Related Game

The Sims 3 Boxshot
The Sims 3

Game Stats

  • Rank:
    30 of 84,347
    (down by 8)
    PC Rank:
    12 of 12,827
    Highest Rank:
    1 in 2009
    Tracking:
    12,455 Track It»
    Wishlists:
    4,753 Wish It»
  • Users Now Playing:
    2,654
  • Top 5 User Tags:
    1. sims
    2. the sims 3
    3. sims 3
    4. the sims
    5. ea
  • Teen Rating Description

    Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language. Learn more

Full Game Details »Close

Featured Games

GDC 2009: The Sims 3 Updated Hands-On - Role-Playing and Short Attention Spans

In our next go-round with this life-simulator sequel at GDC 2009, we play as a would-be rock star facing his worst nemesis...our own incredibly short attention span.

SAN FRANCISCO--By now, no real introduction is needed for The Sims 3. This highly anticipated life-simulation sequel will offer a much deeper character-development system built around personal traits and life goals that, when fulfilled, grant lifetime wish points that can be used to purchase superhuman powers and fantastical devices. But for our play session during the 2009 Game Developers Conference, we decided to aim nice and low.

Specifically, we chose to create a household with a single character whose traits tended toward boundless creativity and living off the land (and his neighbors), such as the "virtuoso" trait, which makes your sims better able to do well with music and art; the "vegetarian" trait, which makes your sims prefer meatless dishes (and actually makes a different set of "favorite foods" available at character creation); and the "mooch" trait, which gives your sims an additional "social" option to casually beg for money in conversation with the people they talk to. And of course, we chose the lifetime wish for our sim to become a star musician.

Given our plan, we figured that pulling off the dream of the lazy, long-haired musician next door would require serious forethought and planning, as well as a strong visual design to really help set the mood. As we've mentioned in our previous coverage of the game, The Sims 3 has enhanced character-appearance options to let you customize your characters' eye size, shape, and color; hair style and color, standard clothing, formal clothing, swimwear, hats, eyeglasses, jewelry, and tattoos, among other things.

We wanted to create a character that wasn't easy on the eyes: a run-down loser with shabby clothes and an annoying head accessory, like a goofy headband, that would make most self-respecting people want to punch him in the face. Steeling ourselves for the task, we hunkered down with the game's character editor for a good two, maybe three minutes before making an even more gutsy executive decision: to just click the "random sim appearance" button a couple of times until we got a sim that had a hat. We figured that was close enough, and off we went.

Our next step was to save our new sim to a family and create any additional sims for the family, a step that would let us build out a whole household of slackers. We decided against doing this partially because that would've meant that we would have had to do the extra work of customizing additional characters (and potentially having to manage household relationships), but primarily because we were bravely committed to role-playing a single slacker living alone. Once our family of one was saved, we were ready to head out to the neighborhood to jump into a vacant house and start our new virtual life. As we've reported previously, the Sims 3 has only one single but extremely large neighborhood in which to live, with numerous community "lots" and plenty of different houses to choose as a base of operations, ranging from cheap little shacks in the range of 10,000-15,000 simoleans (The Sims series' currency) to grand mansions that cost much more.

The Sims 3 will let you lead a vibrant social life, even if your sims are all bookworms who hang out at the library.

We settled on a smaller, one-story flat for about 12,000, partially because having to furnish a larger, multistory house would mean a bunch of extra work designing the rooms with different layouts, carpeting, wallpaper, and furniture, but mainly because we wanted to have the courage to stick with our initial plan of having a lonely, lazy slacker, whom we were role-playing. Then we remembered that as you prepare to buy and move into a house, there's an option for you to purchase the house already furnished (which costs more simoleans), and we totally chose that. Courageously. Purchasing a furnished house won't necessarily net you the best stuff, but it'll make sure that you have all of the essentials a sim needs to live: a refrigerator, a phone, a shower, a toilet, and a bed.

prev

64 Comments

  • greater_bird

    Posted May 22, 2009 11:03 pm PT

    Not much of a preview, since all the primary gameplay they describe is no different to how The Sims 2 played...

    As for the details they mentioned that are different - I do like the ability to buy pre-furnished houses. The description of doing tasks on community lots as "taken out of the world and can't be sent to do other tasks or meet other people" sounds much more limited than the entirely open-world community I've previously heard described.

