The Sims FreePlay CSP - Audience and Industries blog tasks

 

Create a new blogpost called 'The Sims FreePlay CSP - Audience and Industries blog tasks' and complete the following tasks.

Audience

Read this App Store description and the customer reviews for The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions:  

1) What game information is provided on this page? Pick out three elements you think are important in terms of making the game appeal to an audience.

• Life simulation: Players control and create Sims’ lives.
• Customization: Build homes, design characters, and create stories.
• Updates: Seasonal events and new content keep the game engaging

2) How does the game information on this page reflect the strong element of participatory culture in The Sims?

Customisation 

3) Read a few of the user reviews. What do they suggest about the audience pleasures of the game? 

The sandbox element, being able to do things they want at their own pace.

Participatory culture

Read this academic journal article - The Sims: A Participatory Culture 14 Years On. Answer the following questions:

1) What did The Sims designer Will Wright describe the game as?

Will Wright described as akin to ‘a train set or a doll’s house where each person comes to it with their own interest and picks their own goals’. 

2) Why was development company Maxis initially not interested in The Sims?

"Doll houses were for girls, and girls didn’t play video games’. 

3) What is ‘modding’? How does ‘modding’ link to Henry Jenkins’ idea of ‘textual poaching’?

The process of changing a video game's features, content, or assets. They get ides from other places and implement them into the game.

4) Look specifically at p136. Note down key quotes from Jenkins, Pearce and Wright on this page.

Wright: ‘We were probably responsible for the first million or so units sold but it was the community which really brought it to the next level’ 

Pearce: ‘The original Sims series has the most vibrant emergent fan culture of a single-player game in history’

Jenkins: ‘there were already more than fifty fan Web sites dedicated to The Sims. Today, there are thousands’

5) What examples of intertextuality are discussed in relation to The Sims? (Look for “replicating works from popular culture”)

From the early days of the game’s release, skins depicting characters from cult media such as Star Trek, Star Wars, The X-Files and Japanese anime and manga were extremely popular. If one wished to recreate the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, all one had to do was search the internet looking for the relevant website.

6) What is ‘transmedia storytelling’ and how does The Sims allow players to create it?

A process wherein the primary text encoded in an official commercial product could be dispersed over multiple media, both digital and analogue in form.

7) How have Sims online communities developed over the last 20 years?

'The original Sims game is now hopelessly outdated. Its last expansion pack was released over ten years ago, in 2003. One might well question why anyone would still want to play it at all. But for some fans of the original game, it is still regarded as the purest form of the game, uninhibited by the more goal-orientated gameplay of the later games.'

8) What does the writer suggest The Sims will be remembered for?

'But what it will be remembered for, I think, is for the cult following that it engendered well beyond the usual lifespan of a popular computer game; and also for the culture of digital production it helped to pioneer, one that remains such a staple of fan and game modding communities today.'

Read this Henry Jenkins interview with James Paul Gee, writer of Woman as Gamers: The Sims and 21st Century Learning (2010).

1) Why does James Paul Gee see The Sims as an important game?

There has been lots about modding for games like Half-Life and its connections to technical skills--and indeed this is important. But much less has been written about modding the Sims to create challenges and game play that is simultaneously in the game world, in the real world, and in writing things like graphic novels.

2) What does the designer of The Sims, Will Wright, want players to do with the game?

In the case of The Sims, you have a designer -- Will Wright -- who has been outspoken in his desire to empower his users to construct community and build their own content around his games. How does this goal on the part of the designer impact the kinds of stories you can tell about these women's relations to this particular game?

3) Do you agree with the view that The Sims is not a game – but something else entirely?

It's just a game that has lots of options for modding. There are many games with much bigger modding communities. 

Industries

Electronic Arts & Sims FreePlay industries focus

Read this Pocket Gamer interview with EA’s Amanda Schofield, Senior Producer on The Sims FreePlay at EA's Melbourne-based Firemonkeys studio. Answer the following questions:

1) How has The Sims FreePlay evolved since launch?

