I've played more than 30 hours of Sims competitor Inzoi, and I'm not sure it understands what makes those games so special
I've played more than 30 hours of Sims competitor Inzoi, and I'm not sure it understands what makes those games so special
Inzoi throws a million things to do at you, but doesn't make any of them important.
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Its kinda bizarre that there are so few Sims clones/replacements.
It's not that bizarre when you think about it. As a technical piece of software, Sims is actually quite complex.
You need a sophisticated character editor with a vast array of clothing options. You need a house editor that allows you to build any house you can imagine. You need a huge array of possible interactions between people and all kinds of objects. You also need lots of randomized interaction and AI (as in traditional game AI) to control NPCs. You need to have all these things be affected by the characters traits and you need them to go through life stages while still being interesting.
It's a whole lot. It's basically impossible to build a game like that as an indie developer. You really need a large team and that means funding. And that's where it gets hard cause you are up against Sims and I don't imagine many sources of funding want to make that bet.
Its a big piece of work sure, but there haven't even been attempts (that I know of).
And sims is priced so high (with all the expansions) that getting in that market seems feasable if one of the big names wanted to try.
Seems worth an attempt, rather than churning out copy-cat FPS/dots/battle royals/flavour-of-the-month games :/
Big name studios are usually publicly owned which means they have shareholders to answer to and they demand a return on their investment. That means no risk taking which means no niche genres. It's why shareholders (ultra wealthy people) are the enemy of art and why publicly traded studios all go to shit after enough time.
And indie devs don't want to touch the sim genre because it's an incredibly challenging thing to make and would take most people years and years to get anywhere on it. Their only shot is having an angel investor to keep them afloat.
It's why shareholders (ultra wealthy people) are the enemy of art and why publicly traded studios all go to shit after enough time.
No arguments there...
Your probably right, but gaming company's do plenty of other risky stuff, like Concord etc. Would have been nice if they had at least tried to make a sims along the way.
Concord suffered from being too safe and generic. There wasn't a single thing about it that didn't seem generic and played out. It was originally conceptualized around the time when overwatch 1 was super popular and then they took way too long to finish it. The fact that it was pursuing an outdated trend and doing nothing original with it is why nobody had any interest in it.
Gamers could have identified that it was going to flop from a mile away, but the people calling the shots were businessmen and shareholders, not gamers. The industry has been hollowed out and enshittified because it's been taken over by non-gamers who want to turn all games into soulless child casinos.
It wouldn't be the first artistic industry ruined by capitalists and it won't be last.
Practically none really, but there are competitors coming out at least, primarily this and Paralives, probably because people are sick of EA's shit.
EA have been pulling their shit for decades though, so its surprising no one has tried to eat their lunch before now.
I think it's because life sim games are hard to make, and up until recently, no one thought it was worth the effort to make one, when most people would just stick to The Sims. It probably helps that TS4 has been out for so long, and TS5 or whatever they want to call their next one, seems far away.
The games industry is more than happy to throw away billions churning out copy-cat games, that compete in incredibly crowded genres, so it would have been nice if they had at least tried to compete in the one genre with only a single competitor. Its kinda funny that TS4s biggest competitor is TS3.