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Why have no developers challenged Maxis/EA on The Sims? The Sims, while I mildly enjoy - enough to spend $60 every now and again on it (but not the DLC) is a HUGE market. If you don't consider the idea of a 'taking care of humans like a nanny' genre as part of the city-builder genre, it's a humongous market. Not only that, but the bar is set relatively low by Maxis, since they've dominated the industry in monopolistic fashion since its inception and therefore have no other designers testing new concepts. Did they somehow copyright "nanny sims"? Is it not as profitable as it looks? The Sims 4 sold 5 million copies (and preposterous amounts of DLC with it) while CoD: MW3 sold 6.5 million, which says a lot about The Sims, if you ask me. TL;DR: The gaming industry looks as if The Sims is occupying an under-exploited market, why?
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Aug 26, 2017 13:07
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I remember there being a few "The Sims, but we don't censor the sex" clones, doubt any of them did particularly well though. Then there's Maxis themselves trying to branch out with The Sims Medieval - dunno how well that was received (I thought it was alright), but it probably didn't break any records or we'd certainly have had The Sims in Future/Space/etc too by now. I think it's mainly because people don't want to play sims closes, they just want the Sims. Kind of like how there's dozens of Diablo clones but when I felt the itch to play one, I checked out a few but in the end just went screw this and bought Diablo 3. Avalerion fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 13:33
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I didn't like the Sims because it just seemed like a worse version of Little Computer People.
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Aug 26, 2017 20:47
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The Sims is an absolutely appalling amount of work to make and nobody wants to do that amount of work without a bulletproof value proposition as to why they are better. Nobody has come up with that proposition yet. There you go OP
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Aug 27, 2017 17:34
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the sims 2 is close to the sims
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Aug 27, 2017 17:41
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The Sims is, despite the fact that it appears to constantly break in either enraging or hilarious ways, is a loving huge complex game that intends to model human behaviour and lifespan in detail. Nobody is going to throw their hat into the ring of making something of that scale without either a) being an indie developer with a reliable income source and a lot of word-of-mouth buzz, or b) an AAA studio that is dead certain it can come at the king and not miss. Alternative, flippant answer: Dwarf Fortress.
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Aug 27, 2017 17:58
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Look up Kenshi on steam. Its some horrible amalgamation of the Sims and Dwarf Fortress. Early access game though so I won't be buying it until its finish in 5 years or whatever.
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Aug 27, 2017 18:06
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https://www.playalterego.com Distant relative but might interest you.
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Aug 27, 2017 18:22
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http://www.educationalsimulations.com/ Real Lives is pretty cool but many times you have little to no control over your life depending on the culture and family you're born into and really it just teaches you about how other people in the world have to live. It's like a 3/5 chance that you're born in India or China and spend your life supporting like four of your siblings and your ailing parents and relatives.
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Aug 28, 2017 03:22
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real lives is a joke. it was done during the height of the 'plz check your privilege' mania and more or less entirely exists to make you feel bad about your current existence because you have internet and running water. i remember i reported multiple bugs about really basic poo poo like your post-graduate degree brother never getting a job, ever, unless you quit yours, at which point he would get an uneducated-class job that made nothing, and would routinely get emails back from various members of the team, all giving me 3 bits of feedback on the same bug: 1) cheerful acknowledgement, and a promise to have it fixed in the next patch 2) a patronizing explanation that this is not a bug and the behavior is in scope 3) a straight-faced acknowledgement and an advisory that the bug is low on the priority list right now the only thing of any worth that came out of Real Lives was the goiter photoshop. alter ego at least makes no pretenses at being realistic or whatever and just tells you to buckle in for a slice of life story (that ends in you having unsatisfying teenage sex).
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Aug 28, 2017 03:29
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Thank you for the real answers and similar games. I had no idea The Sims was difficult to make (I'm gathering that it's more complex than, say, CoD by the tone in here). I thought EA was just trash. So thank you all for explaining something that's been on my mind for a while as a "WTF, industry?" quandry.
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Aug 28, 2017 05:51
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Similarly, while there are a few, does anyone actually care for sports games other than EA's Fifa/NHL/Madden? It's the same thing here, if you want a slice of that pie you'll be competing against an established franchise, so it's not enough to just make a good clone, it would have to be significantly better, or have some kind of extra hook. Or for EA to gently caress up so bad like they did with the last Sim City, which probably created an opening for Cities Skyline to take off.
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Aug 28, 2017 08:57
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Verge posted:I thought EA was just trash. Well, you're not wrong.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:05
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The sports games make so little sense to me. I'm amazed that there's profitability in it. Then again, they probably reuse a lot of assets every year so development is probably a fraction of what a normal game of the same gross would be expected to cost.
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Aug 28, 2017 21:47
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In the case of NHL, and probably the others, the organization doesn't want more than one game with their name on it, so EA has exclusivity to it. And no one is going to dare make an unlicensed sports game, as they probably believe the market is going to just flock to the NHL name. This also means that the genre is mostly stagnant, as there's no point in bothering to innovate when there's no competition. Though I honestly believe at this point if someone made a better game than that schlock, consumers would flock to that, not giving a poo poo about brands or players.
Oglogoth fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 22:00
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Coolguye posted:real lives is a joke. it was done during the height of the 'plz check your privilege' mania and more or less entirely exists to make you feel bad about your current existence because you have internet and running water. i remember i reported multiple bugs about really basic poo poo like your post-graduate degree brother never getting a job, ever, unless you quit yours, at which point he would get an uneducated-class job that made nothing, and would routinely get emails back from various members of the team, all giving me 3 bits of feedback on the same bug: I'm pretty sure Real Lives originated from the whole edutainment thing that was still going in the early 2000s
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Aug 28, 2017 22:07
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Borderline similar game in some respects: Space Colony.
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Aug 28, 2017 22:22
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The Deleter posted:Alternative, flippant answer: Dwarf Fortress. This is actually completely accurate, though. Which by the transitive law means that the nearest commercial relative of The Sims is Dungeon Keeper. 
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Aug 28, 2017 22:32
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Fortuitous Bumble posted:I'm pretty sure Real Lives originated from the whole edutainment thing that was still going in the early 2000s it educates about goiters
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Aug 28, 2017 22:33
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