EA announces The Sims 3 Generations

Your lovable little virtual torture victims are getting a new expansion pack this spring, EA announced today. The Sims 3 Generations brings new activities for every stage of your Sims' lives.

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Your lovable little virtual torture victims are getting a new expansion pack this spring, EA announced today. The Sims 3 Generations brings new activities for every stage of your Sims' lives.

Your Sim will start out as a child, where he can have an imaginary friend (who can be made real), take dance classes, and hang out in his tree house. Teenage years consist of pranks, proms, and parties. If you're more the teen nerd type, you can have him play with a chemistry set, but misuse will make him a dead teen Sim statistic. If he survives, the adult Sims can plan bachelor and bachelorette parties, throw large-scale weddings, and change their style when they hit a mid-life crisis.

EA didn't mention a price or release date for the expansion, but previous expansions have hit between $30-40 MSRP. Unlike the recent The Sims 3 Medieval, this is an expansion pack, not a standalone game, so you'll need the original The Sims 3 to get up to the wacky shenanigans.

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From The Chatty
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    April 5, 2011 8:45 AM

    Comment on EA announces The Sims 3 Generations, by Steve Watts.

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      April 5, 2011 8:51 AM

      Summary: Your lovable little virtual torture victims are getting a new expansion pack this spring, EA announced today. The Sims 3 Generations brings new activities for every stage of your Sims' lives.

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      April 5, 2011 9:22 AM

      Weird they would announce this so soon after Sims: Medival

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        April 5, 2011 9:47 AM

        Except not weird because that's how they've always done it!

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          April 5, 2011 9:50 AM

          Also, this is a true expansion for The Sims 3, so it's really the next in the series after Late Night. Medieval was a departure from the normal expansion pack model and didn't really do much for people (like me) who simply want more features in their Sims 3 game.

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            April 5, 2011 9:59 AM

            Yeah I was thinking they'd move new content to Medieval and move away from Sims 3.

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            April 5, 2011 10:31 AM

            It would do more for me if there was any way at all to try it out without shelling out $50 first. It sure looked like the sort of thing I'd enjoy...but would it kill them to make a demo?

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      April 5, 2011 10:01 AM

      Comment on EA not announcing Sim City 5, by FuckingIdiots

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        April 5, 2011 10:02 AM

        There are other excellent city builder games, like Dawn of Discovery

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          April 5, 2011 10:08 AM

          That is not Sim City, so I don't care

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            April 5, 2011 10:10 AM

            SimCity 5 wouldn't be SimCity either; it would be SimCity 5? Just rename the Dawn of Discovery executable to SimCity 5 if all you want is for the game to be named something different.

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          April 5, 2011 12:06 PM

          DoD is OK, but it's not the same genre as SimCity. DoD isn't really "city-building", I want to make a subway and put down subway stops :P

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        April 5, 2011 10:11 AM

        I don't think EA could do justice to a Sim City games these days. They would probably remove all the simulation, dlc building types, and have fire fighter mini games.

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          April 5, 2011 10:25 AM

          Sadly you're probably right. I would love for them to prove me wrong. No other city builder has really come close to SC4 so far. DoD, Cities XL, etc

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          April 5, 2011 12:08 PM

          Yea, it's a shame, I don't think anyone would do it justice. They'd make it casual and pretty to sell more. I'd be happy with SC4 graphics if it had improvements on the existing city-building engine. Stuff like NAM and RTMT helps, but it's not quite the same.

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          April 5, 2011 3:55 PM

          Yah it's a shame that we will probably never see a proper SimCity sequal. :(

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      April 5, 2011 10:35 AM

      I don't like my Sims getting older; it makes me sad. I always disable aging.

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        April 5, 2011 11:18 AM

        Man I can't imagine that. It would ruin the entire game. There's no challenge if there's no aging. You're changing the game in to a dollhouse :(

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          April 5, 2011 11:48 AM

          you are talking about electroly here...

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          April 5, 2011 12:37 PM

          I don't understand. Does aging make the game harder? I've never played with aging enabled.

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            April 5, 2011 2:25 PM

            This is mindboggling. How could you possibly not understand that turning on god mode makes the game easier?

            Of course it's harder with aging enabled! If you want to never die or never age up, it's a LOT tougher, because harvesting the life plants that give you immortality is pretty time consuming. Doing that while still keeping your Sims happy or successful or whatever it is your personal goal is can be pretty tough.

            Also, aging means you don't have unlimited time to do everything. If you want your Sims to accomplish X (reach the top of a career, have 6 kids, or whatever the hell you want that Sim to do) you actually have to plan and play well to accomplish it. Depending on the scope of the goal it can be quite challenging to do everything you want your Sim to do in his life before he dies.

