Insimenator.org

hello

http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=23780g

should the following thread be sent to eagames/maxi

don't be shy to cast your votes

frankly I don't want a sims 3, I'm tired of all the bugs with the sims 2 so much so that I probably won't be buying anymore packs, it's getting really old.

Completely agree.
Besides, it's not like they'll listen... :(

The days of believing EA listens to us, likes us, and wants to make us happy have long ago ended for me and many others.  I think they have more than proved that the see us only as cattle and a pool of cash to be drained.  Their entire performance during the TS2 series more than adequately substantiates any accusation of perfidy and mendaciousness.

I am not alone in this sentiment, indeed every day more long-time Simmers are coming to realise the past three years have not been "all that".  The euphoria has given way to a cold realisation that 99% of the euphoria was wishful thinking, and in its stead arrives a chilling realisation we have been lied to, robbed, and betrayed.

So, sending anything like this to the developers at EA will not achieve anything, they only wish to serve their profit line by the cheapest means possible, which in the cold-hearted reality of the financial world, is all they will ever do.  When they were developing The Sims (original) they were shocked at its success and were not able to use a formula since no game had ever been so successful or demanded so many expansions before.  Now they have a formula and a business plan, the creative spark is gone and we are left with a trope of lawyers, underhanded salesmen, and money-grubbing republicans calling the shots.

... They'd listen to us, just like they listened to all of the people who had plenty of negative things to say about what SecuRom did to their PCs... then claim that it wasn't the cause of the problems, when clearly it was for many.  :roll:  I'm with everyone else in saying it's useless to reason with the big-wig now... they just want our cash, not our ideas.  :?

BUT... I do still have some wishful thinking in the matter that if they were to get it together and 'fix what's broken' company wise, it'd be worth a shot.  (But with the way some of their patches and codes work, I wouldn't trust the current staff to do that.  :lol:)  I'm not keeping that option open unless there's change for the better in the future, but with the way things are going... :dontknow:

you never know what might appen they might ask test gamers what they would like to see in the game sims3 and i read on the site sims2 valley that ea maxi will release a new simcity game in the same year that they will relase the sims3

Think of the entire franchise as the goose that laid the golden egg. It seems to just lay out money like crazy-they don't even have to work at it, for god's sake, and it makes money! How can they resist making the Sims 3 when they know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there'll be millions of ardent fans eagerly awaiting the Sims 3, never mind the boo-boos in Sims 2-that was just a glitch.
They pay test gamers to test the games. They don't really do anything more beyond making band-aid style corrections-hoping that the really big problems will only occur after they've made their millions. Then they will reluctantly release patches and apologize..sort of.
No. Until they change their modus operandi, there will be a lot of people who will not touch the Sims 3 until they have solved their attitude towards the really smart fanbase, which says that their games suck hard in coding.
I won't buy it until they do this, and I won't even buy any expansions until they shape up. They've had the last of my money for a while. I've got a game that works, and without any problems-but that is not due to them, it is due to my "tech support" and I being very careful to not push the envelope in hardware and software.
I can't afford their mistakes.

why was the sims1 so popular?
1- is it because the sims1 as more expansion pack or because they rerealise the basegame combine with the first expansion pack

2-is it because the gamer could tell the sims what to do

this we will never know

I would feel more like hearing about the Sims 3 if the Sims 2 was the greatest game ever. Damn thing is it should have, could have been. I can even live with some of the stupidity, (some is funny as hell!), but there is no such thing as customer service at EAxis, nor do they even understand the game they made. I honestly do not think any engineer, technician or QC (?) people know what building up a town from scratch, or developing 10 to 15 generations entails. I wish that they would fix the Sims 2 first. Then we can say: :let us see what new ideas you have...But I for one will not be on the band wagon to load up the hard drive with Sims 3.

Pierreandreply4, actually it is well know why the original The Sims was so popular: The Sims presented to the world for the first time a game that was fully capable of being customised by the addition of user-made content without need of especial programming or technical knowledge; it was emotional satisfying for a wider audience through the ability to add a seemingly endless variety of modifications and animations; and more especially was not a goals-oriented game with a "win" solution, but followed a more challenging theory of "staying in play" as the goal.

All other games rely on the achievement of specific goals or targets, the defeat of enemies (usually through combat), the amassing of points, or the achievement of some end-game scenario.  The Sims was a success not by design, but by accident.  It had almost nothing to do with the developers and game designers, but rather we as the Simming community grabbed hold and made the game as we wanted it as individuals and as groups.

EA has demonstrated their inability to grasp the appeal of The Sims with the release of goal-oriented versions of The Sims 2 in their Stories series and most particularly in the OFB and BV expansion packs.  This betrays their complete misapprehension of what it is we want.

