Fans of EA’s popular life-simulation game, The Sims , are very familiar with expansion packs. So it should come as no surprise that EA Games is already thinking about the first expansion pack for the latest game in the franchise, The Sims 4 . What is surprising is how EA is doing research and development for the first expansion pack.
The Sims 4 players recently received a survey asking in-depth questions about possible expansion packs .
The survey is the latest in a series of moves designed to let EA tell fans of The Sims franchise that they hear their sometimes heated requests, and are trying to make the game better. The studio burned some of the goodwill longtime fans had when players discovered that The Sims 4 was missing much of the initial content it’s predecessors had. In fact, The Sims 4 had the least amount of initial content offered of the entire The Sims franchise. The first was a free content update that added ghosts and Star Wars outfits just in time for Halloween and in celebration of EA’s new business relationship with Disney.
The producer of The Sims 4 , Ray Vaughn, who has been with The Sims franchise since The Sims 2 , spoke to International Business Times .
“We’re already listening to fans and I want to encourage them to keep telling us things, keep yelling at us online. We love that. Not just from a business perspective; I’m a video game developer and I want to make the most fun game possible. Keep up what you’re saying and tell us what you want.”
Vaughn also promised that the much-desired swimming pools will be added back in an upcoming The Sims 4 content update, and the update will be free.
First on the survey list is a careers expansion pack. Did you feel limited by the choice of occupations available to your sim self in The Sims 4 ? Are you desperate to have an official architect career for your Ted Mosby sim? Or maybe you want a Downton Abbey inspired game, and need your sims to have maid careers. Or perhaps you loved The Sims 3 Showtime and want your sim to have a career as a singer. All of those would be possible with a hypothetical careers expansion pack.
Or maybe you enjoyed the celebrity component of The Sims 3 so much you’d like an entire expansion pack designed around fame and fortune?
Other potential expansion packs would let you control the entire neighborhood, own and operate an art gallery, move your sim into an urban environment, build your own Frankenstein monster, or send your sim to get acupuncture.
It’s important to remember that this is just a survey. The Sims 4 may eventually receive all of these game updates, or none of them. Unfortunately for Mac users, while The Sims 4 developers say they are working on a version for Mac products, no release date has been set.
For those who are curious, screenshots of the survey can be viewed at Sims VIP .