This information is NOT official and may not be related to TS4. Take information on board with caution.
SimsVIP has posted information about pre-production UI design screenshots for “The Sims 4”. These mock up images were created by Patrick Kelly, who worked at EA until March 2012. You can scroll down to view the images on SimsVIP’s Flickr gallery.
I personally believe that is is an online component from The Sims as it seems so unlike The Sims UI. If this is the case, I am very excited as I enjoyed playing The Sims Online/EA-Land.
A huge thanks to SimsVIP for this info!
Since the release of The Sims 3, rumors of The Sims 4 have been few, but definitely in the air. Now that we are about 4 years into the Sims 3 series, it isn’t all that unreasonable for The Sims Studio to already be deep into the creation of The Sims 4, assuming it does head into production.
Back in August of 2012, I received an anonymous email with a link to EA UI Designer Patrick Kelly’s public website. On his website, a project named “The Sims 4 (Olympus)” was listed.
To give you a bit of background, Patrick Kelly has worked on projects such as The Sims 3 (PC), Spore (PC), SimAnimals (Wii), The Sims 3 (DS), and more. The “on-the-record” work and experience for Patrick Kelly, is only further confirmation that everything listed at his website was legit.
Notice anything about the “Plumbobs” shown in the photo above? It is not your typical glossy/shiny Sims 3 Plumbob. Here’s a closer look at them in a “Mock up” Loading Screen.
You may have seen the “Green Plumbob” pop up in plenty of online Sims 3 events, Sims 3 community day photos (here, here and here), and most recently in The Sims 3 University. SimGuruSarah states that it is a re-textured Sims 3 plumbob, but I believe it is a bit more than that. If you have The Sims 3 University Expansion, you have definitely seen the Blue & Green Plumbob Statue titled “Into the Future”.
(Sidenote: We posted about this recently, suggesting it could be a TS4 Easter Egg).Description reads: This genre-defining sculpture was created by the senior class art students and donated to The Sims University to proudly display. The students involved in creating this sculpture couldn’t divulge their inspiration for this puzzling piece, except that they believe it’s a sign of things to come…
Some might argue that this would be a type of “Easter Egg” for the not yet titled Sims 3 “Future” themed Expansion Pack, but it includes the Blue Plumbob that has only appeared in The Sims 4 Pre Production UI Design screens below. It also has a pretty specific description attached.
The Sims 4 rumor mill started back in April of 2010, when an EA employee accidentally tweeted about working on The Sims 4′s new Sim. The tweet was immediately deleted, but the employee was confirmed to be Cemre Ozkurt who worked on The Sims 3 Pre-Made Sims.
There are currently three (one, two and three) Designers & Producers working on “An Unannounced Sims Title” dating back to 2010. If The Sims 4 heads into production at some point, it is only fact that they are already working on it.
SimGuru’s Shannon & Trev have also shifted to a new team in Maxis that is closely connect to The Sims Studio. Considering that Shannon has been around since the Sims 2 days, it is only expected that she’d be working on the production of the next series.
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If this is real, I will not buy more expansions =d
I think this may be one of the reasons why Simsocial is closing down. Just speculating, but looks like the modern approach to a sim social game to me. I guess they’ll call it Sims 4 instead of Sims Online, or maybe not? But if there’s not a chance to play by yourself then it’s kind of a turn down in my opinion.
Also the graphics, even though still in development, look really like Simsocial to me, that’s why I got that vibe. I don’t know!
Many things can go wrong and we don’t know what to expect so we’ll see. But if it’s an all online game then I’m not as amused even though the interface and all looks quite interesting :/
I think it’s still worth getting the remaining expansions and stuff packs for Sims 3. Although it is limiting in some aspects, takes forever to load, and lags at times — it’s still a great game with tons of stuff to do. I have a theory that this new game will be a “reboot” and just called “The Sims”. It’ll be a cross between Freeplay and Social and will have always online connectivity as a main “feature”.
Let’s face it, the innovation of The Sims series is gone. Will Wright has moved on long ago. They did a decent enough job without him for Sims 3, but what more can be done on Sims 4 that is really worth spending time with? Sequels are supposed to take what made the previous game great and add MORE to it. This has not been happening with games these days as can be seen with “Sims 3”, “SimCity”, and “Civilization 5”. Now it’s about stripping out content, adding different things, and then reselling the stripped out stuff as DLC later.
Well said Starrfoxx, although as a fellow player of Civilization V I would disagree with you about that. The Sims has effectively failed as a creative vision and is now little more than a cash-cow for an uncaring corporate giant. The game play is limited, uninspired and whatever charm it has left feels false thanks to the crime against consumers that is the Sims 3 store. In the older games, that stuff would have been in the EPs, not on some over-priced online marketplace. The Sims should have taken a massive leap forward from the Sims 2 to the Sims 3, but it didn’t. What did we really get? An open town and better graphics? Isn’t really much compared to the sequels of other games.
Some of that UI design looks like it made it into Sims Social. Anyway, it looks a bit inconsistent and doesn’t have any way of getting to the other modes as far as I’m aware.