How could The Sims be made into a good game?

I think "The Sims" is a bad game, as you know if you read my last review. But perhaps a good way to illustrate why it's a bad game would be to explain how they could have made it a good game.

1. Allow murdering, destruction, and legitimate stealing. I'm not saying this for some immature reason - it's not becuase I think violence is "cool". It is to create a dynamic atmosphere. But it's the same gripe I have with World of WarCraft; a "world" where things can only ever truly be created, never truly destroyed, becomes stale, safe, boring. In fact, if you had a "world" game where only the opposite were true - that you could ONLY destroy, it would probably get boring just as quick. But anyway, imagine committing a straight up murder in the Sims. Imagine committing some kind of huge, creative crime - not just a window that pops up saying "You can steal money from the campaign funds now! Will you do it?", but an actual crime that you orchestrated from scratch. I am glad that they have a time limit on your life but there should be things that can bring an untimely end to your life as well. What I'm asking for here is a lot - I understand that - but hey, you're trying to simulate human life here, are you not? This should be an undertaking.
   
2. Have "good" or at least non-obnoxious content. The music in this game is just abysmal - it's got the worst musical elements of today's super-corporate-pop, which blends nicely into the wasteland that is modern video game music. The 3D models are decent, but certainly don't add any artistic flair to the game. Also the game's desperate need to be trendy hurts it in some ways. I tried to add my haircut, like a straight up, common middle-part deal, and it doesn't exist. NO normal haircuts exist. Only haircuts seen on "American Idol" are allowed. I think it's fair to ask that retail games have better production values than a flash game or cereal-box-CD-ROM game.
   
3. Tell the EA gangsters to back off and make your own interface. I'm sure I'm not the only one who just feels depressed using the bloated, oppressive, unclear, ugly "EA INTERFACE". The interface isn't exactly the same on every EA game, but it's similar. And it sucks every time. I've played Battlefield 2, had the same experience, Fifa 06, same experience, Madden 08, same experience.
4. Do something about loading times, saving times, and general software bloatedness. I really value a game that runs quickly, takes up less than a couple gigs, and is light and nimble, much more than I value "A MILLION CONTENTS!" or "HD CANDYWRAPPER!". The time I have to invest simply running your game is something you developers should be very considerate of.
5. (Bonus Points!) Don't allow people to load during game! This goes back to my "Most Powerful Weapon Ever Weilded" article... but especially if my #1 tip gets used, it is of dire importance that people can't just load the game and undo anything bad that happened to them. Only allow Save & Exit, and loading can only be done from title screen! Come on, game designers! Catch onto this sooner rather than later!

So that's how I would make The Sims into a good game. As you can see, it really would require a complete overhaul. I think this makes sense, becuase EA isn't really in the business of making good games, and neither is Maxis.
Unfortunately, with game media being completely brainwashed-and-or-bought-out, no one is saying any of this stuff except for little inaudible voices like mine, and so don't expect these huge companies to change anytime soon. Like I often say, I think it's that people have either forgotten, or have never seen what a good video game is like, and so that's why it's difficult to judge these new games with any frame of reference. What I'm hoping is that there will be a big insurgence of independent and small teams making good games, and people will gradually realize "Hey, you know what? I'm having more fun with these good games, they load quicker, and they're cheaper." When that happens, it will finally send a message to EA and the like, and they'll either adapt and hire some game designers, or die.

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Game Review: The Sims 3

I think that there are two kinds of people - those who really value their time, and want to make the best of every moment, and those who wish to simply "pass the time". I describe the latter "kind" vaguely because I do not have a good understanding of them; I've never used the expression "a good time-killer" or anything that would embrace the idea that time is something to be wasted. Perhaps this is also the reason that some people fear old age - that they have consciously wasted so much of their lives that they feel sad and afraid that that's all they will amount to. For people like that, games such as World of Warcraft, the slot machine, and almost any game with the word Sim in it (with a few exceptions, one that comes to mind may be SimAnt, for reasons I will discuss later) might be deserving of the high grades they get on every review site in existence (to discuss the "improvements" from "The Sims 2" to "The Sims 3" is really missing the point - it's simply a new paint job and rims on a car with no engine).

The biggest difference between "games" like the Sims and a real game, such as Chess, Super Mario Brothers, or Civilization, is that real games have a clear goal and a clear threat of failure. These elements are crucial for any of the other elements in a game to have any meaning - they are the foundation of game design.

So, in the Sims 3, just like in the other Sims games, and just like in Sim City, you build things, improve things, gain powers, increase numbers, all without that pesky "threat of losing" that for some reason is in other games. So you can just keep on clicking away! Click Click Click! Oh look, the day is gone! I hope soon that I shall be dead (artist's interpretation of someone enjoying playing the Sims for more than a day or so)!

Now to those who say I have missed the point, and that "The Sims" isn't meant to be a game, but rather a simulation, or perhaps a "toy", I offer this argument: The Sims requires many, many hours of play to experience even a fraction of the content in the game. It uses many common strategic game elements such as resource management, obtaining powers, and suggests in so many ways that you are perhaps playing an RPG. So for all of these reasons, I would say the Sims is indeed a game, but one built without a strong foundation.

"The Sims 3" is a huge mindless waste of time. But perhaps that's just what you're looking for.


PS. I almost forgot to add that the music in this game is just about as bad as it could possibly be.

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Some news and things

I haven't been posting as much recently, because I am now working on not one, but TWO games. "100 Rogues", our roguelike game, is the game we started in January. We should have it in beta in the next couple weeks, and released sometime in April.

The other project we started is called "Megaplane Deathmatch". It's a multiplayer-only action shooter for the iPhone. I have an early screenshot here, you may recognize the background image:

It's visually meant to invoke very early 80s arcade look, but the cool things about it are the 3 weapons and 3 special items. None of those weapons or items are particularly strong by themselves, but when used in combination they can be awesome. So there's a lot of strategic synergy between them. The other interesting thing is that the mulitplayer will have an online hub where you can either have it auto-match you with an opponent, or challenge specific people.

Anyway, that's what's going on! Also, something weird happened with blogger.com which caused me to have to temporarily make the site white, and then for some reason my title graphic was the wrong size? I guess they re-did their templates or something. But anyways, it's back in black now.

Take care all!

-Keith

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