MySims News

Hello everyone.

I wanted to first take the opportunity to thank all of you who were able to join us for The Sims 2 University. We are grateful that you took time out of your busy schedules and traveled many miles to spend the day with us and talk about The Sims 2. We feel like it was a worthwhile day and hope you do to. For those of you who were unable to join us, we missed you and hope you will be able to participate next time.

At The Sims 2 University, we gave all participants an updated fansite kit. You can download it here, if you didn't join us and are interested in downloading its content.

On of the most important things that we discussed at The Sims 2 University was the player-made custom content tool. View the screenshots below which show off various outfits that we have picked for
you to customize:

The file that contains the bitmap files for these clothing options can be downloaded here, feel free to play around with them and customize them to express your personal Sim-style!

Many of you have had specific questions about this tool. Below we have addressed some of your issues:

What is CaSIE?
CaSIE is a stand-alone tool that will let you build Sims that can be played in The Sims 2. In CaSIE, you will be able to choose your Sims' skin tone, eye color, hair styles; facial hair, makeup, clothes, and more. CaSIE will also give you incredible control over your Sims' faces through controls to select from a diverse range of facial "types" and sliders to fine tune even the smallest details, such as nose length, eyebrow thickness, lip curl, and chin shape. There are over 50 modifier sliders alone!

Another major feature of CaSIE is the ability to create custom content that anyone can play in The Sims 2. Take a t-shirt and add your face to it ... make a set of yellow cat eyes ... create a set of scaly green skins ... the possibilities are truly infinite.

Finally, CaSIE is the tool that will help you package the Sims and custom content you create and upload them to TheSims2.com, post on your fan site, or share with your friends. We can't wait to see what turns up!

What is the difference between CaSIE and CAS?
CAS (Create-A-Sim) is a part of The Sims 2. CaSIE is a "stand alone" tool that runs separately from the game. CAS is the place in The Sims 2 where you will create Sims and their families and move them into your neighborhoods. CaSIE will be released before The Sims 2 ships as a way for you to start building Sims and creating custom content early. CAS allows you to name Sims, give them personalities and determine their facial appearance, physique, outfits, accessories, and hairstyles. You'll be able to create families with genetic similarities; CaSIE does not.

What does stand-alone mean?
"Stand-alone" means that CaSIE can run without having The Sims 2 installed on your computer, which is why we will be able to release CaSIE before the game ships. Once The Sims 2 is released (and if you have installed CaSIE and The Sims 2 in their default directories), they will work together seamlessly. For example, any Sim you create in CaSIE will be available for you to play in The Sims 2 without having to transfer any files. Also, any custom content you create in CaSIE will be automatically available to you in CAS. (CaSIE and The Sims 2, however, can not be run at the same time.)

Is CaSIE actually mandatory to run the game or can you just buy The Sims 2 and still play the game?
You can play The Sims 2 without having CaSIE.

How easy will it be to create new meshes for new clothes and Sims?
For the first release of CaSIE you will only be able to customize textures and the facial mesh (with modifiers and face choices). This is because the process of creating models in The Sims 2 is much more complex than in The Sims and we want players to be able to get started on textures as soon as possible. We do, however, plan to release an update to CaSIE later on that will let you export and import models to use in a 3D program.

Does CaSIE have the same requirements as The Sims 2?
Yes, CaSIE will work on the same system requirements as The Sims 2.

For all of you console fans, The Sims Bustin' Out community site is live. Click here http://thesims.ea.com/us/index.html to check out the fansite kit and chat on the BBS. The game will be in stores in just a few short weeks.

That's all for now.

Cheers,

Luc

"Everything from the size of your Sim's feet to hair accessories will be customizable."