  • codykingo

    Posted Apr 19, 2009 10:43 am PT

    This is what I want to hear about, not the gay movie maker.

  • Mimogrede

    Posted Apr 15, 2009 1:01 am PT

    I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS ONEEEE!!!

  • zima_claim

    Posted Apr 13, 2009 7:10 am PT

    what a strange preview. so, are you telling us that basicaly there is almost NOTHING new in the third part of the game? that sucks!

  • angelkadaj

    Posted Apr 4, 2009 3:20 pm PT

    I loved making gay relationships

  • Pabasa

    Posted Apr 2, 2009 10:00 am PT

    Rdkil,

    Your sim would not automatically initiate a sexual activity on another sim unless you've trained him or her to do so on the specified gender. I.e. if you don't make your male sim flirt with another man he won't do so automatically at all. Unless you count hugging.

  • Pabasa

    Posted Apr 2, 2009 9:59 am PT

    Rdkil,

    Your sim would not automatically initiate a sexual activity on another sim unless you've trained him or her to do so on the specified gender. I.e. if you don't make your male sim flirt with another man he won't do so automatically at all. Unless you count hugging.

  • Rdkil

    Posted Mar 31, 2009 2:47 pm PT

    I wonder if they will get rid of the whole "instant gay relationships that Sims and Sims 2 had. As in, if your character was a male and you wanted him to be good (straight) friends with another male, the other male would automatically treat him like a woman and do... things. That was one thing I didn't like about Sims; that homosexual relationships were pretty much forced on you if you wanted two sims of the same gender to be friends -_-

  • music_dreamer

    Posted Mar 31, 2009 11:30 am PT

    For those of you obsessed with graphics. In all honesty, from a professional standpoint, I do believe they are about the same poly count for the characters as in Sims 2, just normal mapped. This would make sense, seeing how it would be ridiculous and possibly a poor business strategy for EA to release a great game like Sims 3 to people who have current systems set up for that of Sims 2. Just some food for thought.

    I am slightly disappointed it didn't become an MMORPG. Oh well.

  • PrezKennedy

    Posted Mar 31, 2009 11:10 am PT

    Looking forward to Sims 3: Unleashed, Makin' Magic, Vacation, Open for Business and remakes of all the other addon packs they did for the Sims 2, and previously, The Sims.

    Milk it until it's dry EA Games, just like you've done for every other fun franchise you've ever owned.

  • mfa1486

    Posted Mar 29, 2009 6:55 pm PT

    wow new option I do not expect to be present i well no't comment and say more word but i well say i love u Ea Games i love u

  • Mini_Buddha

    Posted Mar 29, 2009 3:51 am PT

    Dear everyone,
    It seems that some of you peanuts posting below hadn't realised that this is not meant to be a deep review of the new features of Sims 3, but a fun piece. You people probably haven't even considered that this was meant to be funny - God forbid that someone ever has to describe sarcasm or irony to you.....

    PS. Sims 3 will be hot

  • Mega_Loser

    Posted Mar 28, 2009 9:51 am PT

    true, to the person below.
    Graphics got a big facelift.

  • mrs_meanie0

    Posted Mar 28, 2009 7:06 am PT

    the graphic isn't the same as the sims 2.what's wrong with you guys?

  • UbeR_NooB_24

    Posted Mar 27, 2009 8:35 am PT

    cool beans

  • Tommy_Fantasy

    Posted Mar 27, 2009 6:18 am PT

    i don't mind if the graphic are like the sims 2 , because so that i don't have to change new graphic card for it , the new game system improvement are way more important

  • Sniperwolf_SN

    Posted Mar 26, 2009 7:17 pm PT

    It looks like will be amazing, I think its a big step farword

  • sonicspeedshoes

    Posted Mar 26, 2009 5:28 pm PT

    the grapichs look more pure

  • Vasot

    Posted Mar 26, 2009 3:31 pm PT

    The graphics look exactly like Sims 2...

  • HitachiYasumoto

    Posted Mar 26, 2009 10:17 am PT

    Thanks for the article, but to me, it was not quite a useful or interesting hands-on here guys... I think we would have appreciated some more details... It was like explaining the first 10-15 minutes of a Sims 2 game.