The Sims is Serious Business

When the next generation of a game sells 1.7 million copies in the first week even though adopting this version means eventually re-buying all the expansions you had in the previous version, that game must be a monster hit.  The Sims franchise is the monster hit of which I speak.  Being among the top selling PC games of ALL TIME, playing The Sims is s-e-r-i-o-u-s business!

While many Western MMORPG players are grappling with the idea of micro-transactions for virtual goods, The Sims community of players has been doing that for years.  For many, playing The Sims (TS) is all about beautiful, bling and over the top.  Unfortunately, the designing skills of the developers building TS has been shall we say, lacking in diversity and quality.  The community creates massive amounts of custom content for every aspect of the game that can be shared by others.  There’s a lot of free content but the amazing looks so real that it boggles the mind sort of content, comes at a cost.  You can pay by the item from a wide variety of player run websites.  Or you can subscribe to one or more of the better stocked sites for a few months.  That’s what I do.  And I’ve never worried nor cared about that fact that I was basically paying a monthly subscription, to a third party, just to have “pretty” virtual content in my game.

Although I purchased a copy for myself and one each for my daughters, I’m not playing TS3 yet.  But I ran across something while searching for a veranda for my daughter, that completely blew my mind.  I mean, TS is serious business but damn – the Living Sims magazine takes it to a whole new level.

ALL the rooms are created using The Sims!!

I wasn’t shocked to find custom magazines that you can acquire to decorate your home.  I always download books, pads, pens, etc. to give my homes a lived-in feeling, as well as reflect my love of reading and writing.  Seeing a beautiful miniature of a magazine series didn’t stun me.  What knocked me back on my heels was the LIFE SIZED VERSION available on the web with REAL CONTENT. 

Let me say that again, the miniature magazine collection has a “real” version that is all about interior design for your Sims’ homes, with amazing tips for creating stylish living spaces, from the low budget starter income to the fabulously rich.  Clearly, the authors are artists and designers.  I would live in any one of the rooms I saw in my own damn house and this was for The Sims.  This just takes things to a whole new level of fandom and dedication to this award winning franchise.

Viewing past magazines wasn’t obvious to me.  Then again, it was 1 AM when I was browsing the Internet looking for items. 

• Click on Archives
• Click the magazine you want to browse
• Find the next and previous chevrons, which are located right under the magazine, to flip through the pages. 

These designs are jaw-dropping fabulous and delicious!

Comments

[Lloyd]

Awesome find! I've been a long time Sims player and have always been amazed by the creativity of the Sims' community but never expected something like what the creators of Living Sims have done. A magazine about Sims creations that's also a downloadable object for the game--how delightfully meta.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Lloyd - I'm still flabbergasted by it - REALLY!

[Julie Whitefeather]

I was an avid player of Sims 2. I bought game and the updates and often scanned web sites for new player produced content for hours.

But when Sims 3 came out and I was asked by its creators to re-buy everything I had purchased before it screamed "Planned obsolescence" at me.

Quite frankly it felt as if someone had urinated in my morning coffee.

Julie Whitefeather

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Julie - EA has balls of steel when it comes to doing that to their customers. I've been playing since Sims 1 which means this will be the THIRD iteration of re-purchasing all the expansions times 3 PLAYERS IN OUR HOUSEHOLD.

I've gotten over that retarded aspect of their business model. What burns my ass is that they have that stupid RMT store with their lack luster content. Their designs border on hideous and the in game content so freakin' sparse. I'm rather offended that they spent the time to build content for RMT but had so little based content to a game that players have supported, including buying the expansions for years. This time there's even less base content. Their RMT can kiss my ass. I'll pay a player for content before I give EA one penny for their custom crap.