Corporations are not your friend. None of them. Not EA, not Microsoft, not Gillette, not Sea World, not Bank of America, not Greenpeace, not Chick-fil-a, none of them. Their only concern is to make a profit. They can cover it up with either cringey marketing--such as this one--or good marketing--such as Dove--but they don't care about what they preach as long as it gets people to buy their products. It's marketing 101.


I've stated this earlier--the commercial is not for Sims players, because Sims players have already bought the game. It's for people who haven't yet bought the game and may not be familiar with The Sims as a franchise. Marketing your product for people who already know a lot about it or even play it is a good way to lose millions of dollars in investments for marketing.

I read someones comment that they are 40 years old and have been playing sims since the beginning and this ad made them feel very uncomfortable because it seems to be saying "Hey if you're young, come play the sims"... I can say the same thing about myself, I'm 40, I've been playing the sims since the beginning, but the ad doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, nor do I get that message from it. Honestly, I don't know how to feel about the ad at all.

First of all, the ad seems so serious. Would have liked to have seen more reasons for why people love/play the sims, besides just "Im different and now I can be me and I learned that's okay". Because that's how most of these stories sounded.

Sorry that I didn't see your reply until just now!

I didn't word it well, but what I meant was that society (mainly western society) has a certain perception about being in your early and mid twenties. If you ask people to describe those years, you'll get many diverse answers (especially depending on the age of the person you ask), but people tend to describe being in your twenties as "freeing," "full of energy," "rebellious," "carefree," "attractive," "free to explore," among other things. It's the age when you finally get freedom from your parents, you move out and have your own rules, you start a career, you can find and marry your love, you'll find friends who you'll grow close to, etc. It's a time in life that most people will look back on happily.

This is what the marketing is trying to channel: society's yearn to be a young adult. Even teens and kids, who haven't experienced being in their twenties yet, tend to want to grow up quickly for those very same reasons. So, subconsciously, looking at the cover art makes us feel good and gives us a wanting of those (perceived and believed, but not always true) benefits.

I hope I explained it okay, let me know if it's still confusing.

I'm old enough to have baby sat you - you can imagine how old I'm feeling!

lol the way the camera focuses on their hands i-

The problem with the video is it reflects what the series has become. It's not about playing Sims and controlling the worlds and lives of Sims but an avatar game. Make yourself and feel good about yourself. No matter if you are gay, straight, disabled, transgender, etc. It's no longer about a game, but projecting oursevles into the game, and all about 'us'. No, it's supposed to be about this is life, if you do this over here, that might cause problems over there with a different Sim. But no, it's now hey, kids! make yourself in TS4! (no matter who you are) and dress up! Look we have some more and more ugly clothes for you to wear! There are no consequences in TS4, none. Avatar game.

When did the series become a SelfSim game? With TS4 and that is all it is. Look hard at TS1, TS2, and TS3, when did so many people start playing their own avatar/themselves? In TS4 in all others it was about the actual Sim, not ourselves, and what happened to those Sims and their 'world' by choices we made as a god. These days, it's oh, I made myself! Yay! please give me more ugly clothes. If they can sell that new stuff pack coming out, then I should be able to show off my cc I made of a suit that was just a picture from long ago, I pasted onto a mesh it totally is just a drawing. If they can make money on that junk then I should have 10,000 downloads. lol ETA: It's a sketch of a suit, just as sketch now shouldn't I get rich with that?

I'm completely aware of this; you don't need to remind me. I've been dealing with EA and Maxis since 2000; I have a clue what they're all about. However, there is a new generation of simmers that walk around with stars in their eyes and believe that EA, Maxis and Yibs speak nothing but the truth. While is not my job to protect kids of the likes of EA, it's a thing as I'm a parent. As it stands today, EA still has yet to deal with their internal pedo protection program. Kate left, but wasn't fired and Steve is still around.

This is a company that loves to manipulate children. Kids in particular need to understand what EA, Maxis and Yibs are all about. When a company will happily drain a persons' bank account via loot boxes and microtransactions while claiming to the be kings of humanity, it's a problem.

I want to know how Sim Guru Frost cried at this.

Did someone suggest he have crunch time?

