities, connect people with their friends, and ultimately provide deeper game play experiences. Outside of our main Sims 3 Facebook page, there isn’t any direct developer interaction there that I know of, in contrast with how we have our own individual Twitter accounts. On another note, I don’t point out that it isn’t my job to be on the forums with the idea that people should be grateful that I post here, I just want people to see that those of us who get involved with the community do so because it’s something we genuinely want to do.

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