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Will it be awesome, or a disaster?
Following what has become their standard schedule, EA has announced the next expansion pack just as we are all starting to settle in to the last one. The new expansion is called Showtime, and it will launch next March.Showtime has some elements of previous expansion packs (like the Superstar expansion for The Sims, or Nightlife for The Sims 2). The thumbnail sketch would be, "Your Sims can be famous performers and DJs." But what is really going to make this expansion pack innovative (or horrible) is the social component.
EA has flirted with social networking before. There's a Sims 3 for Facebook, which I haven't played. And many of us long-time fans will remember The Sims Online, which was a sort of bridge between The Sims and The Sims 2. (I was in the beta testing group for TSO. I logged on exactly once before dropping out of the beta test program. Fifteen minutes playing the "game" was enough to realize that the whole reason I played The Sims was to AVOID talking to real people.)
As with every other press release, the challenge here is to tease out "what you will really be able to do" from "the hyperbolic language that the marketing department uses for its early press releases." Kind of like how none of us were really sure if Barnacle Bay was a vacation world or a live-in town until it was released, because you just couldn't tell from the way they described it.
According to the press release, you and your friends will be able to swap Sims and comment on each other's walls. Intriguing, right?
After carefully scrutinizing the language being used, I am about 75% sure that (unlike what many people are assuming) you will NOT be able to control your Sim when it's in someone else's game.
I'm also basing this on the otherwise-puzzling (and annoying, and obtrusive) system of "uploadable memories" which was bolted on to the Generations expansion pack. I always wondered what that was FOR, since no one cares if I upload my Sim's memories to the Sims 3 website. I'm pretty sure that this was just laying the groundwork for Superstar, and I would bet cash money that when your Sim is in someone else's game, they communicate with you via those uploadable memories.
I suspect this will work a lot like Spore's creature-sharing system. When you create creatures, they get shared out with the Spore universe. They will show up in other people's games, and you occasionally get messages like, "Your race of Flippitygibbets has been wiped out by another player."
I'm going to be really curious to see how this all works, though!
Image copyright EA/Maxis
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