I’m joking before people pile on me with “Don’t you know how HARD the devs work?”
Oh wait, wrong forum.

The video is cringeworthy. It’s literally like they had a checklist off cliches and ticked off every box. No wonder people are pissed in the comments while the game is buggy, has the depth of a puddle and is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Speaking of Frost...



Again, I find ironic that they use phrases like 'safe space' while there is nothing safe about proverbially sitting anywhere near EA. Then there is this disgusting message that the only way for people to express themselves is through playing sims. People don't grow as a human beings by sitting in front of a video game their entire lives. People grow by living life. There are also countless ways that people can express themselves, learn things and share outside of a video game.

I would ask the question if EA and Maxis could get any more gross, but I already know the answer to that. Yes, yes they can and they will.

And before we have to listen to more " You people are so negative..." Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, ect... are all toxic cesspools. They prove this point on a daily basis.

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter struggle to contain the epidemic in online bullying

I think I just vomited in my mouth.

The hypocrisy of an EA employee calling their game a safe space when within the past 6 months two of the dev team ignored several young boys pleas for help with a grown man being extremely inappropriate; this is the company that calls loot boxes fun surprise mechanics and likens them to kinder eggs.

All games are safe spaces. The sims 1-3 allowed you to experiment in a world being a complete bad ass If thats what you wanted; it was your game, your virtual life and even they acknowledged it was up to you to make your sims happy or miserable. Hell devs encouraged it.

I was thinking about that during the maxis monthly when I think its Sim Guru Morgan said about island living and new players: "If you see any lava bombs, make sure to go and touch them"

Then SG lyndsey jumped in with: "Please don't"

The game is so obsessed with being an all inclusive political platform, its forgotten it's meant to be a game.

And it's quite misleading. It's about freedom of creating stories and scenarios like film. I yet to see this being a platform that would often be used to share ME stories in a fictional setting. It's quite the contrary in actuality; people that tried of half demography find it creepy playing as selfs.

Those are not the roots of The Sims; This video going " emotional touching" way is out of touch but a marketing ploy and EA knows that.

"It's not just a game. It's life" If you're describing what the game is about, you're right then. Thought it's a past time, not LIFE. Ramble bit, I know.

If I could give you a million likes for this, I would. EA and their 'messaging' all the time; it is never shut off.

EA could have used that money from the commercial to make the content players have been begging for for years.

We know what the Sims is.
It’s world renowned.
Give us university.

There is no such thing as a safe space on EA's official forums. People get banned for complaining while happy, gushy people fall over a white shelf, and get down on their knees and kiss gurus' feet for repairing a bug in the game that might have been there since 2014. If you don't go along with all that or the idenity politics EA is pushing then you are thrown off. All the while anyone over there who defends TS4 no matter what or how bad it is, can say or do whatever they want. Now, where is my safe space Maxis? You milk this game worse than the TS3 store, can't come up with any new animations or simulations, too lazy to build new objects for a festival, reuse meshes and claim they are new, reuse animations over and over, and for the last year there haven't been any mind blowing free content other than pandering to one group over another, or everyone else. If we don't go along with all that, but ask o.k. find, but what about the actual game..and gameplay..people are thrown off and called every name in the book, like whiners. They even allow players to hint and talk about users over there, in that thread Are forums always so negative...well, yeah, duh, because you keep calling me names, like hater , whiner, and worse. It's ok over there to tell people to go back and play TS2 or TS3, but if you say one word you don't like the new Sims or their silly, stupid stories the gurus wrote for them, that's it, you get thrown off. You get put on a watch list and they sit back and just wait for someone to provoke you then we are the ones that get banned. Now, there is nothing 'safe' about speaking out about Maxis and or EA and or their cheap game. ETA: Like that one story where the new Sim guy is a social network activist... and often sets up 'safespaces' wth, who cares. Get over yourselves Maxis. You are showing your out of touch ideas with the rest of people, gay or straight or whatever, that isn't all people care about. Gay people also care about cars, and brothers and sisters, jobs, a fun game, not dress up and made up crappy stories. That one Morgan, what a farce, there isn't colleges in TS4, but she remembers her days there, I guess it's pretend this Sim is working out for an Iron Man contest..wait shouldn't that be changed to pc culture, Iron Person contest? You made a pc slip there Maxis. Man is now banned in CA. no more manhole, how ridiculous that state has become. And if they build a hobby for that, you know there won't be any new equipment..it will be the pool and excersise bike already in the game, but oh, look, a transgender is competing in a rabbit hole IronMan contest! Lame as the day is long.

https://twitter.com/yorkshiresimmer...7581705217?s=21

Simmer who got rejected at the advert because she was over 25 and too old for the ad. Nice EA, real nice.