It was much more limited than it is now. Many of its features weren't implemented. For example there were a limited number of sims.

2) Why does Amanda Schofield suggest ‘games aren’t products any more’?

Games aren’t products anymore, they’re services built in a partnership with our players. This means that functions like customer support and community management are a critical part of the game development process and must be embedded with our game teams so we not only know what our players are saying about the newest update, but we also can quickly respond to any problems that arise.

3) What does she say about The Sims gaming community?

One of the most rewarding parts of working on this game is that our community is very active and always hungry to see more features and content in the game. We’ve not had to do much more than listen and build to keep the players engaged. When we find systems that are particularly exciting to our players, we focus our efforts to build that section out a little more.

4) How has EA kept the game fresh and maintained the active player base?

Dlc's.

5) How many times has the game been installed and how much game time in years have players spent playing the game? These could be great introductory statistics in an exam essay on this topic.

Over 200 million installs of The Sims FreePlay. 78,000 amount of game time in years players have spent in the game.

Read this blog on how EA is ruining the franchise (or not) due to its downloadable content. Answer the following questions:

1) What audience pleasures for The Sims are discussed at the beginning of the blog?

“The Sims” games center on the players’ ability to create “Sims” — virtual humans with personalities and ambitions — and take complete control of their lives. Players can also use the game to experiment with architecture, decoration and landscaping. Traditionally, each main series entry begins with a base game containing a large portion of the content, but not the entire package.

2) What examples of downloadable content are presented?

DLC's.

3) How did Electronic Arts enrage The Sims online communities with expansion packs and DLC?

Thoese dlc's should have been in the game from the start.

4) What innovations have appeared in various versions of The Sims over the years?

Every addition to the series has been innovative. The original carved out the niche for “life simulation” gaming. In the next cycle, “The Sims 2” refined the virtual families, allowing players to create multi-generational legacies. Following this feat, the developers gave players full access to every inch of a hyper-realistic world in “The Sims 3.”

The newest member of the family introduced the capability to travel between multiple neighborhoods, download other players’ creations within seconds through the “Gallery” and customize gender options to improve the level of diversity present in the game — all for free.

5) In your opinion, do expansion packs like these exploit a loyal audience or is it simply EA responding to customer demand?

Depends on the company. EA are bastards that are milking their audiences. Primary example if Fifa. Basically the same game just for a price of 50£ every year. However, on the other side of the spectrum you have developers like FromSoftware. They gave us a DLC for Elden Ring that was basically a whole new game and was so good it was the first ever dlc to get nominated for game of the year. It depends on the quality of the dlc.

The ‘Freemium’ gaming model

Read this Business Insider feature on freemium gaming and multiplayer games. Answer the following questions:

1) Note the key statistics in the first paragraph.

“freemium” games and their in-app purchases account for about 70-80% of the $10 billion or more in iOS revenue each year.

2) Why does the freemium model incentivise game developers to create better and longer games?

The freemium model offers users the core product — the game — for free and then optionally charges them for premium content such as in-game currency, extra content, or customizations

3) What does the article suggest regarding the possibilities and risks to the freemium model in future?

Money grabs. Some games pray on addicts spending money on their games.

Regulation – PEGI

Research the following using the Games Rating Authority website - look at the videos and FAQ section.

1) How does the PEGI ratings system work and how does it link to UK law?

Depending on the rating number, a person who is below that age can't buy the game. For example, a PEGI 18 game will require people to prove to the seller they are 18+.

2) What are the age ratings and what content guidance do they include?

 Same answer as above.

3) What is the PEGI process for rating a game? 

It's a 5 part process. First the developer declares what is the content of the game. Then the developer has to give proof. Video footage examination to check if anything has been missed or missinterrupted. Final stage is examination of the game it self. Then they just wait for the licence to arrive.