The Sims 3 Ambitions Q&A

Attribute to: Grant Rodiek, Associate Producer on The Sims 3 Development Team

QUESTION: Can you tell us a little bit about The Sims 3 Ambitions.

The Sims 3 Ambitions allows players to control their Sims while they are at work in a variety of new careers. Instead of sending your Sims off to work all day, The Sims 3 Ambitions lets you pick a career like firefighting, investigator, architect, ghost hunter, stylist or doctor and then guide your Sim to make choices and succeed (or fail) every step of the way. You can also make your Sim a tattoo artist, sculptor or inventor.

QUESTION: Just how popular are careers with the fans? Is this something they have been asking for?

Career gameplay is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and it’s something that our players consistently request. We always strive to do something new that hasn’t been seen in The Sims before. We’re especially excited about the fact that the in-depth careers really offer something for all types of players. Storytellers will love solving mysteries as an investigator or resolving the problems of the afterlife as a ghost hunter. The “gamers” will enjoy being the hero as a firefighter and saving civilians as the doctor. The team cannot wait to see what the Builders and Sim creators make with architect and stylist careers.

There’s a lot of depth and variety here for every type of Sims player.

QUESTION: Exactly how does the career based gameplay work in Ambitions?

The Sims 3 Ambitions is about your Sim’s personal venture. Each career presents a unique experience.

Firefighters need to develop relationships and maintain their equipment while at the firehouse. But as soon as that alarm rings they need to get to the fire, clear rubble piles, carry out children, stop gas leaks, put out the flames, and be the hero. Your town may fall victim to small fires, huge infernos, and even earthquakes.

Stylists will be hired by neighbors to offer fashion advice and provide partial or complete makeovers. You can choose to make Sims look really good or just terrible. It’s a lot of power to put in the hands of our more deviant players, but the ability to give the entire town a facelift is fantastic. And profitable!

Using the tattoo chair in game (or at the local Salon) your Sims can tattoo their neighbors with both fantastic and questionable body art, for a price, of course.

The Tattoo System is an incredibly powerful new creative tool for our players. Players can apply multiple tattoos in up to five layers, scale them, change the colors, and even modify opacity. Players can also upload and share these tattoos on the exchange, giving our community yet another creative outlet.

There’s a lot of variety!

I received a mail from EA Netherlands with information and screenshots from the new expansion pack The Sims 3 Ambitions.

We're proud to announce: The Sims 3 Ambitions.

Widen your Sim’s horizons with a bunch of killer new career opportunities. With The Sims™ 3 Ambitions, decide whether your Sim will be the brave town hero or cause loads of mischief among their neighbors. Make your Sim save the day as a brave firefighter, change the town as a leading architect, or live on the edge as a tattoo artist. Will your Sim find success as a billionaire high-tech inventor or eke out a living as a bumbling mad scientist? Will they uncover secrets as a private investigator by dusting for prints or roughing up a suspect for information? Their future is entirely in your hands!

FEATURES

• For the first time ever, you control your Sim’s actions and interactions while they’re on the job.
• Be a hero or mess with the neighbors as a firefighter, private investigator, doctor, ghost hunter, and more!
• Choose how your Sim’s career progresses—will they work for good or evil, pursue creative endeavors, rise to success as a mogul, or shirk responsibility as a slacker?
• Your Sim’s on-the-job choices now change their town and affect other Sims as well. Modify the town’s structure as an architect or set neighborhood fashions as a stylist.
• Enjoy all-new skills and activities! Master the arts of inventing, sculpting, and tattooing, and use your skills to earn Simoleons.

Category: Life simulation
Releasedate: summer 2010
Platform: PC
Number of players: 1
Online possibilities: None

EA has announced a new expansion pack, which will be in stores in June of 2010. It all sounds great. I can't wait to see more! Here's the press release:

EA ANNOUNCES THE SIMS 3 AMBITIONS EXPANSION PACK
Expansion Pack to Award-winning Game The Sims 3 Allows Players to Become Fearless Heroes and Ace Entrepreneurs

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 4, 2010 –The EA Play Label of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that The Sims™ 3 Ambitions Expansion pack* is in development and will launch in June 2010. As the second expansion pack to The Sims 3, the best-selling PC game of 2009**, The Sims 3 Ambitions allows players to pursue a variety of exciting paths and careers in their Sims’ lives that in turn affect their overall gameplay experience and neighbourhood. While on the job, the player has direct control over their Sims’ work and can choose how to spend their days. Players can opt to make house calls and save lives as a doctor or choose the devious route and test experimental medicine on patients be the hero firefighter tackling raging infernos or smashing everything in sight at the victim’s home with an axe; or take a shot at solving cases as an investigator, nicely convincing sources to divulge secrets or roughing up perpetrators in a dark alley to get information.

