The Sims is a tyrant lording itself over the simulation space with frivolous glee. Building itself up and up with countless dozens of DLC that make it downright impossible for anyone to just jump aboard and have a bit of fun nowadays given the several thousand dollar entry fee- unless you start with the base version of the game which is devoid of even the most basic aspects of what made previous Sims games so playable. It is really bloody telling when, upon looking up the price of all DLC in the Sims 4, the first two options are sites freely telling me how to pirate the DLC. Which, considering the game is currently available free-to-play, is essentially a step-by-step guide on how to rob EA. But when the alternative is paying a small fortune to play a complete feeling game- I mean, can I really blame them?
There was apparently something of an ironic stint on the original Sims when it released- finding a way to gameify not the exciting fantasies of the power hungry, but the banal life functions of the basic. They were supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it is told. Any of that disappeared when the concept ended up being a surprise smash hit scoring dozens of sequels and capturing that all-important 'captive audience' that everyone is eager to get when they make new genre types. Now I see the appeal, don't get me wrong. Playing god with the lives of others is always a little thrilling, as is simply guiding a digital avatar to seek a life better than anything you could ever have. Why do you think I'm play Persona? But I think most of us have really seen the Sims lose it's way particularly in 4 which even now feels like an overall step back from three. And it's been actively developed for 10 years! They still ain't caught up!
Three offered a full city simulation where you could simply zoom out of the household and follow some random on the street for several minutes to see what they're up to- loading screens be damned. Sims 4 wanted to pursue this faux-complex conversation and emotion system, however, which made it so that having too many NPCs loaded was simply unfeasible for the engine to handle. Of course, two console generations later that seems like a moot consideration- but given that EA have settled on this being 'the forever Sims' it seems we've lost the scale for good. And in it's place is an increasingly stuffy feeling 'ecosystem'. Yeah, it's not a 'game' anymore. It's an 'ecosystem' from which the team, obviously, can peddle content at your face with abandon.
Which is probably why even though this genre has been enfranchised with The Sims for so long, customers have absolutely no loyalty to EA and welcome all these coming new competitors with open arms. 'Life by You' got round-the-clock coverage for a time, despite looking like an unfinished Unity Asset hog in most of it's marketing, before that game got itself scarified on the chopping block for whatever insular reason which is going to look silly a year from now. And now we have Krafton published InZOI riding up and promising a level of fidelity and customisation that one could only ever dream of under The Sims, all powered under Unreal Engine 5's Metahuman character system that creates near true-to-life models. And it is... suspicious.
See, Sims-style games don't have any competition for a very important reason- they can get absurdly expensive to develop for. Remember that these games don't just scale upwards but outwards too. Every time an new system is developed introducing some kind of gameplay vertical that needs to be designed to work flawlessly with all the other systems already in place, and without in the case of selective DLC picking. It's kind of like the Minecraft problem except at Minecraft they chose the 'solution' of making everything increasingly more complicated to engage with thus ensuring less people would choose to do so. Which is a choice, to be sure. Sims just kind of has to role with the punches and do universal updates every now and then just to keep the ecosystem in tandem.
Krafton is the kind of publisher you need to stand up to them because, well, they have a crap-ton of resources. They are the publishers behind PUBG, afterall, so they can sink a stupid amount of support into digging into the market- even if that in itself does raise my first suspicions. Because afterall- when the barrier to entry is this thick then what exactly does the company hope to recoup from breaching it? Korean games do have a reputation for being absurdly heavy on the monetisation angle to a degree that many Westerners find honestly distasteful and when I see the hyper slick graphics and eye-wateringly ambitious scale I can't help but get Black Desert vibes. And that's not really the kind of comparison you want to be drawing.
I suppose what gets my suspicions up the most is the fact that the game looks like one of those 'too good to be true' situations. The characters are too lifelike looking, the full city simulation is too close to exactly what Sims fans have been asking for over the past 10 years, the ability to apparently scan files off your computer and transmute them into 3D objects in the world is just- heck I don't think I've ever seen a program work that seamlessly. I don't believe it's genuine. I suspect at the very least that NPC interactions are going to be basic and unsatisfying to play about with, the city simulation will in some way compromise on the full-freedom promise offered and the 2D to 3D scanning system will just break down and be a mess. Those are my predictions. We'll tallying up my marks when I get them all right.
But to be honest- I really do hope I'm wrong because damn- I'd really love to play a Sims style game that hooks me as fully as the Sims 3 back in the day. Just as much as I'd love to see a black eye dealt to EA for everything they're putting us through- not least of all the abominable EA launcher which manages to be an utterly cumbersome edition to my computer every year. Though every rational fibre in my body tells me to watch out- the believer in me wants to believe that the perfect Sims competitor is out there and InZOI looks the cleanest of them. But even if that dream does end up falling apart- there is a whole army of other takers swinging for that Sims crown. Here's praying one strikes home!
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