Done this before
Electronic Arts already tried to make an online version of The Sims when it released The Sims Online back in 2002. That game featured a monthly subscription model that gave players one sim and let them loose in a world with other sims. But it was pretty lukewarm and eventually failed — the game only picked up a score of 70 out of 100 across more than 20 reviews on review aggregator Metacritic.
I tried the game when it first came out, and it felt more like an older hardcore online game. “Greening up,” the act of making your sims happy by feeding them and sleeping, was more of a chore instead of feeling rewarding like in The Sims Social. It was more of a grind to accomplish anything and rewards were pretty scarce — unlike the style of play featured in The Sims Social.
“That game came out quite a while ago, and this is a completely new platform,” Prober said. “With what we now know about social games, we’re pretty confident we’ve made a very competitive game.”
Unlike The Sims Online, which was fun in the more painful grind-y way, The Sims Social was a blast to run through. I got bored after a half hour or so of playing the game, but I would definitely go back to it sometime in the future. And that’s what has made casual games so popular — because they are made to be played in bite-sized chunks like Zynga’s Farmville and Cityville.
The Competition
Zynga has become a powerhouse for Facebook games — so much so that it filed to go public and is looking to raise around $1 billion at a valuation somewhere north of $10 billion. It has released hit after hit to Facebook and hasn’t really faced stiff competition from anyone else.
The Sims Social should probably change that. Unlike Farmville, The Sims Social has The Sims team behind it — who are some of the sharpest writers and designers in the industry. I had as much fun reading the hilarious captions and labels for actions and flavor text for quests as I did connecting with other Facebook players.
Electronic Arts has not-so-quietly established a fierce casual and social gaming team. The company bought Playfish back in 2009 and also bought casual games maker PopCap for $750 million. Both teams have made successful games, and once the deal closes, there’s a good chance that Playfish will be working with casual games maker PopCap. The deal for PopCap still hasn’t closed, so Playfish can’t confirm whether or not it is working on something new, Prober said.
“They are the Pixar of casual games,” he said. “On the day the deal closes, it’s a pretty good likelihood that we’ll work with them — we’d love to work with them.”
Prober didn’t say when the game would come out, but said it would be out “very, very soon” and well before the end of the year.