Go to Time.com

GENIUS AT PLAY: Wright clings to one of his Sims creations near his California offices

Reinventing the Sims

Will Wright hopes to erase some bad memories with a new version of the best-selling computer game

By Chris Taylor

In the beginning—that is, in 1989—Will Wright created Sim City. And it was good. Millions of PC owners got hooked on the game's godlike powers that let players create a town, fill it with enough parks and police stations to please an unseen population, and watch the town grow. Then in 2000 Wright said, "Let there be life." And he created The Sims, which let players micromanage the lives, loves and careers of adorable little people (called "Sims") who lived in homes reminiscent of the Cleavers' in the simpler era of black-and-white television. The Sims shipped 8 million copies, becoming the best-selling computer game of all time. For Wright, it was all very good.

As the 21st century dawned, Wright reigned as the undisputed deity of the PC-game world. That is, until his next big thing: The Sims Online, in which players from all over the world let their little people roam and mingle in a vast virtual environment. It sounded like the Garden of Eden. And lo, it was a boring, poorly populated bomb. Gamers suddenly realized that Wright was not infallible after all.

So what's next for this unflappable 43-year-old geek whose brain seems to overflow with ideas? Since The Sims Online debacle, he has been back at his virtual drawing board, sketching out a new breed of Sims. They look cooler, sound clearer and inhabit homes that are less Leave It to Beaver and more Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Most audacious of all, they have real lives: they are born, they grow up, give birth and die. Legions of fans await the result, The Sims 2, due for release in February. Will it be a return case of divine inspiration—or will Wright slip again? His reputation rests on the outcome—as does the computer-game industry's best hope for the mainstream recognition it craves.

Wright is a gaunt, wiry figure with large glasses and a perpetual ironic smirk. His wardrobe seems to consist pretty much of gray shirts and black jeans. He is soft-spoken and reserved, with a playfulness just beneath the surface. At this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, the biggest date on the computer-game industry's calendar, Wright casually slipped reporters near worthless Argentine banknotes as a surreal bribe. In his office at Maxis, his Walnut Creek, Calif., company, he is a nervy, perpetual-motion machine, methodically pulling apart glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty or constructing towers out of magnetic plastic toys.

Wright, in other words, is obsessed with creating things. As a child in Atlanta, that meant balsa-wood planes and train sets. When he discovered computers, it meant digital cities. These days it often means building battle robots with his 17-year-old daughter or inventing a special set of toy building blocks, which he calls Architex, that can be used to design houses. Indeed, it is his love for architecture that has led Wright to his greatest success. When the Sims germinated in his mind, it was like a virtual version of Architex. You built a home, then computer people called Sims moved in and told you whether they liked it or not. The original game was called Doll House, and teenage boys in a focus group rated it the worst idea they had ever heard.

But Wright persisted. Eventually The Sims became less of an afterthought to house building and more the focus of the game itself. Soon each Sim had a realistic set of needs represented by bars on the screen that turned from green to red. When a Sim registered as hungry, for example, it was time to point him toward the fridge (assuming you had bought him one).

The objective was to keep the Sims' needs fulfilled so they could get promotions and raises when they went to work or buy more stuff to meet their needs faster. Like a lot of Wright's work, it was all very tongue in cheek. The Sims were caricatures who never aged (neither did their children, who arrived as if by stork). The products you bought for them got ever more expensive and outrageous (like the Love-o-matic vibrating bed), and the chirpy 1950s movie music enhanced the Cleavers feel. Somehow it all worked.

Players found it easy to invest their imagination in the Sims' lives, with their carefully constructed needs, personalities and relationships. After the game was released, more than 1,000 fan websites sprang up in which players posted screen shots from their Sims' world. After the runaway success of the original, Wright supplied ever more storytelling tools. Six expansion sets—the Sims have pets! the Sims go on hot dates!—sold 6.8 million copies. (The seventh and final expansion, Makin' Magic, is to be released this Halloween.)

