PC Gamer: The Sims: Child Labour?

Ben: The Sims: Sweatshop

PC Gamer: The Sims: Workhouse. Anyway… I understand Rod Humble’s moved on and you now have several studios. How is the Sims franchise managed?

Ben: My job is to look after the Sims 3 line of games. That includes the PC and console games. We report back to Redwood Shores. We moved some folks here from the team there.

PC Gamer: What are your plans with the different studios going forward? Or is that not something you’re talking about?

Ben: We’re only talking about Showtime right now. The team is split up between the two locations, which creates all kinds of challenges and lots of cool opportunities too.

PC Gamer: How do you pick the expansions?

Ben: It’s a pretty organic process. One of the fun things about working on The Sims is that you can reflect on your own life and the ideas you find are totally relevant to the game. Very few people have fortunately been at war, so there aren’t that many human beings who can relate to that experience. Everyone can relate to the idea of wanting to be a star or basically to being a human being with basic human needs, so the first step is we look inward, at ourselves. What kind of things we want to explore.We look for the absolute ideas, the things that encompass human truths within them, like the desire to be recognised is and have your worth reaffirmed, that’s at the core of showtime. Everyone wants to be noticed and be told that the person they are is valuable. That’s why celebrities do what they do. There’s a little bit of our intuition. The fans of the game have the same intuition and they’re pretty involved in the game. It’s pretty easy for us to look at the kinds of things that fans are creating on the web and they’re saying on the forums and the things they say to us directly, and get what they’d be interested in. We also look at pop culture, those human truths; what are the themes that are interesting on a perenial basis, that people really want to explore more of. All of those things inform our priorities for themes. I would say, we’re just scratching the surface of the range of possibilities, I love it.

PC Gamer: Well, it’s not restricted in anyway is it?

Ben: Everything’s on the table. As long as we can make it funny and personal, it’s ours.

Continue…

MEGA Sauce: SimsVIP

Source: SimsVIP

Source:  The Sims 3 Greek Fan Club via SimsVIP

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

Thanks to SimsVIP and Dimensão Sims for the tip!

The DJ career is notably different from the others. Aaron Conners, Lead Designer; “lots of DJs moonlight. We thought it would be really cool if you could be both a celebrity DJ and businessman or politician.” Hence DJs learn their trade by using a home DJ booth and training it as a skill, though like the other careers they can still perform at a huge venue eventually.

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Also note that at this time these are Digital versions of the games via Origin. But the discounts are awesome!

| Ambitions $14.99 | Late Night $19.99 |

January Compilation (3,500 SP / $35 US)

Africa Inspiration (1,400 SP)

Adventurous Life Compilation (2,000 SP)

Safari Living Set (650 SP)

Source: SimsVIP and 5050 Sims

Thanks to Petar Jadek for the tip!

Source: Sims Nieuws

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

Thanks to Petar Jadek for the tip!