There simply was no competition; since no other game yet made has offered the same flexibility to be used as a platform for us to build a game as we want it.  Not even The Sims 2 has offered us this.  The people who played and yet play The Sims are not typical of the game-buying market; and frankly EA still doesn't understand us or what we want; they probably never will.  They simply aim to repeat the success.

EA has a mind-set, that mind-set has availed them much in the area where it is best applied: combat and sports games; they have attempted to do other sorts of games with remarkable failure.  Even their strategy games have been of limited success.  A close review of their product history will easily reveal these facts.  So it was a great surprise to the original developer Will Wright as well as EA's management that The Sims became the success it did.  The success was not by design, they patently expected it to be a flop.

The guys at Maxis/EA only had to hang on and ride the run-away train into wealth and success.

With The Sims 2, they have deliberately placed obstacles in the path of the learning curve to delay the development of all forms of custom content, animations and mods; continually making unnecessary changes that complicate the development of tools like SimPE.  I have 14 years 3D CAD experience and I can tell you with certainty that EA used the stupidest and most complicated means to achieve almost everything visual in this game, adding unnecessary data at every level to complicate everything.

What we want is a canvas to make our own, what EA wants if a larger cut of the action.  I have every confidence that the problems that have beset the development of custom content since day one of The Sims 2 will be 100-fold in The Sims 3.

This may not be an issue for all players, but I will point out you are asking on a forum that was specifically created to host InSIMenator, the most complicated and most well developed and most regularly update game modification in the history of computer games, so you are definitely asking the question of a biased audience.  If you want an answer that is different from mine, I would suggest you ask on the BBS, where everyone seems to spend most of their energy kissing EA's collective arse and like the game exactly as it is shipped.

We here at InSIM are the guys that say EA sucks and lacks the creativity and understanding to make this game the way we want it, otherwise this forum would not even exist.

i understand tank you

Pierreandreply4 - you aren't off base in wanting EA to listen to us; I fear the problem is that they don't understand since what we say doesn't fit their pre-formed ideas of what makes a game successful.  It's like Mr Tolkien said of his Lord of the Rings, he didn't write it as a writer since he never was one, and truthfully the appeal and success of Lord of the Rings comes from that very fact.

The management at EA wants "safe" games with predictable success; sadly, they are not alone in this mind-set.  "The Movies" was game that was gaining ground and looked to overtake The Sims 2 for sales until the software company got scared by all the mods and imposed a moratorium on all mods. Rather efficiently killing the game.

So this is an industry-wide problem, EA only happens to be the biggest in the industry (largely due to the accidental success of The Sims) and therefore the one most prone to this corporate mind-set.

I have another take on the game: for the first time in gaming history the gamers did not have to kill people or punch people out, lay entire cities to waste and generally destroy the entire world to meet a goal. It isn't a body count style of game, and I fear that EAxis has turned their mindset into that kind of thinking-that it has an "end-game" within itself, and therefore they're not looking to expand their minds to what we want, but what they want-which is a controlled experience in a game. I don't think they understand the entire motive of the Sims game themselves, just befuddled on how to make more money.
I'm sure they're as puzzled as all get out to understand what makes most Sim players tick-it is the basic idea that this game is not one of violence or destruction, but of growth and an expanding universe, where anything is possible. It is a living game, not a death game, where players create their innermost ideals of people and their lives, and  play out their alter egos in a structured way.
Will Wright was the genius behind the Sims idea. Sadly, he has abandoned any role in the game development except for his name being used for streets. I'm sure he's probably pretty pissed at what has happened to the series by the mistakes of the EAxis, which he had no hand in.
Perhaps they should rehire him to put them back on track-he understood better than any of them what it is all about.

i agree they think that the only things players are intrested are violant games witch is not the case for every player i think the sims is a funny game and a tool to prepare the future genaration for life. if only ea maxie would understand that.

My answer is no and I'm obviously a minority. The reason why I voted to the negative is, that I know corporate life and I know, that corporations don't give a (insert any dirty word of your liking here) about wishlists like that. Also, if they're aiming for release sometime in the first half of 2008, the product is pretty much done anyway. And since the majority of potential buyers doesn't give a (insert any dirty word of your liking here) about the quality of the product as long as it's called the Sims, EA won't even consider and the mail will land in one of those wonderful virtual shiny bins.

I guess I'm wondering why some smart, enterprising person or group of people doesn't come up with a game that can compete with The Sims series, one that addresses all the issues and problems and specifically not only allows for, but encourages, custom content from the playing community. One that is even better than The Sims all around, in content and in execution. There must be some way of dodging the trademark aspect -- after all, you see copycat concepts all the time in big business.

