‘The Sims 4’ DLC: Eco Living Wins Fan Vote But With Caveat, Losing Themes To Still Be Used
Maxis recently asked the help of the Sims community in putting together the next Stuff Pack for The Sims 4. The voting for the theme, which serves as the first phase of the process, has been completed, but not without a hitch.
The Eco Living Stuff Pack got the most votes by The Sims 4 gamers, beating out Arcade, Stuff Home, Dangerous, and Wedding. With the theme now set, The Sims producer Graham Nordone had a few reminders for gamers in regard to what goes in the chosen downloadable content (DLC).
The premise of the winning DLC is simple. The Sims 4 players will get to live an eco-friendly life with the experience primarily implemented on laundry, home technology, and solar energy.
One of the suggestions to come out of The Sims forums for the Stuff Pack is the inclusion of a beekeeper, which Nordone fears may not make it to The Sims 4 DLC, despite it only being in the development phase.
The Sims guru explained in a lengthy post on the forums that the issue stems from the clothing that goes with the character that The Sims 4 players want to add in the DLC.
Nordone said that, unsurprisingly, more people work on The Sims 4 Game Packs than Stuff Packs. The latter are usually made by Maxis developers while the former involves outsourced artists from separate studios.
“It’d likely be difficult to add a Beekeeper to this pack, because presumably you’d also want a beekeeper suit for your Sim to wear when handling the bees. A larger pack could tackle this better – they have access to both internal [Create a Sim] Artists, as well as multiple rounds of outsourced art with our external partners where they could request such an outfit after features had been selected.”
Since Stuff Packs, like the Eco Living DLC for The Sims 4, are developed in “shorter spans of time” than Game Packs, doing what he stated above to be able to add the beekeeper “just isn’t an option for us.”
With that said, gamers should not expect the beekeeper in The Sims 4 Eco Living DLC unless a development director works with production and finds spare time, which they do not appear to have at the moment.
With regard to the four other The Sims 4 Stuff Pack ideas that were not selected, Nordone explained in another blog post on The Sims forums that they will not go down the drain.
While development has stopped for these themes since the focus is now on the winning The Sims 4 DLC, they can still be used at a later time in some way, shape or form.
“Thankfully none of the work that was already done will go to waste. We’ll file these ideas and pieces of art away for the future. Some of them may get made into a Stuff Pack eventually, some could be incorporated into a Game or Expansion pack, and some may simply catch our eye as an object or piece of clothing we want to create someday. I can’t specifically tell you what will become of them, because we ourselves don’t know yet.”
The Sims 4 players will be requested to select the art style to be used on the Eco Living DLC from April 10 to 12. The folks over at Maxis will provide fans with new options, although there is no word yet on how many there will be.
The process of putting this DLC together will last a while, since the next voting session, which will be for the objects and clothing for The Sims 4 Eco Living Stuff Pack, will not occur until May 21. Feature selection is not happening until late June.
Maxis will not leave players empty-handed though. The company has teased a fitness-themed theme Stuff Pack for summer and a family-centric Game Pack for spring. The Sims 4 players are not too thrilled about the former while the latter has many intrigued.
Some say it could be the Seasons DLC they have been waiting for, and the pictures of seasons in the background shown in the first seconds of the teaser offer a clue. Others say that whatever the DLC ends up being, it might finally add pre-teens to The Sims 4 as the character sitting in the back is believed to be one.
[Featured Image by Maxis and Electronic Arts]