“The variety of careers to choose from is unmatched and we’ve never given players the opportunity to follow their Sims to work and affect their actions on the job,” said Scott Evans, General Manager of The Sims Studio at EA. “The Sims 3 Ambitions changes that. Players’ actions at work now directly affect their lives, community and neighbours and become an extremely important part of how the game is played.”

Players can now experience some of the most exciting and varied jobs. In The Sims 3 Ambitions, players can choose to hunt down vengeful spirits as the ghost hunter, invent brilliant and potentially destructive gadgets as an inventor, craft glorious masterpieces as a sculptor, and solve riveting cases by any means necessary as an investigator with dozens of cases to solve and numerous clues to find. Additionally, players will be able to change the look and feel of their town by becoming an architect and directly affecting the neighbourhood around them leveraging Build and Buy mode. The stylist career and new tattoo system allow players to make over their Sim neighbours in fashionable or catastrophic ways. For the first time, players will be in charge of how their Sims’ career progresses and decide if they will work for good or evil, pursue creative endeavours or technical affairs, climb to the top quickly, or be a slacker. The future of a Sims’ success or failure is entirely in the hands of the player.

The Sims 3 Ambitions will also be available for feature phones, iPhone and iPod touch in late 2010 from EA Mobile™. These versions will have customized mobile gameplay features which will be revealed in the coming months and will not require a base game to play.

Ten years ago the first edition of The Sims saw the daylight, after several years of development by Will Wright and his team. In the meantime we've seen two more sequels, various spin-offs, Sims games on any platform you can game on and of course a ton of expansion and stuff packs. The Sims team is celebrating by giving away some freebies. The Sims is a hugely successful franchise; expansion packs often top the sales charts, resulting in over $2.5 billion in revenue to date. From its launch in 2000 to 2004, The Sims was the best selling PC game worldwide; The Sims 1 for the first four years, The Sims 2 in 2004. The Sims 3 was EA's biggest launch ever, with 1.4 million copies sold in the first week, again being the best selling game of the year worldwide. Congratulations, EA!

The Sims series will be 10 years old in February, and we have to celebrate this! A couple of fansites including SimTimes and SimFans have received many cool renders from EA Germany, which fansites and fans can use to create cool stuff. I did not want to skip the 10th birthday of The Sims. So I created a bunch of wallpapers, in pretty much any resolution!

Furthermore a short note that our frontpage has been quiet lately, but I haven't disappeared. I have been busy for a while now behind the scenes working on the new version of SimsNetwork and SimsNetwerk. I can't tell you anything else yet, just keep an eye on the website. If something big is about to happen, I will make sure I'll post a message on the frontpage!

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Standard Resolutions

• 1600x1200
• 1400x1050
• 1280x1024
• 1280x960
• 1152x864
• 1024x768
• 800x600

Widescreen Resolutions

• 1920x1200
• 1680x1050
• 1440x900
• 1280x800

Standard Resolutions

• 1600x1200
• 1400x1050
• 1280x1024
• 1280x960
• 1152x864
• 1024x768
• 800x600

Widescreen Resolutions

• 1920x1200
• 1680x1050
• 1440x900
• 1280x800

Standard Resolutions

• 1600x1200
• 1400x1050
• 1280x1024
• 1280x960
• 1152x864
• 1024x768
• 800x600

Widescreen Resolutions

• 1920x1200
• 1680x1050
• 1440x900
• 1280x800

PSP Wallpapers



iPhone Wallpapers

From all of us at SNW, we would like to wish everyone a healthy, fun and Simsy 2010! May it be a year full of Sims playing and creating. :)

I was planning to upload this earlier but was busy so it got postponed. It's finally online though! The Christmas Baubles set in fuchsia and also one in blue! Featuring a couple of new patterns.

To easily install the patterns, use the TS3 Install Helper Monkey from ModTheSims.

Christmas Baubles Set in Fuchsia:


Christmas Baubles Set in Marine:

Yesterday I uploaded a new set for Christmas, including a new pattern, on The Sims Zone. Click on the image to view and download the set!