This First Look At The Sims 4 May Be Cool As Heck, But Will Maxis and EA Hang Modders Out to Dry (Again)?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Earlier this week EA dropped a first look trailer for The Sims 4, the next installment in the wildly popular Sims franchise. Although there's not a lot to this video, it seems like there are two big changes in store: The Sims 4 will refine the current moodlet system into something a little more natural, and will also have a much more organic and intuitive Create-a-Sim process involving direct manipulation of the sim's figure. Although these sorts of trailers are usually pretty polished, it seems like the graphics will also be a step up from The Sims 3... But maybe not as much of a step up as we saw between The Sims 2 & 3. Either way, it's looking pretty good so far.

It's not surprising. I've had my share of technical problems with The Sims, but generally speaking I think it's an appealing and well-designed game. I think most of the choices they make will turn out to be good ones.

That's not to say I'm not worried, though.

Unfortunately my top concern is probably a long way from being answered. My Sims experience just isn't complete without mods, and even though EA and Maxis often reach out to modders when a new Sims game is coming down the pipeline, historically they've done very little to help those modders get a foothold in the game after launch. It took months before the community had figured out how to plug their own custom content into The Sims 3 without overwriting a piece of vanilla content first, which was less than ideal to say the least. This wasn't so bad if you had the money and the patience to wait for new content through monthly releases on The Sims Store, but there are some items modders make that lack the broad commercial appeal to ever appear there, and categories of items like custom skins and eyes that just weren't accounted for at all. Honestly, it made my first few months of owning The Sims 3 pretty boring. I had a hard time getting invested in characters who just looked so.... Blah.

Maybe modding will be easier in The Sims 4. Maybe it will be harder. Maybe in-game customization tools will compensate-- what if you could click-and-drag your hemlines or fringe-length as easily as you can click-and-drag your features? Wouldn't that be outstanding?!

... Or, you know, maybe they'll double-down on The Sims Store content and offer death-by-a-thousand-microtransactions to fashionably restless players like me. We'll just have to wait and see.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

It will take skill to screw this up as bad as Sim City 5.

I'm still worried though.

[Ezra]

The Sims Store seems to be such a cash cow for them judging about the amount of forum communities and YouTubers always anxious to show and receive positive comments about what's newest on it.

And the 'Stuff Packs', with a couple pairing with celebrities like Katy Perry and fashion brands like Diesel, I'm not sure how they could maintain their current direction of bringing licensed content into The Sims while at the same time enhancing (or to them, diluting) our offerings by making the creation of mod content easier.

Official support for mods would be awesome, but I doubt it. I'd sooner expect Porshe's Fast Lane Stuff and Lana Del Rey's Sweet Treats available at release.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The Sims franchise hasn't quite gotten the hang of letting creators sell their creations and skimming a modest fee from the top. SOE beat them to the punch with Player Studio, and there's scant evidence that they even know that they're waaaay behind the curve on this one.

If there's one factor more than anything else that sank The Sims Online, it was the lack of user-generated content. No matter how talented your staff is, they'll never be as prolific as thousands of creative modders (and even if you've got the world's best recruiters, some of those modders are as good as your best talent, guaranteed).

There are IP issues, but those can be handled. Don't let Legal and Compliance constrain what the franchise can be.

[Pussycat Catnap]

We could all just open a spot in SL and put green diamonds over our heads and ...

hmm...

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Blin? Zis graw ep FRATASHAY!