I too would love to see an EP that allowed for more "Historic" stuff. That was the beauty of "Makin' Magic" and "Unleashed" for me because it added elements that allowed us to build a Hogworts or a castle or whatever. And they could farm and make jam and wine and butter. There were oldfahioned stoves and toilets that looked like something from and outhouse. It wouldn't have to be copywrite infringment. Just maybe call it, "Sims 2 Timewarp" or something like that.
Is anyone like me where i have a very BAD habbit of playing only one family and making them REALLY intresting? Instead of getting ALL my family's to grow?
I play the Sims, and Harry Potter's okay, I've read the books. But a Harry Potter-themed EP would be beyond awful. It would ba*dise both of them to the point of unbearableness.
EA already produces the Harry Potter games, but they are not for the PC. I suspect that the console games give the Harry Potter people a bit more control over the copyright stuff than having it as a PC game. But there are already loads of "copyright infringement" stuff going on. All you have to do is look at some of the fansites to find tons of Disney and Harry Potter wallpapers, Xmen and Star Trek clothes, etc. etc. etc. It would be like trying to hold back the sea with a single bucket and nothing more. As to the TS2U, I may not be enamored of putting my Sims into University, but I always look at the EPs for what else they have. In the case of TS2U, coffee house ability (which I wish was full restaurent, but I suspect that will be another EP), dorm ability (which I'm hoping will be useful for apartments as well), more careers, the pool table (which I've sorely missed) and many more objects and building materials. (And I suspect that I'll be putting my Sims through college anyway. After all, I didn't believe that I would enjoy the lifestyles, but they've been a tremendous amount of fun for me.)
Yeah hehe I have a problem sticking to my *main* family - so much so that i've had sons die before their parents (of natural causes) - I have one family that provided a son for me to use, the son had a daugther, who is now older than her grandparents (only by 2/3 days but still!). I really dislike the idea of themed add-on packs, I wouldn't buy them. Anything that defers from reality is off putting - from cyborg sims to celeb sims, talking magic mirrors and skill quadrupling cyrstal balls, its all offputting to me. University is an excellent idea and much more appealing to me than Harry potter. None of this is meant to be-little your idea, I know they would sell like crazy and lots of fans would enjoy them - just look at the sims 1 expansions. But for me the more realistic the game is the more engrossed I get - when a shy sim gets scared off by a man eating attractive female theres nothing that makes me laugh more- or my kid breaking the shower, me selecting mom to come fix it only to see the kid splashing around laughing and smiling.
I hope that they do put in more historic things. I miss the castle themed objects from TS1. This time around they added a lot of pirate stuff, oriental stuff and "Merokkan" stuff, but I hope they realize that the people who like the middle ages and renaissance are still out there and going strong, as well as the people doing Roman, etc. But then, I've already seen tons of custom content which gives us a lot of that (including things that they were never able to do with TS1.)
To generalise, maybe what we're advocateing is simply a move away from the Sims as dominated by western, and specifically American, culture. Obviously we have the 'oriental' and 'moroccan' etc from a very western-centric view of things, but even this ba*disation of other cultures is better than pure America, unadulterated by even pseudo-'other cultural' influences. And this move can be in time as well as space, incorporating Kristal and Kat's calls for historic-themed EPs.
Historic-themed packs would be just fine. An ancient Greek and/or Roman set would be cool. I'd even go for a medieval-style set, but putting a specific brand on those packs would be a tad off-putting. I like Harry Potter and all, but I just think it would spoil my vision of the books to have him grow up and marry Hermione and/or Ginny. Somehow, the characters are timeless, and the Sims would mess with that. I have a hunch we'll see quite a few of the more successful objects making their returns in future expansion packs for TS2, and I'll be flaming angry if Maxis never includes pets again.