The stumble that was The Sims Online happened in late 2001. It was an Internet-based Sims world in which the storytelling was supposed to come from the interactions among players. It didn't gel. Fewer than 100,000 subscribers signed up to pay $10 a month for the service, far fewer than Maxis' hopes. Making your Sims mingle as if at a global cocktail party was, it turned out, not as addictive as trying to win them a promotion or building them a new bathroom. "The Sims Online was a wildly optimistic view of people providing their own entertainment," says Dan Morris, executive editor of PC Gamer magazine. "They needed a game with a well-defined narrative, not just a sandbox." Wright had effectively abdicated responsibility for the parameters of possible storytelling. The Sims is Wright's world; we just play in it.

For The Sims 2, Wright has learned his lesson—and then some. The narrative arc of the game has gone epic. Whereas the original Sims were as timeless as cartoon characters, their successors go through five distinct ages, from baby to senior—not quite the full Shakespearean seven but close enough. You used to have to try quite hard to kill Sims; now old age will get them in the end. The Sims 2 revolves around Big Life Moments that will positively or negatively affect each Sim's final score when he or she dies: successful potty training, the first kiss, the death of a parent, marriage, divorce. What was formerly a slice of family life becomes a tale of generations—or, as Wright puts it, more like a James Michener novel.

The richness of potential plot lines is matched by the Sims' sumptuous new look. The game's graphics, especially the lighting and the characters' facial features, are way ahead of what was possible in 2000. Everything from the size of your Sim's feet to hair accessories will be customizable. Wright found that a lot of players wanted to turn their Sims into virtual copies of their families and friends. Not only will that be possible, but also at the click of a button you will be able to see a random selection of children that any two Sims' genetic traits might produce.

All this is a long way from the virtual dollhouse Wright originally had in mind. What nobody in the industry can say for now is whether he has strayed too far. The casual gamers who fell in love with The Sims included many youngsters who became aware for the first time of what it was like to be in charge of little people who wouldn't stop watching TV and go to bed. Will those same players really care to see their Sims grow old and die? Will the enhanced realism of diaper changing gross them out?

The answers matter to the computer-game industry, which needs more hits of this kind if it is ever going to widen its appeal beyond the 3 million hard-core gamers (mostly men in their teens and 20s) who typically buy a game a month. As with The Sims Online, expectations are high: this is a business in which sequels often do better than the original. (Wright has one other game in the works—which he isn't able to talk about—tentatively titled SimEverything, in which players start out by bonding molecules and end up building galactic civilizations.) "The Sims is a dream franchise for people who want to see the medium grow," says Morris. We'll find out soon enough. And if it doesn't work out—well, Wright can always try releasing Architex.

It’s 3 AM. You’re leaving work. It’s dark. Two figures emerge from the shadows. They approach. What do you do?

Read more below!

When Hardcore Fans and Overworked Testers Collide...

Lead Tester John Cook and fellow Tester Kip Katsarelis had been laboring long into the wee hours of Saturday morning, when they finally decided to succumb to their own circadian rhythms and go home for as much sleep as they could spare. On the way to their cars, they were stopped by two shadowy figures, and... asked for a tour of the office! It seems that a husband and wife team from Kansas City had scheduled some time to swing by Maxis on their trip to California. Perhaps they’re well versed in the working and sleeping habits of game developers. Maybe they were either incredibly behind (or ahead of) schedule. Whatever the case may be, they felt an impromptu late, late, late-night visit was in order. We’re sad to report that the glorious inner workings of Maxis remain a mystery to them, although their sunny Midwestern charm bought them a few snapshots under the company logo and their signatures now grace the official Maxis Guest Book.

Although we heartily appreciate their rabid devotion to The Sims, they might have had better luck if they had tried to gain access to the building during normal business hours. Or at the very least, during daylight hours.

Last week was Camp EA and Press from all over the world were invited to EA to preview our latest games. Here are some previews of The Sims GBA, Makin' Magic, and Rush Hour.

Makin' Magic
PC

• Go To IGN
• Go To GameSpot
• Go To GameSpy

The Sims - Bustin' Out
PlayStation - GameCube - XBox

• Go To IGN
• Go To GameSpot
• Go To GameSpy

The Sims - Bustin' Out
Game Boy Advanced

• Go To IGN
• Go To GameSpot