One of the perks of The Sims is the huge amount of user-generated content (UGC), and the freedom Maxis gives their users, allowing them to create whatever they want. From clothes, hair, furniture and architectural elements to giving the Sims their own genitals, even showing them aroused. There is no limit to what is created. These are available to download from The Sims 2 and 3 website, and numerous fan-created sites, either designed for users to upload their content or specifically for one user to showcase their own. The most popular websites are ModTheSims, All About Style and Peggy Zone.

Users create replicas of celebrities (above: Megan Fox and Mouse M.D), characters from films and tv shows without breaking any rules. This kind of content is accepted and, as of yet, no one has been sued for uploading it. However, Little Big Planet‘s Media Molecule has seen it’s fair share of copyright problems. Users that have created Super Mario Bros themed levels, Batman, and Metal Gear Solid (and many more) have been taken down. So what are the differences between creating an Avatar’s Na’vi for the Sims and making a Super Mario Bros themed level? They are both available to use online and both use copyrighted content, they both also aren’t exact copies.

However not all companies are against users creating content that represents their own work. Alex Evans of Media Molecule explains:

“…the other point is the number of IP owners who came up to us and said please whitelist us – we’ll never ever ask you to pull infringing stuff. I can’t say who that is, but those two things really shocked me, I think it shocked [the IP holders], who were like, hang on, my IP’s being represented and it’s being represented really well. The IP holders have to have last say over the representation of their brand, and that’s fair enough, so we’ve always got to have a method for people misusing a brand, but what’s been really lovely is how well represented so many brands are.” (source)

And they have a good point, surely if the content was well made and enjoyable it’s actually promoting the game. The players aren’t making any money from it and so it doesn’t have an effect on the revenue, like Peer-2-Peer sharing of music or film would. Guitar Hero World Tour game across similar problems. Players could create their own custom tracks that can be submitted online and downloaded by other users, again they make no money from it. However, songs were being taken down because they were created to sound like existing tracks. Again Nintendo demanded Super Mario Bros be taken off, and Legend of Zelda was also removed. Yet some tracks stay put, so there is clear inconsistency with the rules. This could be down to companies, like mentioned before, wanting the songs to stay because they promote their material. It could also be because they merely don’t know it exists or they just don’t care.

Daniel Gervais talks about two types of use, public and private:

“The social norms at play do not seem to reflect the traditional distinction between private (i.e. tolerated) and public (i.e. unauthorized) use. These norms have existed for decades and are reflected in the traditional vies expressed by large rights holders. or example, the Recording Industry Association of America condones limited copying for private use, but does not approve of making copyrighted content available online.”(1)

The cases I mentioned above do fall into the public use, where content is uploaded to the internet and shared with others. So why doesn’t The Sims get in trouble for their content? Maybe because it’s so different from the game, for example, the Super Mario Bros level created on Little Big Planet is a platform level with similar game play and rules. In both games the character side scrolls across the level collecting said points (bubbles or coins) and has to avoid obstacles. In The Sims, the Na’vi character will walk around the Sims house doing whatever the player tells it to, within the constrictions of the game. This would include tasks such as getting a job, cooking, cleaning, painting, having children etc. It has no similarities to the film aside from the character. The problem could be that players who enjoy the Little Big Planet level might not play Super Mario Bros because they prefer the other, meaning possible revenue loss for Nintendo.

“The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature of is for nonprofit educational purposes. The central purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether and to what extent the new works is ‘transformative’. A work is ‘transformative’ when the new work does not ‘merely supersede the objects of the original creation’ but rather ‘adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message.” – Campbell v. Acuff-Rose

This argument could be used towards keeping the levels on Little Big Planet, it is indeed adding new elements that the physics of the game alone provides. The 3D side scroller, moving and breaking parts of the environment, swinging and blowing things up. These are all elements of the level that Super Mario Bros lacks. It is certainly an issue that Media Molecule need to face and bring a fair policy or consistent rule so that players don’t just come home one day to find hours of work gone forever, not even available for their own private use.

(1) The Tangled Web of UGC: Making Copyright Sense of User-Generated Content by Daniel Gervais

The first, Graeme, uses it to create buildings that are part of custom neighbourhoods, that one by one add to become a city. They have re-created parts of New York as well as other specific landmarks over the world. Their interest lies in this alone, and they do not have the need to create Sims and play in “real-time” mode. A lot of the creations require custom content to replicate, as The Sims itself has a limited library of objects and tools. Therefore, they spend a lot of their time downloading custom content that goes towards building and decorating.

