If you’re a fan of The Sims 4 (well, why else would you be reading this site?) then you’ll definitely have enjoyed the news over the weekend.
The folks at Maxis have confirmed that they’re making a big sweep of over 150 bugs in their latest fixes, with more to come. And I do think that the new fixes are a good start on laying a fresh foundation for The Sims 4.
Begin again
Wait, fresh foundation? Well, yes. Because I’m firmly of the belief that this and their latest move to boost performance for The Sims 4 is very telling. It seems to me as if Maxis are taking aim squarely at improving the performance of The Sims 4 with the intent of this being the ‘main’ entry in the series for the foreseeable future.
Now, obviously The Sims 4 is already over a decade old, but it’s still a favourite of many. And yes, while I have gone on record writing that The Sims 5 would be preferably – so long as it improves on some key weaknesses of The Sims 4 – if we do have to remain stuck in the past this is the next best thing.
The general sentiment I, and fans both casual and hardcore alike, mostly have is that The Sims 4 is bloating a bit with expansions. And this can come at the cost of core systems and performance, especially for those playing on newer gen hardware The Sims 4 doesn’t seem to take advantage of.
With that in mind then, it seems as if Maxis are relaying the foundation for The Sims 4 in preparation for it saying around a long while yet.
Why is this good?
For those of you just coming in, I think it’s fair to reemphasise why this is good. Oftentimes long-running games or ‘live services’ tend to suffer from a need to bring in more content. This means over time things break down in the background, whether explicitly due to actual bugs or simply because the rest of the game has changed.
Take Total War: Warhammer for example. It’s one of my favorites and I’ve noticed it’s pretty typical for one faction in this grand strategy title to be released and have new, exciting mechanics. But in contrast older, and less popular factions then fall by the wayside.
Similarly, expansions for The Sims 4 have changed drastically over the years. Both in what these expansions offer and in what they do to the game systems. So smoothing over all the kinks and basically doing a soft reset – or at least starting on one – can only be a good sign for future stability.
And what else?
As for what this means for the wider series, well I think it’s clear that PC and console are viewed as rather stable for now. Obviously with the closure of The Sims Mobile it’s tempting to think that they’ll be shutting up shop over on smartphones, but remember we also have Project Rene to think about.
I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the thinking is to make The Sims 4 as evergreen as possible (maybe a name change? ‘The Sims Unlimited’?) while Project Rene charts a new course for mobile and a new generation of players. It may not be ideal, but it’s better than EA pulling an EA and messing everything up.
Still, Maxis and EA still have plenty in the way of loyalty to regain from fans. The acquisition of EA recently by a consortium of investors has some questioning what this will mean for things like representation of LGBTQ+ topics. Some creators have even left the EA network over the acquisition.
With that in mind, winning back community trust will be harder, but more important than ever for Maxis and EA.
