Greed Is...
Dec. 30th, 2009 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianI'm actually almost ashamed of my glee at the fact that Sims 3 is currently being installed on Hardison. Not because of the game, or any sort of thinking that I should be too old for this shit - I'm ashamed because this means I have in some small way given money to a bunch of greedy tits who have turned the game into even more of a cash cow for EA than it already was, to the detriment of the game at large.
Okay, the history. We had the Sims. Graphics not so hot to look at now, but pretty good for the time. People who were good at 3D meshes and so forth made some lovely custom content for the games so that they could have the look they wanted for the Sim homes. Then they passed it around online, this custom content. Cue a wonderful custom content creation community spread far and wide, making requests and doing more and more interesting things with game hacks and generally turning the game into exactly what they wanted it to be. Awesome.
Sims 2 came along, and the same thing happened - just with better graphics and a better, more comprehensive base game to work with. There was some wank about people not only putting donation buttons on their custom content sites to help pay for their bandwidth and ISP, but as an actual earner. Which went against the usage agreement set into place by EA Maxis, which basically went along the lines of "No one can make money off this shit but us". Meanwhile, EA put out "Stuff Packs" and the Sims store: basically putting out their own 'custom' content. People tended to make improvements on those things because no one really wanted the cartoony look that most Sims have. They wanted realism, and when they weren't given realism, they made realism. And the community spirit and general artistic endeavour of the Sims 2 custom content creators was more or less of the awesome, wank notwithstanding. I mean, you've got to have wank; it's The Internet.
Then came Sims 3. First off, they made everything customisable ... which isn't as helpful as you'd think. Sure, changing the colours and patterns and so forth of all the little bits and pieces of clothes and furniture and what have you is pretty nifty, but the fact remains that you're stuck with a certain number of designs for said furniture and clothing, and usually said design is fairly ugly. Plus customising all the colours is fiddly and annoying, particularly if you don't want to just change one thing. But of course, this is the sort of situation that custom content used to solve. You didn't like the cut of that skirt or the style of any of the hair? You poked around on websites until you found something that suited and then you downloaded it. Simple, no?
Except you can't do that anymore. See, because of the ability to customise everything's colour in Sims 3, it has to be designed not only in mesh tools and so forth, but in a special sort of programme. And who are the only people who have access to those? The EA team responsible for Sims 3. They did get a design team together with various of the BNFs in the Sims 2 custom content creation circuit, but those were the ones who got caught up in a serious brouhaha of untrustworthiness - something about using Paypal details of donators for dodgy purposes, I don't really remember. I mean, I never went to that site because of its poor reputation. In any case, there are limits to what one can do with custom content at the moment, and it's not in the hands of the populace the way it used to be.
But of course, you can get other content. I mean, you can go to the Sims 3 shop on the EA site and ... oh yeah. Apparently they kicked off the Sims 2 shop specifically to see if they could make money out of it, and then all but entirely closed off the avenues for amateur custom content creation so that they could be sure of making money off it. So if you want some halfway decent hairstyles or clothes, just ... go pay EA some more money. But I thought at first that perhaps that wouldn't be so bad. I mean, as replacements for Stuff Packs go, it's a pretty good use of the 'buy online' model and...
Wait. Except they're selling Stuff Pack discs too. So to get the full complement of Sims 3 content, we not only have to buy the stuff off the Sims 3 store, but we also have to buy stuff packs? I've said it before and I'll say it again - I am sick of being treated like a money-stuffed pinata.
However, annoyed as I am, I still plan to enjoy Sims 3 and the World Adventures expansion pack. If nothing else, it's still ... reasonable for set design, if not as comprehensive as Sims 2 used to be. You know, because of the awesome custom content. Which Sims 3 won't let me have. As for the EA extra content (I can hardly call it 'custom' at this point) ... well, I'll work something out.
Okay, the history. We had the Sims. Graphics not so hot to look at now, but pretty good for the time. People who were good at 3D meshes and so forth made some lovely custom content for the games so that they could have the look they wanted for the Sim homes. Then they passed it around online, this custom content. Cue a wonderful custom content creation community spread far and wide, making requests and doing more and more interesting things with game hacks and generally turning the game into exactly what they wanted it to be. Awesome.
Sims 2 came along, and the same thing happened - just with better graphics and a better, more comprehensive base game to work with. There was some wank about people not only putting donation buttons on their custom content sites to help pay for their bandwidth and ISP, but as an actual earner. Which went against the usage agreement set into place by EA Maxis, which basically went along the lines of "No one can make money off this shit but us". Meanwhile, EA put out "Stuff Packs" and the Sims store: basically putting out their own 'custom' content. People tended to make improvements on those things because no one really wanted the cartoony look that most Sims have. They wanted realism, and when they weren't given realism, they made realism. And the community spirit and general artistic endeavour of the Sims 2 custom content creators was more or less of the awesome, wank notwithstanding. I mean, you've got to have wank; it's The Internet.
Then came Sims 3. First off, they made everything customisable ... which isn't as helpful as you'd think. Sure, changing the colours and patterns and so forth of all the little bits and pieces of clothes and furniture and what have you is pretty nifty, but the fact remains that you're stuck with a certain number of designs for said furniture and clothing, and usually said design is fairly ugly. Plus customising all the colours is fiddly and annoying, particularly if you don't want to just change one thing. But of course, this is the sort of situation that custom content used to solve. You didn't like the cut of that skirt or the style of any of the hair? You poked around on websites until you found something that suited and then you downloaded it. Simple, no?
Except you can't do that anymore. See, because of the ability to customise everything's colour in Sims 3, it has to be designed not only in mesh tools and so forth, but in a special sort of programme. And who are the only people who have access to those? The EA team responsible for Sims 3. They did get a design team together with various of the BNFs in the Sims 2 custom content creation circuit, but those were the ones who got caught up in a serious brouhaha of untrustworthiness - something about using Paypal details of donators for dodgy purposes, I don't really remember. I mean, I never went to that site because of its poor reputation. In any case, there are limits to what one can do with custom content at the moment, and it's not in the hands of the populace the way it used to be.
But of course, you can get other content. I mean, you can go to the Sims 3 shop on the EA site and ... oh yeah. Apparently they kicked off the Sims 2 shop specifically to see if they could make money out of it, and then all but entirely closed off the avenues for amateur custom content creation so that they could be sure of making money off it. So if you want some halfway decent hairstyles or clothes, just ... go pay EA some more money. But I thought at first that perhaps that wouldn't be so bad. I mean, as replacements for Stuff Packs go, it's a pretty good use of the 'buy online' model and...
Wait. Except they're selling Stuff Pack discs too. So to get the full complement of Sims 3 content, we not only have to buy the stuff off the Sims 3 store, but we also have to buy stuff packs? I've said it before and I'll say it again - I am sick of being treated like a money-stuffed pinata.
However, annoyed as I am, I still plan to enjoy Sims 3 and the World Adventures expansion pack. If nothing else, it's still ... reasonable for set design, if not as comprehensive as Sims 2 used to be. You know, because of the awesome custom content. Which Sims 3 won't let me have. As for the EA extra content (I can hardly call it 'custom' at this point) ... well, I'll work something out.