Stupid Evil Bastard: “The Sims 3” teaser website is up.

“The Sims 3” teaser website is up.

Posted by Les on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 09:09 PM. Read 698 times. Tags: electronic arts, maxis, the sims, video games

The next sequel to the best selling PC game of all time has been announced by the folks at Electronic Arts with a new The Sims 3 Teaser Website. There’s not much there at the moment, but they promise all will be revealed on March 19th.

If you can’t wait that long and happen to be a subscriber to Games for Windows: The Official Magazine then you can check out the 12 page preview they have. It’ll hit newsstands soon, but the folks at 1Up.com managed to snag a sneak peek:

The biggest change to The Sims 3 is that it takes place in a wide-open, constantly changing neighborhood—a much bigger sandbox, if you will, and a much more complex simulation. The town and park you see on the cover image to the right (click to enlarge) exist in the same seamless space as your Sims’ household, and what you do outside your home now matters as much as what you do within. (Yes, previous expansion packs added out-and-about activities, but they were always separate sub-games. Here, everything’s completely integrated.) The game also sees a major shift in how Sims’ motives are handled: Individual meters indicating bladder and sleep-deprivation levels are replaced by a new system of discrete moods, the aim being to get players off the treadmill of fulfilling primal eat-sleep-pee-repeat requirements so they can focus more on, well, going out on the brand new town.

Sounds like the game is getting a major overhaul and will lose that weird time-warp effect that going into the other areas induced (the time of day when you left the house would be the same when you returned no matter how many days you spent in town or wherever). The removal of having to tend to every basic need should be a nice change as well. The first two games were regularly played in our household so I’ll be checking things out on the new website come the 19th.

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Rachel-G

Posted on 03/06/2008 at 11:19 PM

I was just wondering if you or any of your readers remember the name of the game that was very simular to the sims, maybe a first incarnation of the game, I played it on my Commodore 64, over 22 years ago. Anyway, this little dude would walk around his house, go to bed, you would tell him to go to the bathroom (I think) give him drinks of water and I could swear he would talk to you though his little computer, or maybe he would write a diary or something, but I could be so wrong there. Anyone remember that little game?

Les

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 12:27 AM

Of course I remember that game. I loved that game. It was called Little Computer People released in 1985 (the year I graduated high school) by Activision for the Commodore 64. You can download the game at that URL and make use of the excellent CCS64 Commodore 64 emulator to try it out.

The storyline for the game was that all computers had little people living in them and through the use of a house program you could lure them out into the open and interact with them. When you first put the floppy in this empty house would come up on the screen and nothing would happen for a few minutes. Then you’d hear a doorbell ring a couple of times. Then the door would open and a little person would stick his head in. Once he realized the house was empty he’d walk around for a bit and check the place out. Satisfied that it was a decent home he’d leave for a few minutes and then come back with his bags and his pet dog and move in.

You could interact with him in a number of ways including sending him presents or food for him and his dog. You could pet him using a extensible hand. You could type in direct queries in a text box such as PLAY A SONG ON THE PIANO and if he felt like it he would (usually themes to other Activision games). You could ask him to write you a letter and he’d sit at his typewriter and do so. And you could play simple card games with him.

It was a spectacularly pointless program, but made for an interesting amusement on occasion.

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Jane

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 02:17 AM

I’m really looking forward to the next game in the Sims series, although I hope they have better automatic controls. Sometimes I just want to set up scenarios and watch the sims take care of themselves, see what develops in my little virtual world. OOOh, it would be awesome of Maxis could combine The Sims with Sim City; you’d be controlling your own little world on various levels. Hey, why not incorporate Business Tycoon into that s well and have a complete Sim world.

MisterMook

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 02:23 AM

I love The Sims, but anything that distracts Maxis from Spore is bad form.

Benior

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 02:57 AM

Didn’t think The Sims was all that fun initially, but then I found myself playing a lot of it, so it was quite engrossing despite not having any high highs. Never did get around to playing The Sims 2 though. Sims 3 sounds different enough that it might be worth picking up.

Moloch

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 06:27 AM

The first two completely sucked, I doubt this one will be much better.

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Patness

Posted on 03/07/2008 at 01:00 PM

Are they making everything out of glass this time?

(Glass objects were decidedly the most used by players throughout the last game, IIRC).

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Chicken Girl

Posted on 03/08/2008 at 11:29 AM

I predict, if I ever get to play this game (I’m Linux-only now, and I sort of doubt it will run on wine, at least not right away), it will ruin Sims 2 for me the way Sims 2 ruined Sims 1.