When was it released?
February the 4th 2000
How many were sold?
Within the first 2 years, 6.3 millions were sold
How many people were in the development team?
There are 8 different departments in the team
What is the development and publishing company?
Developers are Maxis
Publishers are Electronic Arts (EA)
What are the themes and style of the game?
Life simulation - 'sand box' game
What games engines are used?
PC - released specifically for Microsoft
What is the structure of the company?
The sims has a Horizontal structure as there is more than one campany to help produce the seems. Also, Sims is a Third party company as it's a game that can be played on several consoles.
Marketing:
The sims trailer-
- Shows location of game/setting/atmosphere
- More advanced graphics
- Shows features which aren't in the game - misleading to buyers.
- Shows how the characters look
- Reveals relationship between characters and how they interact in the game
- Cheerful music which represents the game
There is an official fan page on Facebook for The Sims 1 with just under 2000 members. This is an example of viral marketing, as it is an unconventional method of marketing. Also, The Sim's target audience are likely to use the internet often as the sim's is commonly played on the PC so this method is a more effective way of making the target audience aware of the latest news.
Advertisements:
The sims billboards show clearly the release dates and is local marketing.
Bill boards are expensive but good ways to advertise things as they're very noticeable as they're big and usually in cities/towns for many people to see.
Distribution:
Old model -
You can buy The Sims all over the internet including on Amazon, Ebay, etc which can be second hand or brand new.
You can buy The Sims in most well known game shops such as HMV, Games station, etc.
New model -
You can download The Sims on websites such as www.ea.com
Consumption:
Creating
You can create a person or family. There are different steps to creating sims. You can create the skin color (light, medium or dark), the sex of the sim (male or female), and then everything about the sim. You can change the way their face looks by changing the eyebrows, eyes, chin, nose and cheek bone shapes. You can also change their hairstyles.
Clothing
Chosing clothing for a sim is also quite a task. There are numerous shirts and pants to chose from; they can also change the style of the shirt.
Before creating the sim, you need to enter the family's last name. It can be anything you want- like Smith, or Dork, or whatever comes to your mind.
Once you've created the sim of your choice, you need to name them. You have the option of either naming them in the beginning, or naming them at the end. I chose to name them at the end, because you can see what their style is like.
Personalities
There's even an option for chosing their personalities. The sims can have their astrological signs. Under the astrological signs are scales of certain qualities, like neatness to sloppiness, outgoing to shy, lazy to active, and grouchy to nice.
Aspirations
Under personalities, you can chose aspirations for your sims. There are also many different aspirations to chose from- there's the family, popularity, knowledge, romance, fortune, and pleasure aspiration.
You can't play The Sims with other people, its just you and your PC. You also can't chat to other people whilst playing the game as there is no headset to use. But there are some blog websites that people can chat on to work out cheats and help each other progress in the game.
This makes the game interactive and personal.
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