The Sims 4 has undergone many changes since its launch in 2014. The development team has constantly listened to player feedback to reshape and improve the game over the past decade, a staple of the simulation genre.
In the latest Quality of Life update, featuring new playmats for newborn Sims and the Create-A-Sim base layer feature, producer Morgan Henry explains how the team uses player feedback to determine the course of future content.
The Sims 4 players listen
Henry explains that “player feedback, first and foremost!” The latest quality of life updates were inspired. “One of our biggest goals is to continue to address the top community-voted issues from the EA forums.”
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Players always have suggestions about what else could be added, and people active on the forums are the biggest advocates for change. With so many passionate voices about the game, The Sims 4 developers have to pick and choose their priorities.
“From there, we've narrowed down the themes that players care about – babies, autonomy, food behavior, integrity – and we're gathering more feedback on Reddit and Discord to help guide some of our updates,” explains Henry. “We've also been doing Dev Drop-Ins on Discord, which is a great way to communicate directly with players about our efforts.
“I remember when babies were announced and released on the same day. I didn't work with The Sims at the time, but it was a pleasant surprise as a generational player. After joining the team, I was very excited to work on the initial release of babies with the Growing Together expansion, and now, our babies update patch,” Henry told me. “Many features of The Sims 4 have changed over the years due to updates or expansions, and babies and toddlers are no different. For our update, we wanted to address bugs, but also broader player feedback about what it's like to play these life stages.
Babies and toddlers are the most interesting periods in a Sim's life. There's not much they can do on their own, if anything, but this is such an important stage of development. This determines their characteristics and overall success in life—a poor childhood leads to a mediocre life compared to a sim-sibling, for example.
Henry describes in detail how the development of babies and toddlers has changed since infancy (pun intended), “a good example that comes to mind: during the initial implementation of the 'infant taste test in the high chair,' we wanted to depict an authentic experience for real life,” he says. “I don't have kids, but I was told for babies, 'taste testing' is about taste and texture rather than food, so we really honed in on those aspects with animation and text.
“However, during this update, we received feedback that players really wanted to help this interaction satisfy a hunger need, so we did just that! Sometimes making The Sims is about finding the right balance of realism with fun and rewards. This is a great example of how a feature can evolve over time.”
No update is bug-free
While not as notorious as other developers for bugs (looking at you, Bethesda), The Sims 4 has a history of issues cropping up after each update. From apartment life extensions to save files acting as ticking time bombs to textures disappearing over time leading to empty portraits and tombstones, there's always something to solve.
When it comes to toddlers and babies, a key issue is how often grown Sims feel the sudden urge to pick them up and carry them around like a comfort object. Even if you put them down and let your Sim do something else, they'll be right back to pick up the baby and continue their day.
“We knew that 'caregivers picking up and putting down babies repeatedly' would be difficult. However, I don't think we expected how many bugs would arise when we tried to fix that behavior. It comes down to a lot of 'posture' and carrying systems, which gets technical very quickly, but we spent a lot of effort,” he explained, balancing correctly.
“The biggest challenge was that excessive pick-up behavior was not caused by just one factor. It's actually a combination of different systems and interactions, so we had to approach it with different solutions. In some instances, we had babies crying and picking up because there were loud noises in the room and the players didn't improve the behavior, but we didn't improve the behavior. So the players knew what was causing the pick-up in that case.”
The infamous problem with in-game radio music throws things off again. However, doing an in-game checkup on the game's most vulnerable age groups is a safety feature so that child services don't call your Sim family. Yet despite a deep dive into The Sims 4 code to try and remedy the situation — or at least balance it out — the development team remains optimistic.
“The team is really excited to focus on quality of life improvements and bug fixes. 90 percent of bug fixing is like detective work — especially when it's a challenging bug, like many of the ones we're after — so it's extra rewarding when we find out what's causing the problem and fix it. And they provide the opportunity to improve the fun things in life. Having that mix has been great for the team.
The Sims 4 is a layered experience
Another quality of life improvement added in this update is layering. This feature finally allows you to swap out undershirts for dresses, so your favorite slip or vest can be paired with a tank top or turtleneck depending on the season and style. As a dress-up enthusiast I had to ask what happened to this new and highly-anticipated feature.
“There has been similar adaptive content [CC] By modders for a while, but we want to make something official for everyone, including console gamers who can't access CC. It will also provide a unique category and additional support for custom content creators who want to create base layer content.
No two save files are the same in The Sims 4, and each experience will definitely have wildly different scenarios even if you run the same household. So, what is the most exciting part of this quality of life update?.
“I'm sure every person on our team will have a different answer,” says Henry. “For me, we did weekly infant team playthroughs for this update where we took a closer look at Autonomy. You could tell during the week that there were improvements, and it was really rewarding to celebrate together and see early reactions from teammates who were simmers and didn't work directly on the update. By the last playthrough, seeing the infant gameplay felt very remarkable.”
Life and death are inextricably intertwined, and it is difficult to strike a balance between meaningful experience and chaos. It all comes down to the level of control players have over the worlds within The Sims 4.
“We think a lot about autonomy and player interaction. Some players [are like me] And love chaos in their Sims' lives. Others have a very strong vision for the story they want to tell, and they don't want chaos to disrupt their stories. We must always balance the two. Without chaos, it wouldn't be The Sims, but with too much chaos, it would be impossible to tell a good story.
“There are a few ways to find that balance, but deaths are a great example: you can make certain autonomous behaviors prerequisites. [your Sims must be in this mood to experience the death]The probability of something happening may be very low so it is not common [a vending machine squishing a Sim when they go to pull something out]Or it may require an opt-in response [meteors falling from the sky and the players is warned to get inside]. Designers are always looking for creative ways to give The Sims a dose of fun chaos in a fair and non-aggressive way. Sometimes it's hard to strike that balance, so we're always watching the feedback we get around our more chaotic features.
“Looking forward, we know that autonomy is an important topic for players, as well as saves and game stability. We have planned work to focus on these areas. As always, we are open to player feedback and want to actively listen to what kind of updates players want to see in our upcoming themes.
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