I think society heavily undervalues confrontation as a means of growth. I don't mean bullying is a good thing, just for clarity since you linked an article more or less touching on that, but rather there is an entire philosophy that highlights how confrontation with opposing ideas encourages positive growth. If you cannot face conflict, you cannot discover the reasons why you are who you are or why you think the way you do because no one's ever forcing you to think about those things.

There's another tidbit of philosophy that I forget where it's from, but the jist of it is your enemy is your best friend. If you fail, your friends are telling you it's not that bad and you did great cause they want to comfort you and see you happy. Your enemy? He's rubbing it in. He's making sure you never forget, he makes sure you're forced to embrace that misery...and that's good. Because you can't forget the mistake, you're more likely to improve because of it. You're more likely to dwell on why it happened and ensure it never happens again. Your enemy encourages growth, your best friend doesn't.

What's more, conflict is natural whether we pretend it isn't or don't. Love is a natural emotion, hate is a natural emotion. Both have their place and their uses. There's one specific simmer on the Sims 4 that SCREEEEEEEAAAAAMS passive-aggressive at me because while this person is outwardly kind, only has good things to say and fills their posts with smileys , their nature of posting seems venomous (is constantly in negative threads insisting it's just OP that feels that way and posting smileys everywhere to seem innocent) and every so often they slip up and say something incredibly catty that makes it obvious they're posting with spite and malice. People such as that are evidence conflict is inevitable whether we try to pretend it doesn't exist or not.


I feel like corporations embrace this mentality of safe spaces not because they're popular or wise, but because that's a demographic that's easily controlled. All you have to do is acknowledge how hard and scurry the world is and insist you understand and you'll give them a safe space, and they'll immediately come running and process you as "the good guy" because you're not feeding them hard truths. Moreover, that's a demographic where, for example, you can claim "there's no doghouses because cruelty" or "there's no burglars because it triggers people" and instead of thinking critically about how EA was cutting corners for cash, they'll try and outprogressive each other and immediately be like "yeah when you really think about it it was CRUEL that the past sims games had burglars! Thank you Sims team! "

These politics are killing me. I just want spiral staircases.

Not everything has to be a fight or a confrontation though. 2 or more people can disagree about something and those same people don't have to stomp off into a corner and pout. Also, not everybody that is honest is a enemy. Sometimes people need a mental goose to take a chill pill; not everybody is a asshole when delivering such a message. Jim Sterling said at the end of this video that EA would stab a baby for a dollar. Jim Sterling and I are worlds apart when it comes to politics, but when it comes to EA and the gaming industry as a whole, we're in total agreement.

I'm tired of reading all the passive aggressive bullshit. If people want to act like 2-year olds, I don't have a problem with treating them that way. If they want to pout, stomp their feet, hold their breath, yada, yada, yada, I can't deal with them like I would in real life, so I block and ignore them, much like a 2- year old temper tantrum. When they decide to act their age and develop the ability to have a conversation without the nonsense, I unblock them. It doesn't hurt my feelings either way. There is more to life than wasting time wondering if somebody that thinks TS4 is the shit likes me or not. I have bills to pay, a household to run, pets to look after, ect...

I agree that EA is doing these things because of the demographic that TS4 is being made for, however, that will only work for so long as that demographic isn't going to stay the same age forever. They can be easily lead by the nose right now, but in a couple of years, many of them are going to develop minds of their own because life experiences is going to teach them things that EA would rather society didn't. Then there is the fact that EA can only back themselves so far into that corner before they're forced to come up something else. Since they are creatures of habit, we won't have to worry about that shift for a long time because according to EA, they're always right.

