Can The Sims 3 Help EA Get its Groove Back?

Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago at 6:47 pm. 3 comments
Posted in Cell, Games, The Sims 3.

Electronic Arts has been known for its struggle on garnering trust to its gamers. Economically EA’s potential for profit is huge with their Sports line, Maxis, Boxing, Action, and Mobile gaming department. They continuously flaunt their in-game advertisements and its economic success.

Still this all takes a toll on a consumers by the recent drop in stock shares and quarterly earnings reports. The Sims 3 has many potential spots to solidify game play and do well with gamers. But we worry if EA’s marketing strategy will get the best of it.

A New Gaming Approach

The Sims 3 has an ambitious goal ahead of it. One of the major changes is that it now focuses on ONE household. Your person is placed into a world where everyone’s lives evolves with or without you. It sort of follows the lines of a MMORPG. Everyone existing in the game has their own schedule, love life, and personality. This doesn’t seem to worry fans too much since this concept was used during the Life Stories product line.

The Art Style

The most critical component for potential consumers at this stage is the graphics. The graphics look marginally better than they appeared in The Sims 2. A more realistic approach was expected, unfortunately the only areas so far that seems to be visually improved are the outdoors.

This screenshot depicts of a more detailed and realistic look of how a neighborhood is like. Now that the world is seamless, the gameplay allows you to leave your house and walk to another in real time. You will be able to move around the world with as much freedom as the console games. Hopefully as you move around, there should not be anymore loading splash screens that break up the action, but I do expect a loading screen before you enter another building.

Interior design still has that barren Sims 1-like look, every object is placed on a grid. The only new feature with object placement is diagonal rotation. This is not enough to make this game stand out from its predecessor.

This is the only screenshot so far has the most radiant lighting effect. The sun shines through the windows and the couch gives off its glossy glow, if only every screenshot presented this rise in quality…

User Feedback

Here are some various user comments from different message boards:

What I was most looking forward to in Sims 3 was a major overhaul in the department–a more realistic looking game–after all, it is a life simulation, but apparently that’s not going to happen. This looks like more of same to me, with incremental improvements.

Actually I looked at some of the graphics and they are dramatically improved hardware wise. The problem is that everything is unquestionably UGLY

Lindsay Pearson Interview Response:

However the screenshots give a somewhat distorted image, because when you see the Sims 3 live at work, you immediately notice the high detail in the world and its characters.

We shall see how this will turn out, there isn’t much uproar for this game as Simcity Societies. So far EA, your on a positive note here.