My name is Ben and
I’m an Executive Producer on The Sims 3. The last few years
have been exciting for me personally. Since joining The Sims
Label at EA, I’ve had the opportunity to work on dream projects such
as The Sims 2 Pets, and The Sims 2 Castaway. However, things
are about to get very exciting and I’m so happy to be sharing this
news with you.
In the very near
future, we are going to announce the first details of The Sims 3.
As you can imagine, The Sims 3 development team is very excited
because we have been working on the game for the past few years.
Like you, we are all fans of The Sims and we can’t wait to talk to
you about the innovations in The Sims 3. We know that there
are so many expectations for this game. The Sims 3 team has been
quietly listening to the community and incorporating suggestions to
make this the best possible game. Many of our team
members worked on The Sims and The Sims 2, so trust me, you are in
good hands. We hope that you’ll be impressed by what we’re working
on for The Sims 3.
What is The Sims
3? Very shortly, you’ll see magazine articles, websites and
interviews on this subject. However, we want to share the
announcement news with you first.
When the team first started thinking about what The Sims 3 could be,
we asked ourselves the following question. What if you had to live
your whole life in one location … and then one day, suddenly, you
could step outside and go anywhere in the whole neighborhood?
The first thing
you’ll notice about The Sims 3 is that the Sims now live in a
completely seamless, living neighborhood. This means that they
can walk next door, walk down the street, drive to the center of
town, stroll through the park, and explore everything without ever
encountering a load screen. Wherever you go in your town, you
will see other Sims going about their daily lives. You’ll
discover new things about the community that your Sims live in, and
you will have the chance to participate whenever and wherever you
like. As a player, this is an incredible innovation for me
because now I can see what my neighbors are up to all of the time
and go interact with them. Or if I am feeling devious I can peek
through the window and spy on their every move. I can even
shoot across town to see what the other families in my town are
doing, any time of day or night. It’s an entirely new way to
play with your Sims!
The second aspect
of The Sims 3 that always impresses me is our completely reinvented
and realistic Create a Sim. In The Sims 3, you have so much
freedom to create the Sims that you want to make, yet it’s easy and
fun. In the coming weeks, we will have some screenshots on our
website that show you a small glimpse of what is possible with
Create a Sim. The Sims can look like anyone you imagine. I’ve
made my friends, my great grandpa, and many other important people
from my life. We also have a new realistic personality
system called Traits that allows you to determine the personality of
every Sim. There are dozens of Traits that you can assign to
your Sims. Every Trait will change the way that your Sims
feel, think and behave in the game. You can choose several
traits for your Sims, so it’s really possible to make any character
that you can imagine and they will come to life in The Sims 3. Now
imagine placing these unique personalities into your very own
“Petri-dish” that is the new seamless, living neighborhood.
The third thing
that I really want to share with you about The Sims 3 is that
everyone will be able to customize the appearance of everything,
right in the game: This is true for furniture, walls, floors,
fashion, hair, and so much more. You will be able to customize
the colors or patterns and apply them to everything (this is great
for me in particular, as I am colorblind). You can make everything
match, clash, or coordinate. It is so easy and fast, and it is
incredibly powerful. What is really exciting is that you won’t
need developer tools to make big visual changes to the game.
We will be giving you a small taste of how this works on the
website. However, I cannot wait to show you how fun this
feature is when we have the final user interface in the game.
The real power of this feature will be obvious when you get your
hands on it. Fans of The Sims already make amazing things, and
now it will be so much easier for to make and share creations.
While I have met
many of you at fan events, I look forward to sharing more with you
about The Sims 3 as we develop the game leading up to launch.
There is so much
more that I would love to tell you about but we’ll save that for
future emails. Please stay tuned.
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