We're standing at a unique point in history. No community, no game has withstood the test of time like The Sims has. With the recent announcement of The Sims 3 in development, we can be one of the very few gaming communities to proudly boast ten years: A decade of Simming; a decade of creating characters, storylines; a decade of custom content; a decade of rewriting the entire book on the gaming industry. But as we approach this decade landmark, we ask this very question: Is Maxis falling victim to the same fallacies and conclusions other gaming companies have made about their fan base? We definitely want to see The Sims survive past a decade and into another decade, but we realize it's time to do a self-evaluation on this community. Maxis has failed to comprehend and utilize to the fullest extent one of the largest and most loyal communities around, a community based on friendship, comradeship, creation, talent, and fun.
In recent months, Maxis has moved away from serving the community to using the community. They no longer have the interests of the fans, only the coffers that they fill and the taskmasters (Electronic Arts) that demand tribute.
In the early Sims days, we saw an explosion of Sims fan sites popping up everywhere. You name it, it overwhelmed hosts. Many people were popping up everywhere. Every other day a new site appeared. Every other week, a new artist wowed the community with their talent. Maxis, realizing this potential, released and indirectly supported development of custom content in The Sims through TMOG, and skinning kits. Fansites took root and helped the game flourish. This was really self evident under the leadership of Luc Barthelet, former General Manager to Maxis, now Vice-President at EA. Under his leadership we saw an explosion and growth of The Sims. No longer was Maxis a kid studio. It was a force majeure; An act of God; a force to contend with. No other company could duplicate the success of Maxis has had with The Sims.
Its success is most definitely attributed to a few reasons. First being able to rewrite the myth gamers is merely teenagers and men, or single ethnicity but rather a game can attract a vast age group of all cultures, and genders. In fact, The Sims itself reaches an audience broader than anyone could have ever expected. Translated into seventeen different languages and has sold 58+ million units life to date. Second, is its ability to listen to the community and make changes. Thirdly, is its ability to utilize its fan base to promote and encourage growth, and willingness to change the rules and be different.
Early fan base growth was merely done in house to begin with. From the startup of The Sims, we saw evidence Maxis was willing to rewrite the book. Drawing from its SimCity community, Maxoids did not hide behind cubicles and the world of gaming. The Sims had a chat room system on the official site where Maxoids could step into and join in the discussions and mingle with fellow fans. These were opportunities to not merely to ask generic questions about the game or get technical support, but rather an opportunity to simply talk, chat, and build friendships. Even Will Wright himself has spent time within this old chat room walls mingling and exchanging comments with fellow Simmers.
With The Sims 2, we saw an even greater willingness to redefine the community itself. For the first time in The Sims history, the doors were opened to fansites who were then able to go to EA itself and mingle one on one with Maxoids, and not via electronically through bulletin boards, forums or chat rooms. The opening of doors behind the mighty fortress known as EA was lowered so it wasn’t just media who was allowed into The Sims 2, but rather all walks of The Sims, from news, to custom content, to community builders. For the first time in our communities’ history, a vast array of sites from all parts of the world converged in one spot to see The Sims in a way never seen before and forge friendships unlike any other.
But the question now, what is Maxis doing to look ahead to continue to further this growth in the community? In fact, there is some evidence to suggest they have grown too comfortable where they are right now, and more so, have become lost and incoherent in the route and direction they wish to take. Arguably, they have grown complacent and in much respect have even let things start to break down. No longer are brand new ideas, but rather the rehashing of older proven ones, with tweaks that far do not represent the spirit of The Sims. Other concepts have been left by the wayside to be only forgotten.
One aspect of the community has felt the effects of change within Maxis far quicker than any aspect of the community: The Moviemaking community. Now almost a mere memory within some in the community, this was probably one of the fastest growing communities with the launch of The Sims 2, simply because of the ability to record in-game footage. It was simple in nature, but it paved the way to many new doors, vertically expanding the community in a whole new direction never foreseen. This was the doorway to allowing your Average Joe (or Jane) to become a Hollywood director. Anything conceivable, from music videos, to mini-series, the limitations were only limited and bounded by one’s imagination. The explosion of interest in this aspect of the community was continued to be fueled by the growth with additions like BBS areas dedicated to the movie-making community. More so, it became a forerunner in representing the Sims community in many ways, like through YouTube, and to millions of television viewers, through the SimsPlayedBy ad campaign.