The next, Keflyn, enjoys the story side of the game, playing the custom made characters and seeing how the narrative progresses. In The Sims 3 he makes the most out of finding seeds, fishing and collecting rock. He also create characters with extreme traits in order to see the personalities shine through. The new expansion pack World Adventures allows players to take photographs of landmarks and sell them. He has also explored this area and like to master the skills that The Sims provides them with. This is something that The Sims 3 emphasises, shown from it’s biggest development of the open neighbourhoods and free movement.

Lastly, I enjoy dabbling in both of these areas. Sometimes I’ll just build a house, using the cheats to get enough money, though nothing extravagant, and then creating the Sims to play in it. I like customising the house, decorating it and exploring different ways houses are built and laid out. I rarely download custom content but used to create some of my own for The Sims 2. Having a custom neighbourhood was a big deal for me. The way everything looked and placed made it something of my own, that I was proud of. I am not often interested in the “mini-games” like fishing, collecting rocks, photography etc, but I am not sure why.

In The Sims 3, you can no longer create your own custom neighbourhoods. There is just 2 that are available (Sunnyville and Riverside) to choose from. These have spaces where you can choose to build houses, and others that are inhabited by houses already. You can also explore the town, but whenever entering a shop, the Sim simply disappears, whilst you wait. If you own World Adventures, a workshop has been released to download for the PC allowing players to create their own worlds, including neighbourhoods. This would be something I’d consider, as it’d bring back that customisation I miss from The Sims 2. Yet it’s not available for the Mac, so unfortunately I can’t.

This is what I believe to be the reason I don’t play The Sims 3 any more. And for the same reasons, nor does Graeme. But it’s not just us, friends that own the game (who were eager to play) expressed their lack of interest after a month of play, and some even reverted back to The Sims 2.

“What we’ve discovered is that the Sims is a very private experience for a lot of people,” Rod Humble, head of the Sims studio, said in a telephone interview last week. “It’s private because it’s set in real life. Rather than on a console in the living room where everyone can see, you generally play on a handheld or on a PC in the study, where no one can look over your shoulder. You get to tap into this wonderful childhood imaginary game, which is ‘What if I could create my own little world and all the people in it and watch them go through their business and jump in and change things when I want?’ That is a pretty personal fantasy.”

I agree completely with this statement, and when I think about it, believe this could be one of the reasons I don’t play it any more. My sister and myself used to be huddled next to the home desktop taking it in turns to play, each with our own neighbourhoods. It was something our parents didn’t go on, they never saw what we got up to. The computer we owned was well kept by my dad. It always ran games well, and with everything optimised. Now, I have a mac laptop that’s not designed for playing games. I tried playing The Sims 2 on it and it was a little slow but playable, and the graphics were OK. Yet I got bored after a few plays and didn’t go back. The problem was with the trackpad, trying to control the viewing points, especially because my screen is only 13″ and I like to be able to get the most of what was on my screen.

When adults or older adolescents play The Sims, it is often with the slightly perverse goal of seeing just how dysfunctional or outlandish a household they can create — “Three’s Company” meets “Peyton Place,” perhaps, with maybe a little “Brokeback Mountain” sprinkled in. But when children play, they usually try to make healthy “normal” families, often modeled on their own lives.

I can’t say I’ve ever acted this way on The Sims. If I created Sims, a house etc, I didn’t want to burn it down or drown them. It was my creation, why would I want to destroy it? It just took me an hour to build! This again could be down to the individual differences, the way different people play the game. It could also be to do with when you start playing the game. I started playing The Sims when I was 9, and so like they said before, treated it as a sort of doll house. Maybe if I’d of only discovered it now, I’d be spreading anarchy across my screen.

“The Sims was really an important part of my life for a few years,” she said. “But I stopped because real life started to get more interesting, so at that point games like that started to seem a little bit less relevant. Around that age is when my social network started expanding and that kind of interaction was no longer something you had to practice in The Sims.”

This, too, applies to my situation. Though I can still picture myself sitting at a good desktop computer and loading it up.

So does The Sims have an effect on it’s players?

