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1 week ago
Feature: If you build it, they will come
Forget Tiny Living, in The Sims 4 builders have achieved greatness with Grand Designs
Earlier this week, EA revealed the new Tiny Living Stuff Pack for The Sims 4. It allows players to build cosy little homes, limited to just 100 floor tiles in size, and adds new little home items like a bookshelf that has an inbuilt TV. Plus: cosy knits! All very lovely. But the creativity of The Sims' community has never been confined by size -…
2 months ago
Feature: Our grim task comes to an end
Motherlode: a pocket full of gravestones in Simento Mori part 3
When half the town was gone, an interloper appeared in an empty house. His name was Whitely and I still don't know where he came from -- he just arrived. Perhaps he saw an advert in the local paper for a house sitting vacant: "Previous tenant spontaneously combusted. Ready for immediate move-in. No questions asked." He needed to be dealt with. This is the final…
4 months ago
Feature: The sequel to death, it's Simento Mori 2
While playing through this second instalment of Simento Mori, an exploration into the limits and meaning of death in The Sims, I nearly swallowed a fly. I had casually taken a sip of my drink, only to feel the sensation of some foreign object (decidedly solid) making contact with the inside of my teeth. I had to extract its carcass from my mouth with my…
5 months ago
Feature: Simento Mori: Remember, You Will Sim
Six months ago, The Sims inspired an existential crisis. I say this with no particular gravitas, but to say it: The Sims is an undeniably powerful force. You can read about that existential crisis here, but suffice it to say that I have both a deep admiration for, and significant vendetta against, Maxis property The Sims. Perhaps sensing this rage/respect combo for The Sims, I’ve…
11 months ago
Feature: A wee existential spiral about The Sims
A year ago or so, I re-downloaded The Sims. My partner and I wanted a low-effort game to play together, and I introduced them to the life-changing videogame craze: “Make yourself in The Sims and live the life you’ve always wanted!!!” We made ourselves, built a beautiful little home, and adopted a cat. I became a professional writer or something, and they went into the…
2 years ago
Feature: Sims, Petz, Journals and Dreams
Videogames were a presence throughout my childhood, thanks to my dad having a PC for work. When he didn’t need to use it, I was allowed to tinker and explore. The games built into the computer like Solitaire, SkiFree and Fuji Golf, as well as the CD-ROM games we got from stores like Office Max and Borders, quickly became second nature to me. Now, looking…
Feature: Big talk
The planet is full of aimless people. Dozens of non-descript robots silently going to and fro, with no discernable purpose or meaning. Yes, I’m at Gamescom, the annual gaming conference in Germany, but I’m not talking about the visitors on the show floor. I’m talking about the on-screen player bots of Dual Universe [official site], a sci-fi survival MMO making big promises about player numbers…
3 years ago
Feature: You are what you wear
Virginia never imagined she'd be telling a Black woman it was okay to wear Black clothes. As an African with lighter skin, Virginia had feared accusations of cultural appropriation when she first started making traditional African outfits for The Sims 4. Though she had spent the first 12 years of her life in West Africa, her mixed-race origins marked her as an outsider, and she…
4 years ago
Feature: In my defence...
The Advertising Standards Agency publishes rulings every Wednesday on everything from psychic hotlines to videogames. I'm incredibly fond of their rulings. I think it's mostly because of the language the companies use to defend themselves, breaking videogame concepts down and presenting them in what's intended to be a neutral manner. The upheld complaints are generally less entertaining for obvious reasons – the concerns have been,…
Feature:
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Later Sims games were probably better games, in terms of how they fleshed out the fantasy (and accidentally gave it more than the intended degree of consumerism critique subtext with all those expansion packs and DLC), but Will Wright's original people simulator remains…
5 years ago
Feature: Another mouth to feed
Note - this was originally published a month ago as part of the RPS Supporter program, hence the reference to our now-finished Survival Week. It's Survival Week here at RPS, so I decided that I'd write about my earliest experiences with The Sims, a survival game like no other. Left to their own devices, Sims are just about smart enough to struggle through life but…
Feature: From The Archive
Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam explores his own gaming history to understand why he plays and why he writes. This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play…
7 years ago
EA's recently-announced The Sims 4 may in fact be a new Sims game, sources have revealed to RPS. The source, who did not wished to be named but who purports to have strong ties to the press release-reading community, claimed exclusively to this website that The Sims 4 is in fact the fourth in the Sims series.
Feature: Escaping the shackles of simulacra
This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do…
8 years ago
Feature: From The RPS Archives
More from the archives, this time a 2007 piece on the dark eroticism inherent in The Sims, penned by the sorely-missed RPS co-founder and giant of words Kieron Gillen. It was the phone calls that made me certain. The Sims was going to cross over, one way or another. I worked in a cramped games magazine office for just shy of five years. There were…
Feature: Mods And Ends
Oh no! It’s for girls! And not even the good type of girls. The bad ones. The ones who like Hollyoaks and reality TV, and feast on swirling and scurrilous rumours about Brangelina. Except that’s a load of old rubbish, like claiming that games with guns only appeal to violent sociopaths or wargames only appeal to retired colonels. I have it on good authority that…
9 years ago
Feature:
Young people. Good grief. Your ignorance is as plain as those spots on your greasy face. Don't you know anything? Can't you be bothered to learn anything? Did you even read the words of esteemed colleagues Rossignol, Walker and Smith detailing the first three parts of this Olympian list of The Most Important PC Games Of All Time? I am quite sure that I, Deacon…
What's this? A press release has come tumbling through the RPS letterbox, bound in tattered leather and announcing the Spring 2011 release of The Sims Medieval. A full game of its own (presumably using the Sims 3 engine), The Sims Medieval will allow players to create their very own "Hero Sim (TM)" and then either head off on quests or focus on building up their…
10 years ago
College Humor gets it right pretty often, and this remarkably well produced Sims spoof is perfectly aimed. Sure, we've all told our own version of the time we made our Sims die in a puddle of their own urine, but CH realises those jokes with impressive production values and a superb horror movie vibe. In fact, it's because we're all so familiar with the themes…
11 years ago
Cleverman make cleverthinks! Fresh from the Web 2.0 expo earlier this month is this entertaining and educating half-hour talk with Will Wright about everything including but not limited to his career and games to date, what's next, lessons learned from Second Life, the intersect between games and reality and -ooh missus - Spore's controversial DRM and the business considerations around it: "These people have paid…
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