But let’s look at it today. The community is on life support. Movie contests and its frenzies of movie creations are now mere memories. Proposed plans for expanding the moviemaking BBS are now on hiatus. The days of this once flourishing community are now growing dim.
With fan site events, there is a diminishing representation of this great community, especially with the movie making community. In an email written by a Maxoid, they wrote, “Since the last fan event in which you attended, we’ve been working to bring in fan leaders around the world. This means that our invitee list is very different for every event because we want to give all of our major fan sites a chance to meet the team and see upcoming products.” That poses a serious question on selecting the representation of fan site leaders. But we’d raise a question on ‘Is this the primary intention and objective these events were designed to do?’ We’ll address that a bit later. If we look at the recent Pets events, serious eyebrow raising could be asked about sites like Simmingworld.com, Varioussimmers.net and a Sims 2 Myspace. Each, in their own way, is an important contribution to the community, but at the time of invitation, one must ask what element each of these sites contributed. Simmingworld.com was (and is) idling as well as Varioussimmers. Can one really classify a Sims 2 Myspace as a fansite? It only proves one can fill in a few forms to generate a group, like Yahoo or Google Groups. While this is indeed a partial list of the total list of sites that attended the Pets event, we can clearly state with confidence that NO movie making fansite was represented in the demographics. Even with future events, the likelihood of an invitation to a movie-making fansite is non-existent (and with a fair degree of certainty).
But is this the true and ultimate purpose of the fan events? What are these events suppose to be doing? Yes they are supposed to be driving and pushing the limits on the community. Yes it is also to promote and create a buzz about the latest product and development. But what about the unspoken aspects of the events, that further grows the community? We would argue the vision of Luc Barthelet; when originally conceived, these events were to create a core group of leaders that would ultimately help further the growth of the Sims community. Now core group does not equate to the big names in the community. It means sites with leaders who have the passion for The Sims, can lead, and represent the community to a world and population unfamiliar with The Sims. This was a group to represent the best interests of the community. A big side effect would be the establishment of friendships normally not possible, either regional, transcontinental, transatlantic, or transpacific in nature. It would be this very group who would assist one another to grow this community further through representing the community such as events like E3. When push comes to shove; will these leaders stand by Maxis? Not many would pay out of their own pocket to fly half way around the world and pay for their stay just to attend E3 or other gaming events. Nor would fansite leaders ban together in an effort to provide transportation to one other in their respective hometowns for various reasons, Sims-related or not. It is these sites that go the extra mile for the community that is truly the leaders Maxis wants representing this community. They are the ones who help each other out. They are the ones who go long distances to meet friends. These are the ones who travel to different parts of the world to represent the Sims Community. These are the ones who meet and greet one another at the airport and assist them to get places. We would love for every site to stand up and say yes, I will stand by Maxis, or Yes, I will help build this community up through some resources I have and can offer, but the reality is many sites here ride the popularity wave and will fall back when it’s over. Yes it’s a mechanism to promote their latest development, but that’s a secondary objective. We believe the primary objective was and is to ensure this community remains healthy.
The future of this community lies in the hands of Maxis. Sadly, these hands are ones that many of us have little faith in. We have seen this sudden chokehold placed on the community, with a sparse amount of news trickling in to fansites. Arguably what is even worst is the amount of silence coming from Maxis. This increasing isolation policy from Maxis has erected a massive barrier between fansites and the community manager with Maxis. It has been the general purpose of a community manager at Maxis to help the community out with the needs and demands of each fansite, and generally trying to help when they can. Nowadays, it’s generally dead silence. The occasional IM doesn’t get responded to. Emails go unanswered. Gone are the days where Maxoids do communicate to you. Granted this has been an ever-growing problem with the last few changes of community managers and with each handing of the torch, the problem appears to become worse.
We stand at a unique point in time. We must make sure these changes occur for the survival of our community. Yes it is a game, but this isn’t just any game. It has broken many of the traditional rules games have set. It’s allowed us to make friends we normally can’t make. It’s time for Maxis to stop sleeping and wake up to help address matters of great concern to this community, like communicating with us, copyright and intellectual property concerns, and most importantly, building each other up in ways no other game could.
We will continue to remain loyal to Maxis. But while our loyalty to Maxis is unlimited, our loyalty to The Sims is not and will continue to diminish if changes are not made. We’re still committed to this community and have no plans of abandoning the community anytime soon and we plan to see this through. We have not past the point of no return.