“Asked what he had learned from the game, Meghan’s brother, Conor, 10, was blunt: “I learned don’t leave your baby crying or people will come take your baby away.”.”

The article also talks to a girl who explains how she can understand how difficult it is to get someone to do something when they don’t want to. She now understands why her parents get frustrated when she doesn’t do what they want her to. Behaviours like this in The Sims seem to have a positive effect in teaching players some basic “rules” in life. It allows them to explore areas they might not have chance to yet, like physical relationships and how hugging strangers might end up with you being rejected and called crazy.

“We leave most of the social work in our society to women and The Sims lets young girls, in particular, work out their desires and conflicts about those relationships,”

Taken from a New York Times article.

“…Maxis looked to replicate the variety of musical styles available on the radio. The developers turned to several producers, including the Humble Brothers, a pair of music mixers and composers who live up to their name by fiercely guarding their anonymity. The Brothers have worked on other games, as well as projects in the mainstream music industry. Their first hit was a mix of Linkin Park’s “1stp Klosr.”.” (source)

It was during The Sims 2 University that the first artist came forward and re-wrote their song completely. This singer was Charlotte Martin, who sang her track “Beautiful Life”.

Funnily enough, I never noticed any covered tracks when playing The Sims, and I did own the University expansion pack. However I didn’t know who Charlotte Martin was so the likelihood of distinguishing regular Simlish music to covered tracks was slim.

Below is the music video released for Katy Perry’s Simlish version of Hot n Cold.

The video was created to promote The Sims 2 Apartment Life expansion and became very popular on YouTube having over 2 million viewers. This is good move for both The Sims and musicians choosing to translate their tracks. Not only does The Sims get more notice from the singers fans but the musicians now have their songs playing in the game, for every Sims player that owns the expansion to hear.

Other musicians include Pussycat Dolls, Barenaked Ladies, Katy Perry, Lily Allen, Trivium and others.

“Nelly Furtado, Pixie Lott, and Stefanie Heinzmann have all now been announced as being part of the  music in The Sims™ 3 World Adventures Expansion Pack* for the PC and Mac later this year. The EA Play Label of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that in The Sims 3 World Adventures, players will have their chance to get down, Simlish-style, to artists like GRAMMY award-winner Nelly Furtado, rising star Pixie Lott, German sensation Stefanie Heinzmann, breaking new rock band Matt & Kim, global indie dance rockers Young Punx, and more!” (source)

Sims can get married to each other, sealed by wearing a woman wearing a white wedding dress and a man wearing a tux and then giving the other Sim a gold wedding ring. This itself is a western way of life, ignoring the marital traditions of any other cultures.

Although the player can make a Sim female or male, they are very much genderless in terms of behaviour. A female sim is just as likely to fall in love with another female as they are with a male, as they don’t have the ability to discriminate. However, it wasn’t until the release of The Sims 3 that gay sims could get married (source). This could be seen as a good thing, players have the freedom to create their sims and make them do whatever they want without question, but this also means they lack a soul. They have no opinions based on their experiences, nothing to shape their personality.

In this article Will Knight describes the simulation game NEW TIES that will attempt to see a culture form through artificially intelligent virtual characters, who unlike The Sims, have to learn to survive.

Simulated Environment May Generate Virtual Culture

17:21 14 July 2005 by Will Knight

Virtual computer characters more accustomed to battling deranged alien monsters are about to take part in a unique social experiment.

A society of virtual “agents” – each with a remarkably realistic personality and the ability to learn and communicate – is being crafted by scientists from five European research institutes who hope to gain insights into the way human societies evolve.

The project, known as New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning – or NEW-TIES – brings together experts in artificial intelligence, linguistics, computer science and sociology. It is backed by a consortium consisting of the University of Surrey and Napier University in the UK, Tilberg and Vrije Universities in the Netherlands and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.

Virtual reality show

The experiment will see about 1000 agents live together in a simulated world hosted on a network of 50 computers based at the various institutions involved.

Each agent will be capable of various simple tasks, like moving around and building simple structures, but will also have the ability to communicate and cooperate with its cohabitants. Though simple interaction, the researchers hope to watch these characters create their very own society from scratch.

Every character in the simulated world will need to eat to survive, and will be able to learn from their environment through trial and error – learning, for example, how to cultivate edible plants with water and sunlight. In addition, characters will be able to reproduce by mating with members the opposite sex and their offspring will inherited a random collection of their parents “genetic” traits.