... oooh a Harry Potter EP ... I was just reading about how Ms Rowling is getting ready to sue the US Army for copyright infringement ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4243145.stm
I really like the idea of going for several generations. It's why I wish there were community cemetaries. I don't like having the tombstones on the "family plot" (as that's not the way I was raised) and I don't like the ghosts. But I'd like it if my family could go to a community lot for a "remembrance day" type of thing. (We used to have big family get togethers when I was little which included a picnic at grandma and grandpa's gravesite. I missed it when they stopped having those, but then it started to get rather large like a family reunion, so it probably was no longer feasible. But it always made me feel like I got to include G&G in our lives that way, so that we were less likely to forget them.) I like the idea of the family portrait gallery too. I was so sad when I had to move my family out of their house full of paintings of the kiddies at various ages (because of the slomo bug that resisted all other fixes but eviction). At this point I have too many families to get to the multigeneration point very quickly. But I anticipate that this project will be ongoing for quite some time. I will probably only be playing this one neighborhood. My first neighborhood was sort of my "tutorial" one and I'm not fond of the way I had been playing them. And the only other one I have is the one I use for experiments (like seeing how a Maxis made house plays before I put it in my regular neighborhood or trying out beta objects). (I have several others, but they were just made to see how TS2 and SC4 meshed, so that if we get a neighborhood exchange I have some in readiness.)
I'm not sure that I'd want an EP specifically themed with historic elements. I feel that it would be too specific and would lose people who don't see how they would get use out of the things. I'm just hoping that they continue to add sub-themed items in all the EPs (like the pirate stuff in TS2). I think that is what my main objection would be in a Harry Potter themed EP as well. I enjoyed Makin' Magic, but would rather it had been themed for the fun farm stuff with the magic on the side, rather than the magic being the main theme and the farm stuff on the side. (And I know people avoided it because they thought it was too much influenced by Harry Potter, even though it had takeoffs from so many sources that it was very generic IMHO.)
According to a SnootySims thing, there will be medieval furniture&architecture styles with the University EP.
MEDIVAL TOO?! awsome!!! Don'r complain people of sims forum! At least we have sims 2 to be thanken for! LOL
Okay, to clarify: ( and not to pick a fight, really ) I'm not a hardcore Harry Potter fan. It's just that I've been thinking for a while about why Warner Bros/JK Rowling just don't see the (additional) franchise potential of combining Sims and Harry Potter. The add-ons alone would make it worth the time and effort, imho. Yeah, I miss stuff like the pool table, going downtown to eat at a restaurant instead of having to bbq your own stuff, and others, too. ...but I miss a diversity among what is originally offered in Sims2 even more. I bought the game, took one look at the wallpaper/flooring choices, and literally groaned in disappointment. Sims1 had more to offer in terms of items you could combine to make a house look tasteful. Yes, I am demanding. I don't deny that. And the day they finally brought out homecrafter was the day I sat down to make fantasy-themed or just plain normal-looking wallpaper. Have you ever been in a room with red walls? It's no wonder the Sims are neurotic - so you'd be! ( I had a point to this rant, really. Apologies. ) I'm not asking for expansion packs which exactly are Harry Potter-themed. Like I said, it just made me wonder why, if Maxis already does the HP game, they didn't go one step further and include items of something that has a large fanbase, in other words, a fanbase which for the most part has a lot of money power behind it. YMMV, of course. And apologies ( again ) for going off-topic.
Actually, I agree. I tried a while ago to get some interest from some top design houses but my emails went unanswered ... :( Copter reported that Disney, at least, spotted the benefit of plopping its registered designs and copyright material onto Sim merchandise http://forums.worldsims.org/showthread.php?t=3812&highlight=disney There must be many design franchises that could offer sims gamers a few crumbs from HP, Tolkein, Star Wars etc to fashion names like DKNY, Armani, Gap, Timberland etc. ... and think what great adverstising coup it would be global home furnishing brands such as Ikea if they were to offer some of their popular items as Sims2Pack downloads!
