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The Sims 4 – Fans First, that includes you!

We here at Platinum Simmers are a part of the special VIP group. We do not know what this means in practice other that we will somehow be involved.

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Before you scream at me/us, along the lines of ‘why are we not involved!’ if it was up to me we would all live in a happy fluffy bunny world where we all got directly involved and we all got a customized game that we personally will love. But that is very hard to do. They have to set priorities and have a busy work schedule.

This is where I feel we at Platinum Simmers come in, I can assure you, we will ask for your opinion every step of the way that we are allowed to tell you about! We will also tell you everything we can. We do always post long articles about events, to make you feel like you were there and to answer every question you have. It is an honour, responsibility and just plain awesome that we are a part of this. I used the word responsibility too because we want to represent the community the best we can and do not take that lightly.

To us representing the community is much less about our opinions and more about all of our opinions (yours/ours/the neighbour’s down the street/etc). Before any of us go to a The Sims (3) event we read all of twitter/forums/Reddit and make a huge list of questions to the point I had someone at EA comment ‘oh you are always the one with a long list of questions’, awesome reputation to have imo.

We want to have your every question/opinion/everything. However, at this point we do not know if they will ask our opinion on already made features of The Sims 4 and have them only tweaked a bit them to make them better. Or to ask for new features, with The Sims 4 released some time in 2014 already I expect it is the former. Or maybe the features of The Sims 4 are locked and they involve us in another way? We do not know, when we do we will let you know.

Next to that all that, we are Simmers too. We have all played The Sims series for so many hours, we are regular fans of the series but we have taken the opportunity to share our love for this game using a website and social media.

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Then The Sims team seems to be going in a direction of ‘Fans first’ and talk to the press second. Do you have any idea how happy I am about that? I do not talk much in public about things I dislike, but game press is something I am often not impressed with.

Here is why: it appears they do not always play the games they review. I will say that on individual cases this might not be true, but overall I do get that impression. Naturally, game press people ARE gamers, they just do not always play the same games that I do or pay attention to the same details that I do.

  • I have seen game reviews that almost literally copied the Press release and other by EA (in this case) created taglines and called that a review.
  • Amazing games get a low rating because it wasn’t in their personal taste. I know a review is subjective but you still have to discuss every aspect of the game and give people the chance to form their own opinion.
  • Then there are less good and even bad games that get an amazing rating – did they even play the game??

Game press has stopped being the opinion makers they used to be. In the good old days having a website was more difficult than it is now and putting your opinion online was also more difficult than it is now.

Now, with Social Media and blogs/WordPress it is so easy to share your opinion, so by all means do. But the key to an opinion that is heard and actually used: stay polite and constructive. If you do not like something, phrase it in a constructive criticism way. List pros, cons and then conclude why your opinion is beneficial for Maxis to use. I’ve found that always works best and maybe not every opinion gets used, but even 1 in 20 opinions is still 1 more than nothing!

To share your opinion with us, comment below or please tweet at us @platinumsimmers – maybe we will post a guide soon on how to best tweet at us and the Simgurus because if you are not talking to Simgurus yet on twitter, you are missing out.

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I have many wishes and hopes for The Sims 4, but my main wish is that it has the same humour as The Sims to The Sims 3 has. After playing each game in the series for more hours than I will admit to, I can still be surprised by the funny little quirks.

 

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