-In The Sims 3, characters have evolved to have ‘traits’. These traits affect the personality of the Sim and their behaviour and reaction to things around them. When creating the Sim the player can choose five traits. An ‘insane’ trait may lead the Sim to act oddly in public, wear only underwear when outside the house, and trying to hug everyone in the streets. Mixing this with an ‘artistic’ trait means that the Sim may get up in the middle of the night, dress formally, and then go and paint at a neighbours house without their permission. This is an attempt to give the Sim a personality, or ‘soul’. However it does not mean it will create a culture.

Random word generator

Perhaps most importantly, however, by pointing to objects and using randomly generated “words”, characters should be able to conjure up their very own language and communicate with others inside their world.

And this language may bear little resemblance to anything spoken in human societies. “It’s quite possible they will develop a language that we have to interpret,” says Ben Paechter at Napier University in Scotland. “They may discuss things in ways we find difficult to understand.”

However, the ability to communicate could enable these agents to develop complex cultural activities resembling those found in small human societies. “A long-term aim is to see if we can get culture to emerge,” Paechter adds. “This way, we might learn something about the way human societies evolve.”

-The Sims can already function in their world without our help. They are born with the basics of life built in, such as the ability to make food, use the toilet, speak to one another. The Sims don’t choose where they live, they don’t built it nor decorate it. This is the players responsibility and without it, would strip it of any gameplay, making it more like Big Brother .

Reality check

But not everyone is convinced that it will yield valuable results. “We have real human societies that grow up on their own within computer-generated fantasy worlds,” says Edward Castronova, an expert in online gaming worlds at Indiana University in the US. “The most sensible research project, it seems to me, would be to study these societies directly, rather than conjure artificial ones.”

Castronova suggests that the synthetic nature of such a world will undermine its potential. “Inferences from an entirely artificial system are always going to be weakened by the artificiality,” he told New Scientist. “There’s no reality check.”

Nevertheless, the researchers behind NEW-TIES hope to have seen some spectacular results by the time the project comes to an end in 2007. “It’s incredibly ambitious, and it may be that, at the end of 3 years, we say we need at least another 30,” Gilbert admits. “But it’s worth a try.”

-I have been unable to find any of the results from this project, which was scheduled to be built by August 2007. This could mean that the project is still underway, or that it was never completed. The link to the NEW TIES site no longer exists and searching google has not linked me to the results. Online games such as Second Life allow users to create their own virtual character and build within an online community. However, we are able to do this from the knowledge and experiences we have from the real world. For example, in Second Life, a player did not learn to build a swimming pool because they need one due to the hot weather, but either because we are bored, or we just want to pretend to swim. Their character will not die if they don’t feed them, nor do they have to learn to communicate. Therefore, this kind of game, like The Sims, is different to that of NEW TIES.

Without knowing the full extent of the project I can’t say whether I think it would work well. There are questions to consider such as, would they enforce law, can they kill? If they don’t have emotions, then why would they kill? Can they die? They can build, but what with? And what? If weather affects them, then shelter would be built. But does it?

The idea of being able to build my own house and watch people run around like ants intrigued me. Perhaps because I wasn’t very good at SimCity at all. Interestingly I was never fond of doll houses, often finding them boring and although you can customise them, the ones I had seen were made with specific rooms already. Like a room would have tiled flooring indicating it was either a large bathroom or a kitchen. And another room had a built in fireplace and so hinted towards being a lounge. There was always only one set of furniture to use also, deeming the house to look pretty much the same every time you moved things around.

I remember browsing The Sims website one day when I saw the announcement of The Sims 2, I quickly skipped through all the written descriptions to find the video:

The graphics amazed me, the idea of generations amazed me even more. The excitement I’d felt from the original Sims was nothing to compare to this. By this time a gameplay video had been released, and I would watch it repeatedly, showing my sister and dad trying to convince them it was ‘so good!’.

So far I’d only ever seen The Sims advertised on the internet, but it was years later that I saw an advert on TV.

The Sims 3 took on a bolder approach to advertising. Although I never saw any of these, the NYT describes the three ways EA used to promote the game:

There will be a free trial available at Sims3.com and at the Sims 3 fan page on Facebook, meant for people who have never played the game before.

