Reasons Sims 4 is going to suck.

delete: i'm an idiot

Maniacal said:

Early access was born by a few different indie devs who A) needed more funding to make their game, B) wanted to get community involvement and word of mouth going about their game, C) did yes want people beta testing it for them but not really in some evil way.

It exploded after Minecraft used it with massive success and Valve added Early Access to Steam, but companies have released unfinished;/unpolished and/or otherwise unready games for decades and then patched them up after release (hopefully), some companies make this a habit, and that hasn't really changed even with Early Access. Most of the big companies don't do early access anyway, aside from maybe some open beta if you pre-order (but that also pre-dates early access).

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/agree

Early access is just pay-for beta testing, and that shouldn't surprise anyone given how rabid people have been in the last 15 years to be involved in beta testing their most anticipated titles.

Get early access to a game for a discounted price to help beta test it and contribute to its development. That is what it is supposed to be for, it worked very well for Mount&Blade and a number of other titles, even some of the recent ones with too many people buying in under the wrong impressions.

Maniacal said:

Get early access to a game for a discounted price to help beta test it and contribute to its development. That is what it is supposed to be for, it worked very well for Mount&Blade and a number of other titles, even some of the recent ones with too many people buying in under the wrong impressions.

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That's why I think Stardock did the right thing by putting their pre-beta early access at $100. It made people think before buying it, and thus those who did likely realized that it was still in its development and they would get to contribute to its direction more, rather than expecting a finished product from the get-go. And they probably had a lot fewer people buy in then and be disappointed than they would have at $45 or $50.

Although I think Stardock was doing early access precisely for the community feedback with the goal of it resulting in a better game, not to fund the development. A studio doing early access because they don't have the funds for the development (besides that being a questionable business model) would likely try to price it to encourage sales, not to discourage them.

Edit: Didn't realize this was a Sims 4 thread. Anyway, I'm not sure it's going to suck. It'll have a million expansions, no doubt, and I wouldn't buy it now, but some of the core changes like the emotion system sound good. Better than the predecessors... probably depends on individual preference. But I highly doubt it'll be a Sim City 5 style debacle.

I'm not aware of any direct competition. There's town management games like Tropico and Banished, but they don't allow the control over individuals or customization of dwellings like The Sims does. The one indie game I'm aware of that compares itself to The Sims is Kudos, and it does have some similarities in terms of career and free time choices, as well as some dwelling furnishing choices, but it lacks the house-building and multiple-Sim-control aspects, so it's not really a direct competitor. It's likely part of the reason The Sims has done so well over so many iterations - there's really not anything quite like it other than its own previous versions.

I can see the reason for the negativity, though. With The Sims (the original one), I suspect it more or less went as they created the game, perhaps planned one or two expansions like most games, and as they went and kept being able to expand the engine and get really good sales, realized they could add more expansions (many of which actually extended the gameplay as well, not just items) and extend the game's lifespan and profit. Signs like the fact that in the original Sims, you have to install the expansions in order (so if you buy House Party after Vacation, you have to uninstall Vacation to install House Party) point to the plan not being infinite expansions from the start. But after the many-expansion model went so well, each iteration has been designed more and more for that model. And with TS4, it's so obvious what they plan to release expansions for that it's generating backlash.

I'll buy this game ...

When the complete edition with all expansions is <£50.