Oh, by the way, that old trick about getting a sim to be your friend by alternating between gossip and chat about 30 times is no more. EA wouldn’t say exactly how, but that has been changed. Now you’re going to have to work a bit more at actually making friends.

What I didn’t get a good look at yet was the way you share items in the game. EA isn’t showing that off yet, but it won’t be some kind of Spore-like, in-game content browser. Part of the reason is, as Bell notes, people don’t want to share literally everything they make in the game with others. So you can pick and choose what you want to share, whether it be your sims, clothes, furniture, and more. And the sharing mechanism will be a special Web page.

Meanwhile, this is the age of Internet video, and you can (like in The Sims 2) record gameplay. That same Web page will also allow you to edit your videos and create mashups that you can share with others or post on video sites such as YouTube. We’ll get more details regarding all of this later on.

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