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XCOM developers start new studio to take on The Sims
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24155843/midsummer-studios-next-gen-life-sim-the-sims
Their first game will emphasize player-driven narratives.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24155843/midsummer-studios-next-gen-life-sim-the-sims
Their first game will emphasize player-driven narratives.
Go to bed, 98% chance not to die in your sleep... Grim reaper appears on your first night
99% chance to hit in xcom means you'll accidentaely fill up the bathtub without a single drop hiting the actual toilet.
This could be cool; here's a tip guys if you want people to really like it? Don't charge for a million different DLC packs. I'm not sure who's worse, EA or Paradox, but JFC just trim it down at the very least.
You know, I actually appreciate Paradox. They make top notch games like Stellaris, that are absolutely playable and complete by themselves, then add optional DLC while continuing to support the original game with updates. Some of their DLC is purely cosmetic, but they also add a lot of cool shit like "what if we had giant star sized dragons?"
For a game that's 8 years old, I don't mind dropping a few bucks on interesting DLC every now and then. All in all, I'd say I've spent about $50 on Stellaris DLC and have more than enough content to keep me busy for a while.
The Sims, on the other hand, is just fucking out of control. They've got expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs, and kits. Buying everything for The Sims 4 would be close to $1,100 as of a year ago - probably quite a bit more by now.
People complain about the total cost too get everything in The Sims, but I don't remember anyone complaining about the total cost of every song in Rock Band.
Lol I absolutely complained about the cost of songs in Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I started playing those games in Guitar Hero 2 and refused to ever pay extra for additional songs. I guess in my mind, that was vastly different than paying for stuff like Stellaris DLC since I felt like I was being nickled and dimed.
I take that back though. Now that I think about it I might have paid for the Trogdor song... unless that was included in the base game.
Trogdor was a man. I mean, he was a dragon-man. Or maybe he was just a dragon. But he was still TROGDOR!
My friends definitely did. Granted, we had varying taste in music so there was always a little bit of something for everyone. If we only played it single player we might only have bought a quarter or less of everything.
Sims on the other hand, a lot of expansion packs are features from prior games cut up into small chunks and given new animations then sold for ridiculous amounts of money. After sims 3 I promised myself to never buy another sims game knowing damn well it would just be a constant drain on my wallet if I ever wanted to stay current or enjoy anything close to a complete experience. You certainly can enjoy just the vanilla base game, but everyone who ever played this series before knows you most of the expansion packs if you want to play as intended and experience the good stuff.
My friends sure did. Personally I never gave a damn about rock band or any other music rhythm games. You're not long though.
I also like to point out that train SIM DLCs, which I also don't play or care about, are also exorbitant and insanely numerous. But that's a really niche product and I've heard the argument made that they're trying to recoup off of the investment for something that gets low numbers of sales. I don't know how much work goes into developing one fucking train car or one train or whatever; it would seem to me that most of it should just be assets considering that the physics engine and basic architecture of all components is done and basically similar. Regardless of it's statistics a train engine is a train engine and all cars look basically the same; standardized wheel frame with one of a fairly small number of actual car designs. I think it's like a dozen or two? Everything after that is scaling and skin, and changing numbers for a scale isn't that hard. I don't even know if these things have hit boxes, since it's just meant to be a train sim and not something you run around on like a platformer. So whatever the cost of developing the skin assets is most of what those DLCs are, so charging like 15 bucks for each them is pretty ridiculous. Honestly I don't even know why I looked into this in the first place years ago but the pricing structure really is silly.
The issue with PDX is the total cost can get too high and, I assume, pushes away new purchases. If you play one of their games and buy the DLC as it comes, it's fairly cheap. The base games are a fair $40, which is nice. However, to catch up on HoI4, which I think i purchased the deluxe edition for, would cost me about $115, while most of it is 50% off right now. Admittedly a lot of this is cosmetic stuff that could be skipped, but the price has to scare away new players. EUIV is $248 for me, with most between 30-70% off. Even CK2, which I own every expansion for, is $157 for cosmetics, content packs, music, etc all 50% off. It gets ridiculous.
Personally, I tend to buy these games at launch and, if I want to play them a few years later, I pirate it. I have given Paradox a lot of money and I like supporting their games, but I play far too many of them (basically all of them) for me to think it's reasonable to buy all these DLCs. I'll buy the first couple, but after that I'm probably never putting the time into it like I did at launch and it isn't worth it. Piracy becomes the most convenient option at that point, as long as you don't care about achievements.