Speaking entirely as someone who has always found the "brand-of-the-hour" fads a bit ridiculous, I sort of grit my teeth whenever I go to the movies and the hero or heroine of the film promonently chugs a pepsi or a dp or a coke just before heading of to pick up the plot line. The idea of adding brand recognition to the Sims is something I would be wary of. Good grief! Think about the potential for product placement. Somehow, I have enough trouble with the need to "keep up with the Joneses" in reality without now needing to buy EPs in order for my Sim Joneses to keep up with everyone elses' Sim Jonses. My worry would be that companies would be more interested in having Maxis buy the rights to use brand names from them rather than buying space for their brand names to appear in Maxis games. Were this to happen, the cost of EPs would either go up or their content would most likely go down since Maxis would have to shell out money to feature a brand. Of course, this is a purely philosophical viewpoint. If I buy any future EPs it will be because they add interesting content to my game, not because they add Armani clothes, Coca-cola, and/or brand-themed stuff. If they release an EP with pets and big brand name items, you can bet my money went to buy the pets with the brand names becoming incidentals.
I'm not fond of the "real life" things when they get put into the game. I'm just not into "brand names". I like things that are pretty, but not the in-your-face advertising (such as the brand name showing in a movie.) I too find it distracting. In TS1 I really disliked the real celebrities that were put in the game and wished that they could be removed. I, too, would rather they stuck to generic people and items instead. (And certainly don't want them to have to buy rights to stuff like this.)
Well speaking as someone whose kitchen store cupboards are filled only with unbranded products and whose closets and shelves are lightly packed with clothing that is in no sense up to the minute fashion ... I buy "labels" only when I see a good item in a charity store With that in mind ... I have another perspective. I have been struggling -- and mostly failing -- to get to grips with object recoloring and skinning and likewise, with clothing I have yet to progress beyond recoloring ... all my attempts at bumb maps have been pants (which would have been a positive if I wasn't using the word pants as a colloquial synonym for terrible ) Anyway I have a vested interest in seeing more and better designed stuff for download. I would like to see more top designers' websites carrying (free to download) sim versions of their latest styles. The websites have the staff and the expertise and the pay-off for the designers is obvious: very cheap PR/promotion, little or no extra risk of design piracy. The pay-ff for we gamers is obvious. Quality designs. Even more valuable though would be for the major furniture conglomerates (eg Ikea) to start offering free sim versions of some of their stuff. I really dread some of the player made object collections ....FLASHBACK ... Some years ago I had a job involving custom made bedroom furniture. This entailed a visit to client's homes to measure up. The fashion was for patterned surface treatments ... but some of the homes were a nightmare. 2 patterns of wallpaper per wall divided by a patterned horizontal strip ... one of the patterns matched the drapes, another matched the cushions and the carpet looked as though ... aw shoot ... it was awful. It all reminded me of a Star Trek Lampoon I wrote back in my youth where Scotty got to be captain and decorated Kirk's cabin in tartan, walls, floor, ceiling, all furniture ... but it wasn't enough! He installed a fiendish laser system that turned the very air into a three dimensional fog of plaid! ... I get this same feeling, too often, looking at custom objects. Where Maxis went out of their way to see that nothing matches anything else, player made objects often fall into the trap of matching so well it's hard to see where one finishes and the next begins ... OK rant over. It is a matter of perspective and opinion. One man's meat and poison and all that .... In any event I suspect that few players actually uses all elements of a collection together ... even though they are so often displayed together (which I suppose is what I am trying to say is the thing that puts me off ... ). Anyway for those who're still with me ... ... I cannot imagine, nor even think of a rational reason, why Maxis would need to pay to use a registered trademark in its game. It's advertising people! The trademark owner has to pay! Remember the Macdonald's burger stand in Hot Date? I bet McD paid for that, not t'other way around!
Odd as it sounds, companies make others pay to advertise their wares. In part it's a way of controlling their copyright on the images. In other words, if you haven't paid (or at least got a contract from the company), you can't use their images. That's because loss of their copyright is far more expensive than the free (without specific permission, that is, as opposed to tacit) advertising would generate.
Fair enough, Kat. However I hope that you will forgive me for continuing to believe my own position; I cannot prove it, though I do not think I can be proved wrong wrong either.