Another option, called SimFriend, lets visitors to the Web site pick a Sim pen pal from among 120 characters, and that pen pal will send e-mail messages. For example, a Sim might send a message asking what type of dinner she should cook for her boyfriend, and the fan picks from options like “Cook an elegant meal.” The e-mail chain would continue, tailored to the Sim’s personality and skills.

“If the Sim happens to be a kleptomaniac chef, the response you get back might be, ‘Thanks, I went and stole food today,’ when what you’re expecting is ‘Thanks, I just had lunch,’ ” said John Buchanan, senior director of worldwide marketing for the Sims line at Electronic Arts.

The third option is called SimSidekick. A fans chooses from 6 characters on the Web site, and an image of the character that is chosen floats on top of the browser as the fan moves around the Web.

The character has site-specific responses to sites that Electronic Arts has chosen, like MTV.com, YouTube, and Twitter. On Twitter, for instance, where the mascot is a bird, a flock of bluebirds descends on the character, and, depending on its personality, the character will jump, wave his or her hands, or respond in some other way.

On other sites, the SimSidekick software looks for the category of the Web site, like travel or news, and the character responds appropriately, acting like a sports fanatic on a site like ESPN.com, or looking like he’s searching for something on Google.com.

I saw the trailer on the website:

I was, again, excited for The Sims 3. Though I felt the change was less dramatic than from The Sims to The Sims 2, I had doubts I would be as impressed.

Considering how popular The Sims is, I expected to see more advertising than I did. As I said earlier, I didn’t know about the online promotions that the NYT talked about, but why? Should I of been made aware of it? I did browse the Sims 3 website every few weeks, mostly checking to see when the release date for Mac was, so surely, unless I completely blanked it, it should of been obvious on the website. For around 3/4 of the year I don’t have access to TV, and so chances are of spotting a commercial were slim. The 1/4 of the year I do was in the summer holidays, which was the few months before The Sims 3 was bring released. I expected in that time I would of seen it, but I didn’t. However, this could be because they have such a huge fan base that they don’t feel the need to make it obvious, because their followers would be checking in every day anyway.

With such a large fan base, it didn’t surprise me when I found that The Sims had joined Twitter. There is both a Sims 2 and Sims 3 profile that you can follow, and a huge list of fan created profiles. The Sims was one of the few profiles I could find that was about the game itself, the rest seem to be the companies that make the games. Other profiles I found that were solely based on the game itself included Rockband,Guitar Hero, Band Hero, Katamari Forever and Bioshock 2. I found these by going through the list of games I own and searching them, considering I own over 20 games that’s not many. There are probably more out there however it would take far longer than I have time available to write every game in the search box.

So why have these particular games joined Twitter? Well, Social networking is a powerful tool, with websites such as Facebook and Myspace boasting the two of the most visited websites in the world. In the chart below the blue line is Facebook, and as the months progress it tops Wikipedia. It’s now the fourth largest website, sitting beneath Yahoo!, Microsoft sites and Google.

A recent example of the power of social networking is the success of the Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1 facebook group which asked users to purchase the Killing in the Name track by Rage Against the Machine so it would overtake X-Factor’s Joe McElderry’s cover of The Climb by Miley Cyrus in the Christmas No.1 charts.

Another example is extracted from The Wealth Of Networks, by Yochai Benkler (Full book available here)

“Our first story concerns Sinclair Broadcasting and the 2004 U.S. presidential election. It highlights the opportunities that mass-media owners have to exert power over the public sphere, the variability within the media itself in how this power is used, and, most significant for our purposes here, the potential corrective effect of the networked information environment. At its core, it suggests that the existence of radically decentralized outlets for individuals and groups can provide a check on the excessive power that media owners were able to exercise in the industrial information economy.”

“Alongside these standard avenues of response in the traditional public sphere of commercial mass media, their regulators, and established parties, a very different kind of response was brewing on the Net, in the blogosphere.”

Through the use of various social networks responding to each other, they managed to find a way to hit Sinclair where it hurts.

“By 10:00 that morning, Marshall posted on TalkingPoints a letter from an anonymous reader, which began by saying: “I’ve worked in the media business for 30 years and I guarantee you that sales is what these local TV stations are all about. They don’t care about license renewal or overwhelming public outrage. They care about sales only, so only local advertisers can affect their decisions.” This reader then outlined a plan for how to watch and list all local advertisers, and then write to the sales managers—not general managers—of the local stations and tell them which advertisers you are going to call, and then call those.”

