The Sims 4 needs to get stripped to the studs if it's going to be the 'foundation' for another decade of DLCs
Last week EA finally set the record straight on The Sims 5: There is no Sims 5. There's just The Sims 4—forever. EA plans for The Sims 4 to be the "foundation of our future growth strategy," but this game needs a serious overhaul before it can be the foundation for anything.
The multiplayer Sims game currently in development under the name Project Rene is still in the works, and EA plans for it to live beside The Sims 4. They'll share creator tools, a gallery, a marketplace, and some kind of social network. Instead of winding down The Sims 4 and rolling out The Sims 5, EA says it's "disrupting the sequel model" by continuing to invest in the current game with years of more DLCs and updates.
The sentiment in The Sims fan spaces so far is mixed, as ever. Some are disappointed that we're not getting a built-from-scratch Sims sequel, but there's also a contingent of folks who share my feelings that actually maybe it is nice that they aren't going to depreciate the game I spent all this money buying DLC for, replace it with a barebones Sims 5, and sell me all those same themed DLCs over again for another 10 years. But if we're taking the "Love It Or List It" approach to Sims games, EA is going to have to do some serious construction work to make Sims 4 habitable.
The Sims 4 just turned 10 years old and as my fellow Sims player Mollie Taylor observed, it's really showing its age. Not only are there lots of lingering simulation bugs in the base game and the years of old DLCs, each new expansion adds another steaming heap to the pile. Animation bugs abound. Sims get confused by basic tasks, cancel entire queues of actions, and are frazzled by pathfinding.
EA certainly knows this. Only a few months ago it announced that it had "assembled a team to invest in the core game experience." We're meant to expect those big laundry lists of bug fixes every couple months. I was pleasantly surprised that EA would spend time shoring up the existing game while the DLC gears are forever turning. Though now that we know its plans to give The Sims 4 eternal life, I see why it was considered worth the effort.
EA entertainment & technology president Laura Miele also said last week that the developers "will be updating the core technology foundation for the product." I can only hope that's not an overstatement because I can't imagine an 'every few months' delivery of patch notes from that strike team being enough to make The Sims 4 a load-bearing pillar for another decade.
Former game director of the now-canceled Sims competitor Life By You, Rod Humble, told us earlier this year that creating a life sim requires "the most complex behavioral AI systems ever written," and I thoroughly believe it. The Sims 4 is a bog of bugs specifically because it's such a dense simulation covering a broad swathe of life experiences.
If The Sims 4 is going to last another decade, EA really will need to take this thing down to the studs. I'm reminded of Runescape moving to a new engine or Minecraft for Windows versus the Java version. Even if EA doesn't want to build a whole new Sims game to replace The Sims 4, it's going to have to effectively build a whole new game to replace The Sims 4.