alicubi journal :: s.m. lust

I think your best work is the back-alley stuff: The barbed wire, boarded-up windows, grimy bricks, graffiti and such things you do beautifully. I'd like to know why you think that having a more unsavory environment for your Sims to inhabit makes the game more fun. It certainly does for me.

When you look at the general taste of creators in the Sims community, you'll see "beautiful" creations--not so much ordinary, out-of-shape, "ugly" Sims. Same goes for objects. I don't like shiny and new all the time. I like to make some exciting dark alleys, motels, etc. I'm obsessed by industrial environments. I get turned on by the sight of a certain rusty metal texture. Back in the day, in Sim City, I made my industrial zones as big and scary-looking as possible. Games such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil inspired me a lot. These artists share the same passion for this "beauty."

Okay, I have this travel-brochure image of Amsterdam in my mind. You know, all tulips and old dormered rowhouses and quaint little marijuana establishments and a charming red-light district. Is there a grim industrial side of town, or do you like the industrial aesthetic so much because it's exotic to you?

Yes, I love the red light district. But the docks and industry towns surrounding Amsterdam are of astonishing beauty. Here are some photos.

Well, there you have it, folks. You probably won't see those views in the Fodor's guide to Holland. Now, tell me about your collaboration with the 7 Deadly Sims and 8th Deadly Sim people--Claw et al. How did you hook up with them?

I was working for The Sims Resource at the time, and I wasn't satisfied with how they presented the creations. I always was a great admirer of 7DS and Claw, many people said, why don't you work for them? Especially since my name would fit the place. So I mailed Claw asking if he wanted me as an artist, and he said, yes, he did. I feel very honored to be part of a team with such great artists. 8DS is the next generation of what 7DS was in the beginning.

I've noticed that some of the things 7DS and 8DS have made have been picked up by Maxis and included in game expansion packs. What's the relationship with Maxis? Did they pay for rights?

Sensitive subject. Maxis is seriously ignoring the community too much, meaning they don't support custom creation. Nothing "3rd party" gets any help or support. They do have a few programs released, but compared to the programs made by programmers from the community, they're really lame. The community seriously needs more support in custom creation by EA/Maxis but as you could guess, it's all about the money.

But they forget they have the community to thank for making the most successful game in computer history. They don't seem to care. Instead, Maxis takes some skins and puts them in their game without any credits or thank-you messages (at least not to my knowledge). And they come up with the most insulting expansion pack ever created: The Sims Deluxe. This expansion pack is a package of the original game and the first expansion pack, Livin' Large. With this, they included fewer new things than they promised, and an editing program for making custom skins, which runs too slow on general computers to get any fun out of it.

It's the most disappointing rip-off. I've never seen it so transparently done before. Maxis wasn't this dollar-thirsty before they joined EA. One could even say the "passion" we used to know from Maxis is gone.

So you see, I'm pretty pissed off about this, because there is one extra-sneaky strategy EA/Maxis put into it. If I should own Deluxe and clone (an option in The Sims Transmogrifier, a program we use to edit a copied base of an existing Maxis object and edit graphics and coding after that) objects that where also available in the original version or Livin' Large to edit it to a new object, it wouldn't work for people with only Livin' Large and the original installed. There is new coding in the "Deluxified" content. So people would have to buy Deluxe to play with the object. I think it's meant to make some sort of chain reaction in the community--to start a "consumer virus," so everyone would need that package to play with their friends' custom-made downloads. It's just insulting is what it is.

It's getting worse each time. Maxis is changing codes and internal stuff around inside their games which makes it harder for us to make real new content, and that takes the fun away more and more. So, next time you see Will Wright speak about The Sims and its community in an almost guru-type way, keep in mind that behind the face are marketing agents thinking of the sneakiest and cheapest ways to empty their fans' pockets.

EA/Maxis is signing multimillion-dollar advertising deals with Pepsi, AOL, McDonalds, and Intel for the upcoming Sims Online, but you'll have to pay each month to use the game online. The excuse is that it will cost money to maintain the servers that support the online gaming experience. Will Wright claimed that if it were free to play online, they would go bankrupt within a short period. Bullshit.

We'll see how much they spoil it for us. At least we have fun now, and I hope it stays like that.

Well, most online games charge a monthly server fee. The Dark Age of Camelot game is played a lot in my home, and we pay a monthly fee for that. I don't see how it should be different for The Sims Online. Bandwidth is expensive, is it not? Nevertheless, that Deluxe thingamajig sounds not so good, as you say.

Yeah, bandwidth can be expensive. But I was a big fan, not too long ago, of Delta Force, a 3D shoot-em-up game. It was free to play online, and 3D takes a whole lot more server power than a game like The Sims. That, and the company would not go bankrupt if they didn't charge for online play, considering that it will be supported by these multimillion-dollar deals.

Maxis is giving their own country more support than any other. For instance, the contests are only for USA citizens. Translated Sims.com sites are gone, as they refused to take care of these sites (or I missed something, but I don't see translations anymore). They made extra objects for AOL and Pepsi. This would only be known to people in the USA. I'm glad I can understand the English language, as I wouldn't know this otherwise.

Yep, that's the American way. My frustration with Maxis is the long lag time between new releases on the PC and their release on the Mac. In general, there is very little Mac support from players making custom things, too. Would you guys consider making 8DS and 7DS more Mac-friendly?

Claw just started on a more Mac-friendly approach. There's a Mac user taking care of conversions, and she's a moderator at the new Mac sub-forum in the 8DS forum.