In total, the boycott database included 800 advertisers. The damage was that at first, 50 advertisers pulled ads, and mainstream reporters had reported it. Next, the companies stock dropped by 8%, and the following morning, by another 6.

“While this does not prove that the Web- organized, blog-driven and facilitated boycott was the determining factor, as compared to fears of formal regulatory action, the timing strongly suggests that the efficacy of the boycott played a very significant role.”

As you can see, this can be very dangerous for companies. The public were able to indirectly affect the success of the company by social networking. What used to be a simple letter of complaint has turned into a retaliation that makes a difference, clearly showing companies cannot ignore the voice of their consumers.

If something as effective as this can bring a company down, it’s likely it can be of great benefit to the company too.

“The most valuable part of marketing using social networks is that it allows people to market their services to a large market at no cost. Thousands of people enter these sites daily. Therefore they are able reach a mass market free of charge.”

So you can see why companies would want in, with the ability to influence their “followers” (twitter) or group members (facebook) and trigger a large scale chain reaction so that their product, or themselves, gets noticed/ talked about. The Sims benefits from it’s inability to ever be completed, it’s on going game play which revolves around customisation and creation means that users want to share what they’ve built, videos they’ve made, Sims they’ve created etc. and will do this via these social networks. However, I find that The Sims tweets are very stale, almost robotic. I can see why they wouldn’t want a personality representing their game, as it could clash with their followers and cause problems. Here’s a few examples of  typical Sims tweets:

Happy Tuesday, Simmers! Which one of these reasons is your favorite reason to give TS3 as a gift this holiday?http://bit.ly/6YKaUa

We love LOLSims! Do you have any of your own? Share them with us and we’ll post them in our Facebook LOLSims album:http://bit.ly/5y4i5e

Perhaps it’s the lack of personality, over use of exclamation marks, or feeling that they’re just bluntly trying to sell me more stuff that puts me off. But how does a franchise as big as The Sims avoid this? Or maybe this is exactly what the fans want, but I’m just not that big of a fan any more to get excited about what they’re saying. Yet here I am, talking about The Sims. Whether I’m saying anything good or bad, they have succeeded in making me think about it.

]]> http://thesimscase.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/twitter-the-sims/feed/ 0 laydehgad Facebook Rising http://thesimscase.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/the-sims-timeline/ http://thesimscase.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/the-sims-timeline/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:17:58 +0000 Mincx http://thesimscase.wordpress.com/?p=37 ]]> The Sims was by no means the first simulation game to hit the market. Vehicle simulation games such as Battlezone and Elite were released in the 80′s that allowed players to simulate real life activities. Elite allowed players to pilot in a space flight simulation. Earlier than this, online games had been created based on the same idea. Spasism was released in 1974 and claimed to be the first 3D multiplayer online game.

It was then in the 1990′s that Maxis began it’s line of Sim games, starting with SimCity.

After the release of The Sims in 2000, it opened up a a once hidden audience in the game industry, the ratio of male to female players was dominated by girls. In an interview with MJ Chun, the producer for the Sims series tell us:

“ MC: It’s actually sixty percent female and forty percent male.”

As more expansion packs were released, the less limitations appeared in the game. Livin’ Large and House Party were the first two to be released, giving players more skins, clothes and objects to play with. Then Hot Date came a long, bringing something different to the table. Hot Date allowed players to leave the household and venture into town, taking your partner on dates or simply dining alone. This also meant the player could now create their own restaurants and entertainment. Other expansion packs included Vacation, where players could go to holiday resorts, Unleashed (pets), Making Magic (Sims can practice magic) and Superstar (Sims could travel to “Hollywood” and become a star).

The Sims series came to my attention because of its large fan base, including the vast amounts of user created content and film making.  What also caught my eye was the making of a Sims film, which is being written by Brain Lynch and to be released in 2012. So far there are only rumours as to what the film will be about.

Musicians such as Lily Allen, Katy Perry and The Black Eyed Peas (And many others) have also jumped on the Sims bandwagon, releasing their tracks in ‘Simlish’, the Sim language.

In finishing this unit I hope to of gained a better understanding of the reasons I no longer have interest in the game, whether they’re personal or because of changes made by EA. I also want to establish whether there are others who have found themselves in a similar situation and why, and those who do still enjoy the game and why.