I’ve been a huge fan of The Sims since 2004: after playing the first chapter for two weeks with my cousin, I returned home to find that The Sims 2 had just been released. At the time I was playing exclusively on consoles (I still had the first PlayStation), but I made an exception and bought it.
I immediately fell in love with all the features introduced in the second chapter, even playing it for 12 hours non-stop. I didn’t have a lot of friends at the time and was usually home alone all day, and The Sims 2 kept me company through those tough years.
I bought all the Expansion Packs and got The Sims 3 at d1. It didn’t have the same charm as The Sims 2, but it had some interesting features. Despite their differences, both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 were great gaming experiences even without purchasing any DLC .
Then The Sims 4 was released
I want to start by saying that The Sims 4 is an excellent game and I even prefer it to The Sims 3. I love the role that has been given to the emotions of the Sims and I also appreciate the step backwards made with the open-world, an excellent feature on paper, but not that great in practice.
My problem with The Sims 4 , as you can see in the title, is with its DLC . Something has changed in Electronic Arts’ approach to this, both in terms of quantity and quality of the released expansions.
Expansion Pack, Stuff Pack and Game Pack
For those not familiar with The Sims DLC, I briefly introduce the Expansion Pack and Stuff Pack :
- Expansion Packs have existed since the days of the first The Sims. They are the most expensive, but also the ones that provide the most content, including new locations, mechanics, items and things to do for our Sims.
- The Stuff Packs, introduced in the era of The Sims 2, were cheap expansions that don’t offer new game mechanics, but focus more on providing new items and clothing.
With The Sims 4, a new type of DLC was introduced, called the Game Pack . Game Packs are a cross between Expansion Packs and Stuff Packs: they introduce some minor mechanics, as well as items and clothing. It is precisely the presence of this new type of expansion that makes a big difference between the amount of content released for The Sims 4 and that released for the previous chapters .
- The Sims had a total of seven expansion packs during its four-year lifecycle. Some of the features introduced in some of its DLCs later became content of the basic version of The Sims 2, such as the ability to organize parties at home and travel around the neighborhood. Other expansions have also been proposed in the successors, such as the one dedicated to animals.
- The Sims 2 had eight Expansion Packs and ten Stuff Packs during its nearly five-year lifecycle.
- The Sims 3 had eleven Expansion Packs and nine Stuff Packs during its life cycle of just over five years.
- When The Sims 4 has eight expansion pack, eight and sixteen Game Pack Stuff Pack , not counting the next three DLC already announced (one for each type).
So The Sims 4 has a lot more content than its predecessors? Not exactly.
Division of content and the vile money
How did we come up with such a high DLC content? Very simply Electronic Arts has taken the contents of expansions of the old chapters (there is a habit of repeating the usual types of DLC in each cycle, for example the one on animals and the one on travel have had an iteration in each chapter), and divided them into several Packs .
If you wanted to recreate the experience offered by The Sims 2: Nightlife (€ 40 at launch) in The Sims 4, you would need to purchase the Get Together Expansion Pack, the Vampires and Dine Out Game Packs and the Bowling Night Stuff Pack (total prices at launch: 90 €).
Simply put, we have to spend more than twice as much as in the past for the same content . If you want to buy all the content released for The Sims 4 at full price, you are talking about spending over € 600 . And if you’ve played the predecessors, it’s hard to settle for a single expansion, as The Sims 4 DLC can’t hold a candle to the past .
Even the base game does not contain features like thieves (which have existed since the dawn of the franchise), it does not even have a military career (only available in the Strangerville Game Pack) and aliens (available in Get to Work). At launch, among other things, swimming pools, foundations in Build mode and toddlers (the age between baby and child) were also absent.
The lack of content can also be seen when comparing the vanilla versions of the various iterations of the series. The Sims 4 doesn’t even have half the longevity of The Sims 2 . The lack of various contents, the absence of storylines in the neighborhoods (how can we forget the mystery of Daniela Alberghini?) And things to do with your Sims are the reasons that make you tired of The Sims 4 after a few hours.
How did we get to this situation?
Why, you may be wondering, have these decisions been made? The reason, in my opinion, is only one. The Sims has no competition whatsoever . The franchise, for all its twenty years of existence, has never had a game to compete with. There is nothing on the market that is even remotely comparable to the type of experience offered.
Other types of simulators have been able to thrive thanks to the existence of competitors , trying to offer the most attractive experience to players. Which is not to be done if you are the only option on the market.
Things , however, may be about to change .
Between Paralives , indie in development, and a mysterious Paradox project that has Rod Humble among its insiders (who worked on The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and Second Life), Electronic Arts may have to revise its policies related to the contents of his life simulator.
The presence of competitors would be the breath of fresh air this market has needed for years. And apparently I’m not the only one to think so: many fans define themselves disappointed by the DLC issue of The Sims 4. Just take a tour of the videos of the various simmers to get an idea of the general discontent in the community .
The thoughts of a now ex-simmer
The Sims franchise has been with me for many years, especially in the most difficult times. Seeing how he’s being treated by his own development house makes me really sad. We’ve had some incredible improvements in Create A Sim (CAS) and Build modes that I couldn’t have imagined five years ago.
Unfortunately, at the same time we had content cuts and DLCs torn apart just to make a bigger profit.
This huge disappointment I feel made me decide not to support The Sims 4 anymore . I’m bitter and even angry to see how The Sims has been reduced. I tried to buy expansions (three Expansion Packs) and each time I was baffled by the comparison with the predecessors.
My only hope is that competitors will give EA a wake up call , or at least propose something interesting and different. Paralives, whose development I am following, seems to be a really promising project and which, above all, wants to have its own identity.
If things were to change with the advent of The Sims 5 (development of which has been confirmed, although I imagine it is still in the early stages), I would retrace my steps and give the franchise another chance, but for now , how we would say in simlish, dag dag Electronic Arts .
