Sims Camp

Welcome to my next Sims 4 article from Sims Camp in Cologne, this time looking at Build and Buy Mode. It's been really hard keeping quiet about all the great things I learned back in August, but release embargoes have made talking about this stuff off limits... Until now!

Aaron Houts, Designer of the Sims 4 Build Tool, gave us a presentation and demo of how Build/Buy works in Sims 4. There is still a lot we don't yet know about and of course, this stuff that we think we do know might change before release. EA are drip feeding us info so expect more soon. Apologies for the image quality, we were restricted to photos of a projected screen so had to make the best I could of them.

The community seems quite split right now on its love/hate relationship with Sims 4, long before they are really able to make a fair judgement, but that's natural, given the limited information available. Let's try and balance that right now by telling you that during this presentation I noted no less than 15 'WOW' moments from the group in my notes, and it pretty much sums up Build Mode.... WOW!

Sims 4 is built on an entirely new game engine which has allowed the developers to rethink the way Build Mode works. They felt that some players felt intimidated by the complexity or sheer workload of creating their own stunning homes in previous games. Many admitted to playing their entire family in a one box house with everything in the same room (sounds familiar). At the same time, EA respected the deep customization that experienced builders wanted. The result was a complete rework of the system to make Build/Buy accessible to all.