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When I first pitched this idea, I think Edge thought I was joking. But no. I’ve wanted to write about The Sims and the injustice it has done to my mental health for an entire year now. And here I am. She can’t stop me. I can’t even stop myself.
In the last year, EA (Electronic Arts) made “The Sims 4” free to play. I had unfortunately bought it for the full $60 around six years before that, and ten years after “The Sims 4” was initially released. But because “The Sims 4” is free now, it really highlights how incredibly dated the material of the game is. It came out in 2014—ten full years ago. The clothing is all fushia and mint green, cropped tops and low rise bell bottoms. The furniture isn’t much better, full of gray-beige-minimalism and shiplap walls. The updates to the original content are far and few between, with one item every once and a while. For the franchise’s 20-year existence, they decided to give the game a little update, and provide a new item for the players. One new item: a hot tub. Not even a nice hot tub. It’s rather ugly. That was their letter of gratitude to the simmers; a hideous “thank you” for 20 years of patronage.
Yet, they continue to make miniscule updates, and pour all of their resources and creativity into making as much money as possible. Every few weeks there’s a niche kit announcement, where you could spend five dollars for around 20-30 very personalized items. Every few months there’s new stuff packs, game packs and every three to four months there’s an expansion pack. Expansion packs are the most, well, expansive packs within the game, and of course the most costly, always around $40. There’s the animal pack (specifically the horse pack), the school pack, the other school pack, the family pack, a different family pack—you get the concept. And all 40 dollars each. Yes, the expansion packs are great when they come out, they have wonderful items, and tend to have good enough gameplay. Some creative individuals have obviously spent so much time creating something that they think the community will enjoy, but EA seems to split the ideas up so that there is just one unique concept about the pack, and that’s the single selling point, bundled up at an atrocious price.
Speaking about the price. There are over 70 pieces of downloadable content for “The Sims 4,” ranging from $5-$40 dollars. All in all, the grand total cost of every single piece of half-baked content is around $1200. I’m practically speechless, because it is so incredibly stupid that it would cost that much. I could buy a better computer with that money. I could buy 600 goldfish, or 16 grams of 24 karat gold. But this is nothing new from EA. It has been well known that EA is money grabbing and immoral, ever since the 2010s. They’ve bought so many minor game studios to add to their collection that the quality decrease is absolutely appalling.
Often, “The Sims 4” is looked at in comparison to “The Sims 3,” released in 2009. The game has so much more character than the Sims 4, there’s criminals who can break into your house, the repo man, ghost hunters, scary clowns—everything that “The Sims” originally stood for. The most interesting thing to happen in “The Sims 4” is the semi-threatening ‘tips’ that appear on the loading screen, such as “I don’t want free earbuds” and just the word “O.K.”—I lay awake at night wondering what they mean by that. The absurdity of the original Sims games was one of the many things that drew people to it. “The Sims” franchise was the original life simulator, wacky things happen to your Sims all the time, and you would have to dig them out of the hole the world made for them. And although “The Sims 4” is superior to its predecessors in many ways, it lacks the fundamentals of what made it so incredible in the first place.
This isn’t a word of warning for people wanting to play “The Sims,” but merely my experiences. “The Sims 4” is an addicting game, with wonderful graphics that constantly fry my computer. However the packs have become a necessity for good gameplay for the majority of people, including myself. And for those without infinite money, it’s not possible to enjoy the full experience of everything “The Sims” has to offer without a hole in their wallets. That is my gripe with “The Sims 4.”