I don't really mind this model because it seems to work for them, and it let's them continue to work on a game for a decade or more, instead of being forced to start from scratch and remake everything over and over. I know I'm not the only one doing what I do though, and I'm sure they know this as well. You don't need the expansions and everything, and they even include parts of it for free usually, but some mods will require them or it would just enhance the experience I already payed $100+ for, so I like to use them, but just can't justify the price for the 5 PDX games in active development plus the other studios games with the same model, like Cities: Skylines.
So far the XCOM series has been pretty good at that. Each game typically has 1 big pack which feels worth the money and 1 or 2 chea[ stinkers there's no need/push to buy
The more competition Sims has, the better. Maybe EA will actually try and innovate... HAHA. I've been keeping an eye on Paralives and Life By You, and there are a couple others coming as well, I think. It'll be a good time to be a life sim fan in the next couple years.
Wow, it's like you think Sims are supposed to live long, happy lifespans. Considering the most popular Sims mods all have to do with murdering Sims, that suggests that most players already churn through Sims like popcorn.
I wish you managed a dynasty of people sort of like CK, but with more emphasis on life rather than war.
For anybody thinking this new game will be anything like XCOM prepare for disappointment.
Jake has previously said that he is leaving turn-based tactics games behind.
And his tweet announcing Midsummer even says "it's going to seem very different from what I've done before."
edit: There is some good news for turn-based tactics fans. Another studio founded by former XCOM devs is focusing on turn-based games.
Sims franchise has a dedicated fanbase but they keep getting screwed by these insanely priced DLCs. I think people are hoping for a City Skylines scenario where another studio tackles the genre and adds mod/quality of life support.
Well let's hope it's not a Cities Skylines scenario because the second game is a complete shit show.
And even the first one has many issues.
Cmon man… Sure it had issues, but acting like Cities Skylines didn’t completely revolutionise city builders is insane.
I thought Life by You was trying to fill that gap.
With both that and Sims 5 (edit: oh an Paralives of course, was forgetting about that) on the horizon will this new studio be able to find its space in the market?
Guess more competition is always good, hopefully it doesn’t flop immediately.
It also feels like the Sim logic hasn't really changed in a while. They still do things like go upstairs to the bathroom to wash dishes
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Before founding Midsummer, the two worked on XCOM, Civilization: Beyond Earth, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
Today, the new studio has announced its first game: a next-gen life sim game with former The Sims director Grant Rodiek leading the project as executive producer.
According to the studio’s press release, this debut project “emphasizes player-driven narratives, allowing communities to share memorable moments that grow out of the creativity of players themselves.” The project doesn’t currently have a title or release date.
This new game will face stiff competition in the life-sim genre, which has been dominated by big-budget games like The Sims 4 and smaller, indie outfits like Stardew Valley.
Midsummer’s developers wrote that they want to give players the tools to tell their own stories, reminiscent of the popular trend of players using avatars created in The Sims and similar games to act out soap opera-style stories that are recorded and uploaded to social media.
Meanwhile, EA is already working on its next iteration of The Sims, a free-to-play title dubbed “Project Rene,” and former Sims and Second Life developer Rod Humble set up a new studio to launch the life-sim Life by You, which is due out on June 4th.
The original article contains 218 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 8%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
my only concern is that Midnight Suns was riddled with bugs and very high hardware demand, but the xcom 1+2 engine would work great with a Sims game, hell I'll take a Sims Tactics at this point
Did it have that many bugs? The only bug I got was the whole no ancestral armor at the uhhh greenhouse area.
Which, to be fair, was really really annoying! Damn I want the last armor!
Weird change of direction but I'm okay with it, plenty of indie devs are picking up the slack for turned based games.
The Sim X: Terror from the derp. Yeah no Jake, we want a successor to X-COM Apocalypse if you don't mind.
Id probably pay good money to watch my rookie college student to hit on a viper and fail miserably, panic and then one shot KO her muton boyfriend before running away.
I don't really see how this would compete with Stardew Valley, honestly, sounds more like the initial Sims comparison is more apt. Stardew and Sims are pretty different games
Look forward to it, worst comes to worst, two new options for the sims, with this and paralives is two chances to not fail like sims 3 and 4 did. And I don't mean fail in a financial sense, I'm sure they made money. But failed in a "worth playing" sense.
I remember playing lots of sims 2 as a kid. Could not play sims 3 due to not having a pc that could run it, and I found sims 4 extremely disappointing.
Been keeping an eye on Life by You and Paralives for modern takes at the genre.
I wonder if EA will try to innovate with sims 5 and if they’ll try to optimize the unbelievable loading times (talking about sims 4 here) due to the competition or if they hope to coast on reputation alone.