"We invite people from ages 18-25 to promotional addition after TS4 rebrand to invite more people to the franchise (obviously for the latest installment). Recommendation benefits: confess being transgender person, be disabled, or a person of color. Bonus points for including a sad backstory (when you were confused/frustated about own sexuality, surgeries you had go through or how you were picked up on school for being outsider/different)! New casual players will need to pity you and embrace the idea there's a game that allows your type of diversity we're promoting. How else could we possible attract them to the game? Your creative stories? Lol no, we dont want to share them.

Of course they may not said it specifically and not literally last bit, but these people they aimed for bringing to the video.

I rewatched the whole thing again, trying to understand what Maxis is trying to convey. You know this video is an insult to most Simmers who have been paying their bills for them since 2000. And for those of us who are over the age of gullible. Let's see, no one over twenty five able to speak about playing The Sims series. That says, hey, we are embarrassed most of us gurus are over fifty and still making games instead of a real job where we must work hard and produce. So, we needed someone to explain why people play our games.

We had to search for some young people who are so insecure in themselves that we wouldn't feel bad for building games instead of a real job after all these years, where we have to work hard and produce. It's an insult because it makes all Simmers look like they are so unhappy in their lives that the only way they can love and respect themselves and have some fun is to buy Maxis games. And in turn Maxis developers will allow them to chat with them on Twitter, and hero worship them for giving them a life.

It shows Maxis thinks most people playing are incapable of living unless they live inside their games. They are saviors of the world. No wonder Grant had such an ego. It's not because they built fun games, but because people needed saving and fixing, and it shows Maxis suffers from a god complex. Instead of finding older Simmers who have been with them for years and many the age of Will Wright or older, just play to play and enjoy the life simulator. No, it's now about come play our game, we love you, we want you to be happy, we want you to feel safe in our game, where nothing bad will happen to you, now hand over $600 more while we add some more ugly clothes. (The ad says there is something wrong with everyone who plays The Sims series and they/we all needed help to live).

ETA: And might I add, we can't even build shorter Sims in this game, but they sure made it look like that Simmer who had all the surgeries could play herself as short as she is. What a false ad this is.

You tell those kids who watched that 13 year old boy give up his satchel to one of them and lie down before on oncoming train and get run over with 30 to 50 of his schoolmates watching him. It's all generalisation and piffle. You cannot understand how some people are let down and take refuge in whatever way they can. It's the way the whole world is and not just EA. I've been there, took too many pills but not enough and even then there was no one to help me when I woke up as there was no one calling.

These days it seems as if all videogame players are in training for a new world war, playing guns and other weapons but at least EA/Maxis are trying to go against the prevailing trends.

https://twitter.com/HyperboleGrant/...896050141024256

Hmmm... scratches head

https://s22.q4cdn.com/894350492/fil...lease-Final.pdf

No need to read the whole statement, just the very top. Does anybody else see the revenue loss? Just askin' because I'm seeing revenue loss.

Grant's statement confirms what I've been saying all along. The BS going on with TS4 and their being 'inclusive' is nothing more than cash grab, although the more revenue thing is a bit sketchy as while may be true that Maxis itself has made more, EA is losing money. Thanks to so-called AAA game companies and all of their bullshit, they've lost even more sales in June. https://seekingalpha.com/news/34791...d=mw_quote_news

We should all hold hands and sing kumbuya because they are so smart. seal claps

What a weird way to find out you're blocked by Grant Rodiek.

well, if they say "you're too old for that shit"...
I'd agree.

‘Young adult’ in Sims 3 is just how that life stage is called. It’s basically people from 20-40 years old. Adults are 40-60 (including a midlife crisis when you have Generations). I like that, it actually acknowledges the different life stages for people 20 up, instead of putting it all in one huge life stage that lasts from graduation till becoming an elder. Sims 3’s YA is Sims 2’s A. Sims 3’s Adult life stage doesn’t exist in Sims 2.

That Sims 4 only has very young people in mind becomes clear reading this tweet, a reaction to the video by a very old lady.

https://twitter.com/yorkshiresimmer...7581705217?s=21

That’s too old for this game, 28.