The thing is, I don't think EA will ever work on their quality control issues unless they're forced into it by either a drop in profits for some reason, or by some challenging competition. Big corporations like that are very short-sighted from what I've seen...money is everything, and to hell with their consumers. A very, very stupid modus operadi in the long run, IMO.

JudeMG, I'm adressing your whole post: EA bashing may be right in this particular sense, but EA is only a symptom of the whole industry's desease. They have to make money and they have to make a lot of money. Therefore, as has been said in another thread, they have to suck up to each and every American lobby (biggest market after all) to get the lowest possible age rating. Allowing modding is the utmost you can expect under these circumstances and in this sense EA is much better than many of the other companies. No company will ever actively support modders. The legal implications could be too much to handle and it would be against the economical rules also. They want to sell their expansions and new games after all.

Also, since the early 90ies, there's no interest in creating a fanbase or something like a community around the product. The particular PR department will create the ghost or the shadow of a community to fool the customers into a makebelieve support.

And last, there's the quality control. Name one game, that has hit the market in these last few years and hasn't been a public beta. That's how this industry works. You, the customer, is giving them the funds to iron out the flaws or the original product. Also, it is to be expected, that the PR department has released wrongful information about the features of a particular product. These may have been planned for the release, but the deadline forced the dev team into leaving some of them out. There have been worse products than the Sims in this aspect.

i hope for 2008 2009 ea games will revise there sandard in gaming quality take for example: the sims for ps2 you can raise kids the sims2 for ps2 no kids to raise from baby to toddler toddler to kids kids to teen teen to adult adult to elder and i hope if they make a console version of the game sims3 that we will be able to raise a family when i am talking about a console version the consoles are ps3, wii, xbox 360 nindendo ds (*PS2) and psp

JudeMG, I'm sure that every single game company in existence would die to have an idea that would blow the Sims franchise into the etherworld; it takes a very rare and unusual talent to spot a winning idea that will translate into the biggest game of all time.
It also takes money-to pay people to create something that even comes close. There have been replicas, copycats and the like, and nobody yet has come up with anything so similar to the Sims that it would seriously challenge the company.
That is why Eaxis is so fat with cash-they have the winner of the competition, and they know it. They can afford to blow off their customers, produce rotten code, and get away with it forever, because they're the "only game in town" named the Sims. As long as they hold the trademark and the intellectual copyrights to the game that they make, they own the cash cow. There's no game company in existence stupid enough to try to infringe on those, lest they get destroyed by a legion of lawyers that would get unleashed if EAxis decided to defend their copyrights.

MaryH, Yes! In a different way you said what I said! The Sims 2 could have, should have been the greatest game ever. There is no easy way technically or financially that another company could create something similar. I love this game. I play it daily. It just bothers a lot of us that a company as big as EA, putting out the most sucessful game ever, doesn't put a little more love and pride into their product. If I had a product that was the "Best", I would not want to see so many web sites with so much negative reaction to my product. A problem like this can only be corrected with higher Quality standards and control over those standards. The game is awesome! They have just put share holder opinions at a higher priority than the buyer\players opinion. As always the bottom line rules, cash is King, and the whole greedy world bows down before it. -Bill

if it was not for for sites like the sims2 mts , sapphire the sims2 insimenator the sims2 tsr that make custom content  the game would not be intressthing because in my opinon i think maxi objects do not offer much choice playing the same house buying the same maxi objects if it was not for custom content frome site like mts the sims2, sapphire the sims2 insimenator i think pepole would stop playing the sims2 and there would not be expansion packs

thank you for sites like the sims2 mts, sapphire the sims2 insimenator the sims2 tsr to name a few

That's about it. And therefore, you will never get a better quality control by any company. They're selling their stuff anyway and it's not a car killing off it's driver, thereby involving you in a bigtime lawsuit or something. Let's face it, the majority of game buyers are easily satisfied fanboy kiddies with the adults being in the minority.

Unfortunately, the majority of buyers-"fanboy kiddies" don't know any better than to accept what EAxis puts out-and those of us adults who do know quality when we see it are doomed to suffer because the kiddies do rule the game universe-and I'd dare say that the majority of the meshers, modders and creators are all adults who have better taste and qualifications for games. It is sometimes so stunning to see the difference between a professional creator and a "wannabe" (and there are a lot of those) in the different sites and forums.
But if it wasn't for those people who do create some wonderful stuff, we'd all suffer the lack of imagination that stifles the Sims franchise.
Thank god for the good, great creators-you make the game far better than it was meant to be.