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              April 5, 2011 4:39 PM

              i don't even know if you're serious about the life plant thing or not. i'm not a good sims player :( i just want to hang out with my sim. the game is pretty stressful even without the lifetime time limit

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                April 5, 2011 4:45 PM

                Of course I'm serious. What part of my post did you find ambiguous?

                As I say in my post below, I don't think your way of playing is wrong; it's just so foreign to me and unenjoyable it's somewhat hard for me to understand.

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                  April 5, 2011 4:46 PM

                  I mean I've never heard of the life plants, since I always play with aging turned off. I wasn't sure if that was a real thing or not. I'm very much a noob Sims player.

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                    April 5, 2011 4:47 PM

                    and actually now that i know you can earn immortality in-game, i'm much more inclined to enable aging. i thought it was an inexorable march towards death.

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                      April 5, 2011 4:49 PM

                      It's awesome, but I will admit that it can be stressful!

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                    April 5, 2011 4:48 PM

                    Ohhh! Yeah, there are life plants that you can get in the game, and eating them rewinds your sim's life clock by 1 days. So as long as you can grow and harvest a steady supply of them, you can keep your sim alive (or at whatever age you want) forever.

                    The Sims 2 had the same with except it was an aspiration reward. It was a lot easier in The Sims 2.

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                      April 5, 2011 11:33 PM

                      only a day? i thought it was longer than that.

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                        April 6, 2011 12:18 AM

                        That's if you eat them raw. If you make Ambrosia it resets the entire bar for that aging period. If you eat it too close to an age up though it gets borked. At least it did way back in 2009.

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                    April 5, 2011 4:52 PM

                    Goddamnit I think Lamp ate my replies to you, or the caching bullshit is taking extra long. Regardless:

                    Yeah there are life plants in the game that you can grow and harvest with high enough gardening (I think there's something similar that uses cooking and gardening or something but I can't remember for sure.) Eating a life fruit rewinds your Sim's life clock by 1 day, so as long as you can harvest a steady supply of them, you can stay alive forever.

                    It is stressful though! And one time I kept procrastinating on eating the fruit and didn't notice the clock and BAM my sim turned elder. You can't rewind past those major age-up points so that was that. But part of what I like about the game is having to deal with whatever unfortunate events happen so I went on!

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                      April 5, 2011 4:53 PM

                      Fuck me; it WAS the caching bullshit and now I am dumb

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                        April 5, 2011 4:53 PM

                        I saw it too. The post appeared and then disappeared.

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          April 5, 2011 12:39 PM

          Isn't that the whole point? I've never played with aging on.

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            April 5, 2011 2:28 PM

            Not for me. I enjoy The Sims as a game first and a dollhouse a distant second. I like the challenge of the game, and a huge part of that is the limited time you have. In fact TIME is the only limited resource Sims have, and by turning of aging you are removing the only thing that makes the game a game. You might as well just use the cheat console to give yourself unlimited money if you turn off aging. It changes The Sims from an actual game in to something more like Farmville.

            I understand why some people play the game this way and I'm not saying their way is wrong. It's just so unimaginably foreign to me because I couldn't have fun with the game that way.

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              April 5, 2011 4:07 PM

              True, True. I play with aging on but Once I have one sim who has mega cooking skills, gardening skills and fishing skills topped out, I can make Immortality and hand the item off to any of my other sims in other households (however, as far as I know the items gets deleted out of the inventory upon changing households without the help of mods like awesomemod). Once one sim hits the self-sufficient point, it's basically turning off aging. However, it took me 2 or 3 generations to get a sim with all 3 skills.

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              April 5, 2011 11:06 PM

              Oh, I do that too. To me, Sims is a virtual dollhouse populated by insane AIs. I have no desire to play it as a game as I've never found the mechanics interesting in the least.

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      April 5, 2011 10:46 AM

      So if we can have teens die from Chemistry sets, they can actually overdose at parties then too right?? :p

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      April 5, 2011 12:05 PM

      It really annoys me that I can't activate my retail copy of The Sims 3 with Steam. I would be much more likely to pick up these expansions if I could just do it through Steam. :-/

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        April 5, 2011 12:07 PM

        yeah thats pretty dumb of them.

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        April 5, 2011 2:28 PM

        this a thousand times over. i hate ea.com and everything about it.

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      April 5, 2011 4:43 PM

      This is a great sandbox series and something wonderfully different when I get tired of run of the mill action games or shooters.

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      April 6, 2011 12:34 AM

      i wonder if the try for a baby would be uncensored

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