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551. The Sims 2 Open For Business - Open All Hours or Closing Down? - Part 6

Written on Tuesday 16 May 2006 at 15:14 by Andy - 0 comments.

In this sixth and penultimate part of our almost never-ending review of "Open For Business", we look in depth at the robot-making industry, especially looking at the hard work involved in training yourself up in order to make this old friend on the left one of your family.

We also look at the different toys, from the exciting brick to the Wet'N'Wild Water Wiggler, giving warnings for what evil creations your sim toymakers can fabricate.

You can find it right here.

552. The Sims 2: Pets: Pictures and Videos

Written on Friday 12 May 2006 at 04:09 by ChEeTaH - 19 comments.

As announced here earlier, the next expansion pack for the Sims 2 on PC is going to be all about pets. Due to the Internet connection not working at the hotel yesterday, the pictures here are a little later than expected... but they're here. Just click the thumbnails below to see the big versions of the pictures. Although the quality isn't too great, it does show the theme and the logo. More images and a video can be found on TheSidDog.com, and in an E3 line-up video of Electronic Arts at their media center you can see short clip showing artwork of the expansion pack.

553. Expansion 4: Pets

Written on Wednesday 10 May 2006 at 23:58 by ChEeTaH - 18 comments.

Live from the E3 in Los Angeles comes the news that the next Sims 2 expansion pack will be all about pets. One of the most requested features will be put in the fourth expansion pack for the game, with the title "The Sims 2 Pets." The trailer is being shown at EA's 360 booth in the South Hall at the LA Convention Center, where the E3 is being held. We'll have pictures and more up later, so stay tuned for the first graphics of this new expansion!

554. Little Bit of Sims on E3 After All

Written on Monday 8 May 2006 at 23:29 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Despite earlier reports that there would be no Sims game on the E3 this week at all, SnootySims reports that there will be a trailer of the new expansion pack showing what it will be about. Mmmyrs2, a member on their forums, heard this by e-mail from Tiffany Spencer, PR Manager for EA. The announcement of the pack itself will happen in the weeks after the E3. There won't be many details or reports about the expansion pack though, which will make it a relatively quiet E3 for the Sims this year.

555. Children replace Dolls for Sims

Written on Monday 8 May 2006 at 14:03 by ChEeTaH - 4 comments.

The New York Times has today published an article about children replacing the classic dolls for videogames, of which the Sims is probably played the most. Children use the toys to play variations of their own lives, or lives they observe or imagine. It's those children, especially the middle-class schoolchildren in the USA according to the paper, who made the Sims the success it was - it sold 60 million copies globally since its release. Experts say that girls seem to like making a friend, whereas boys like to take on a pretend identity. Will Wright is also quoted saying that girls want a more creative, complex experience than boys for entertainment, and that the Sims gives them that. Also, girls tend to stop playing the game when they're going to high-school and start getting more interested in boys, at about the same time when they lose their interest in science or math. If this continues, Education Professor James Paul Gee says the gender imbalance in those areas will continue to exist. In the article several young fans of the Sims also talk about the game and their experience with it. For all the details read the entire article, which covers three pages.

556. No Sims at E3

Written on Saturday 6 May 2006 at 00:26 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Electronic Arts, publisher of the Sims franchise and owner of Maxis, the creating studio, has announced its E3 line-up today. The E3 expo is the world's biggest expo where publishers and developers show their upcoming games to the press, and is traditionally the show where a lot of news regarding games comes from. During the past couple of years the Sims was there every year, with console games as well as a PC game (either the Sims 2 itself or an expansion pack). This year however, there's no Sims title in the (announced) line-up. Although a PC expansion pack is still not unlikely for later this year, as well as one or more other Stuff packs, it makes a console/handheld title less likely for this year. There's one Maxis title on the show floor though, Spore, which we'll be reporting on from the E3 through our sister site The Spore Zone. For more details see the entire EA E3 Line-up.

557. New Avatar Items on Official site

Written on Saturday 6 May 2006 at 00:17 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The official site has a MySim feature, with which registered users can make a Sim-avatar using several outfits. Since January this year Maxis has twice improved the create-an-avatar tool adding content for Nightlife and Open for Business respectively. Now it's time for Family Fun to get some of its content being used in avatars. Maxis has indeed added some new content in Family Fun style to use when you edit your avatar.

558. Survey Revealed EP ideas

Written on Saturday 6 May 2006 at 00:06 by ChEeTaH - 1 comment.

Last week the official site briefly had a survey online, most of which was about the last expansion pack, Open for Business. The first half of the questions was about how you heard about OfB, what you like most about it, etc., but after that a couple of possible expansion pack concepts where given. Whether Maxis is planning to make one of these, or perhaps already making one, is unsure, but it's very well possible that one of the ideas will actually be made into an official expansion pack. Of course pets are mentioned again, as well as the returning vacation idea which has appeared in previous surveys as well, albeit a little different, and this time mentioning weather as well. Other ideas are about taking Sims back in time, a new hospital in town, expanding on the youth years of the Sims, seasons (including neighborhood changes and weather), and castaway Sims on a tropical island. Finally there's also a somewhat different idea, which is much like an adventure game as seen on handhelds before: something strange has happened in the neighborhood, and by socialising you need to figure out details of the puzzle to solve the mystery.

Besides the concepts, several new features were given of which a couple could be picked as favourite which should appear in a future expansion pack for the Sims 2. Plans for the Next Generation consoles - XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii (known as Revolution earlier) - also seem to exist, as one question asked about interest in a game on one of those consoles. So far no details of new console games have been announced though. The eight expansion concepts and 27 features are all in the read more bit of this newspost. Read More!

559. Family Fun Stuff Patch Arrived

Written on Wednesday 26 April 2006 at 00:40 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

We recently reported about one specific bug in Family Fun Stuff, and as posted in a BBS thread there are many others as well (although missing custom content is easily fixed by enabling it and restarting the game). Nevertheless Maxis has fixed two main problems with a new patch. Family Fun Stuff content will no longer disappear from the game after usage. The other problem that's been solved is an object error when both the helicopter and the nanny car arrived at the same time. Even though these are just two changes, the patch takes 26 Mb of disk space for the download. You can get it from the update page.

560. EA Settles in Overtime Lawsuit for Engineers

Written on Wednesday 26 April 2006 at 00:31 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Back in October of last year EA settled in a class action lawsuit about overtime compensation for Computer Graphics artists. Developers and employees of EA, including at least Sims 2 and the Urbz team members, were not paid for overtime they had to work to get a product finished in time. Now a similar case, filed by computer programmers (engineers) has also been settled. EA will make a payment of $14.9 million, which will need to cover all claims as well as attorney fees, incentive payments and administrative costs of the settlement. Any money that remains unclaimed will go to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, and it will also be used to establish scholarships at five universities (Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Georgia Tech, Stanford University, and Morehouse/Spelman College) for female and under-represented minority students interested in studying interactive entertainment. EA doesn't expect the settlement will financially impact the fiscal fourth quarter 2006 by much. More information is to be found in the full press release.