1. EA Maxis Did Exactly What They Did With SimCity. Zero Effort.
Sims have mobile phones. Which is great! But they barely work. Which is not great! Why can't a Sim call the fire department from their mobile phone? It's undoubtedly true that the vast majority of fire department calls to 999 come from mobile phones. This is usually because the house phone is inside the house... which is on fire, hence the call in the first place! It's little niggles like this, and those detailed earlier in the article that show where EA Maxis' ethos is currently lying. Gone are the days when Will Wright would bring his unique eye for interesting simulation models into gaming, gone are the days where every expansion bought meaningful new mechanics to the game. Now The Sims 4 is twice as shiney and only a quarter as full; funny how the price tag managed to stay the same. The entire game seems to be based around the same spurious business model that lets 'Freemium' games dominate the mobile market. It doesn't matter if a few fans are disappointed, and think the game is poorly designed and built. It doesn't matter because there are some players who will buy the inevitable expansions, at forty bucks a pop, and they'll buy every single turgid expulsion that crawls out of EA's DLC sweatshop. Instead of buying 69p gems to speed up basic mechanics, EA are now trying to make you buy £40 expansions just to add those basic game elements. Really, is anyone surprised? If you've had a different experience with The Sims 4, or if you've had the exact same awful experience, please let us know in the comments section. Let us hear why we're wrong, or what tales of woe have befallen you and how EA are obviously refusing to give you a refund.
