Well, it’s here… sort of. The Sims Labs: Life Together is now in soft launch; hey at least it’s a better name than ‘City Life with Friends.’ But already we’ve got our first controversy, this time over a mode within Life Together that riffs on the format of Roblox sensation Dress to Impress.
With a lukewarm reception at best, it’s not off to a great start.
Fashion, turn to the left
For those not in the know, Dress to Impress was a Roblox ‘experience’ (back in my day we just called them ‘games’) that sees players creating an outfit to fit a specific theme. From that, they’re scored based on how closely they meet the strictures of the theme and how innovative they were.
Dress to Impress has been hugely popular both in and outside Roblox, even spawning its own memetic spin-offs. But the mode shown in The Sims Lab has gotten it in the neck from fans (not helped by other er- very ‘mobile’ elements) for seemingly hewing a little too close to the original Dress to Impress concept.
This’d be far from the first time that Dress to Impress has been copied either wholesale or in part. Roblox itself is rife with both spins and copies that seek to get the rub from the original hit themselves.
And with Life Together seemingly seeking to compete with the glut of social gaming and life sims available on platforms like Roblox, which are extremely popular with a mobile audience, it’s not surprising they’d take a swing themselves.
Dress to express
But I think the debate about whether Life Together ‘ripped off’ Dress to Impress misses the mark somewhat. The concept itself isn’t exactly copyrighted, and as stated above there’s already been dozens if not hundreds of wholesale copies.
Of course that doesn’t make it any better, but I digress.
At the same time, it does demonstrate one key critique I’ve been musing on for a while now. Which is that Life Together/Project Rene is taking on already popular platforms like Roblox, not by doing what The Sims already does well; but by emulating them.
As I’ve said, the main issue with Life Together seems to be that it’s sacrificing much of the core which made The Sims so popular. And with The Sims Mobile now set to shutter it’s going to have a lot of expectations to carry the franchise on mobile going forward.
Suffice it to say a lukewarm reheat of something which was popular back during the fabled, semi-mythical ‘Brat Summer’ isn’t going to cut it.
