The Variety Princess Blog

For all my fellow Simmers out there, would you guys be opposed to the Sims 5 being multiplayer/online? Because there's rumors going around that it is indeed going to be just that.

Where did this idea come from?

Recently, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was interviewed and some of the things he mentioned led Simmers to believe he was hinting at the Sims 5 being an online installment of the game. Wilson stated, "As Maxis continues to think about The Sims for a new generation - across platforms in a cloud-enabled world - you should imagine that, while we will always stay true to our inspiration, escape, creation, and self-improvement motivations, that this notion of social interactions and competition - like the kind of things that were actually present in The Sims Online many, many years ago - that they will start to become part of the ongoing Sims experience in the years to come."

Didn't this cause problems before?

Of course, the Sims community had a lot to say about this, and being an avid Sims player for seventeen years, I do as well! Apparently, the Sims 4 started off being an "online" project, but it was scrapped at the last minute. This led to there being many missing features in the base game amongst many other things. The Sims 4 has received a lot of backlash over the years, and it could totally be due to the fact that it lost two years of precise development because a significant part of the game was thrown away at the last minute! We don't want this to happen again.

Questions, questions, questions.

How would a lot of the core features that's been a Sims staple work if the game was multiplayer/online? How would CC work? Mods? Stuff/Game/Expansion packs? If I have things in my game and other people don't, would I just not be able to use any CC or mods or packs? What about building? Would that limit the possibilities we'd have with building? If I wanted to log out, would it be problematic depending on if I was interacting with someone or not? Would that mess up their gameplay? Internet connection would obviously be required (which i'm not sure how to feel about), but would they charge a fee for us to play in the online world? Would woohoo not exist online? I mean, think of the weird crap that would happen with that. Adults and children alike play the Sims....so. I have a lot of unanswered questions.

My thoughts:

Sims 5 being an online game could obviously cause a lot of problems if everything we know and love about the franchise is just changed into something completely different. That's not to say that it couldn't be successful. I think a lot of great things could come from an online version of the Sims. Back in the day, I loved playing the offline multiplayer modes on my Playstation 2 whenever my friends would come over. It made for great competition and great gameplay! I think if the Sims team executes this the right way, it would be very fun.

What's the right way?

When I say the right way, I mean:

Don't make the game solely multiplayer/online. The same offline, single-player mode that we all know and love should still exist. The online mode should be just that -- a mode that we can choose to play if we want to. If single-player is still a complete mode all on its own, I wouldn't care so much about what they do with the online mode and if it exists or not! However, it would be fun to have an open-world online mode where you can go over to your friend's Sims' homes. Imagine how fun it would be to share a Sims household with your best friend. That would be pretty cool, I must admit.

Alternative options

Another option would be for them to have offline multiplayer modes for friends to play whenever they're hanging out at one another's houses just like they had on the console versions of The Sims back in the day. I think the Sims team's safest bet would be to make a completely separate installment of the game that isn't within the main series that's strictly online, that way, nobody would feel like they're forced to utilize any multiplayer or online features. That would also give the Sims team the ability to put their all into the multiplayer/online installment because it'd be its own, sole thing separate from the main Sims series.