I found this story about "Sims on line" in Newsweek and followed it to the site. They have a "Beta" that is available free and the download is free. You can go through the process by going to ea.com You go from there to a download site that you have to register with, but you can then get it downloaded. Very Slow! I got it at 79KB/PS and it took 4 1/2 hours. I had to sign on the the wait for the download about 6 times as I kept getting knocked off. The problem is due to the enormous demand. I have it now and am getting ready to try. Here is the Article.
Sims Family Values
America's hottest PC game is moving to the Net, where thousands of players will interact and live virtual lives. Is this the future of home entertainment?
By N'Gai Croal
NEWSWEEK
Nov. 25 issue, For diehard New Yorkers, moving to a small town where you don't know anyone isn?t easy. So when we arrived in sunny Alphaville, population: 26,900 and rising?and a couple of babes asked us to join them in the hot tub a mere 10 minutes after our arrival, we decided that small-town life wasn't so bad after all.
WE DIDN?T EVEN NEED the classifieds to find a roommate; a guy named JB with a fondness for black leather pants asked us to move into his crib along with six of his buds. To show our appreciation, we blew $2,000 of our savings on an espresso machine for the house and a pool for the backyard. Life in Alphaville was a 24/7 party backed by DJs and go-go dancers?with a couple of brief pauses to earn cash spinning pizzas?until we disappeared from the house for an entire weekend. Upon our return JB said, ?You?re not online enough to help the cause,? and kicked us out of the house. Just seven days into NEWSWEEK?s play test of Electronic Arts? weirdly addictive virtual life simulation, The Sims Online, we?d effectively been voted off the island. Starting in December, thousands of people are expected to spend $10 a month for the privilege of living in Alphaville and its sister cities. Could online games like this be the future of entertainment?
It?s no secret that electronic games are a big business. Last year $6.35 billion worth of video- and computer games were sold at retail. An additional $196 million came from subscription fees to online games, a number that is expected to grow to $1.4 billion over the next five years, according to Jupiter Research. That?s because for many people it?s more fun to outwit, outplay and outlast a fellow human being than a computer. Since The Sims, which was released in 2000, is already the best-selling PC game ever, many are predicting that The Sims Online will shoot to the top of the online-gaming charts as well. ?It?s the metaverse meets chat meets IM, and no one has done that before,? says Electronic Arts president John Riccitiello, who sounds cautiously optimistic one month before the game?s Dec. 17 launch. ?A decade from now, tens of millions of people will be subscribing to games like The Sims Online. But right now, that?s premature. We have to be successful with this first.?
MEET THE SIMS
If you haven?t heard of The Sims?the twisted-sitcom-as-computer-game from SimCity creator Will Wright?you?re either a recluse or you watch nothing but C-Span. Since its release two years ago, Electronic Arts has racked up worldwide sales of nearly 20 million for The Sims and its expansion packs. You create a simulated person or family and help them get through their daily lives as they try to decorate their homes, hold down jobs, make friends and win the hearts of the other computer-controlled ?sims? in the game. Because you control only your sims? actions and not the outcomes, the whole experience is filtered through Wright?s satiric distillation of human behavior. Try to kiss the neighbor?s husband before you?ve wooed him sufficiently, and you might get cruelly rebuffed?and your kids could be barred from visiting their playmates. Or if you become overly materialistic, your sims may end up in a house filled with broken-down grandfather clocks and combustible stoves as you struggle to keep everything in working order. The game?s simple premise and user-friendly interface have made it a runaway success with all demographics; 45 percent of the players are women, and more than a third are over 24.
With The Sims Online, every one of the hundreds of sims that you encounter is played by a real person, not your PC. (In industry parlance, that?s called a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.) And that has the potential to appeal not only to fans of the offline version of The Sims, but also to people who have no interest in the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired online games like EverQuest and Asheron?s Call, which currently dominate the category. ?Until now, if you weren?t into dragons and trolls, you were shut out,? says Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. And since The Sims Online draws on real life, with houses, streets, nightclubs, game shows, wedding chapels and most other real-life analogues you can think of, there?s no time spent figuring out how to cast spells or cut down orcs. ?The key message we have is, ?Be somebody else?,? says Luc Barthelet, the 40-year-old head of Maxis, the division of EA responsible for the line of Sim products that began in 1989 with SimCity.
To understand why The Sims Online is a step forward for online games, it may help to understand how a popular game like EverQuest is played. Take Bridget Goldstein, a 40-year-old school trustee who lives in Pasadena, Calif. Every night starting about 10, after she?s put her two children to bed, she spends a couple of hours playing EverQuest as Nin Lyrael, a buxom, flirtatious bard who can fly and slay dragons with equal aplomb. ?It?s no different from losing yourself in a good book, [but here] you?re the star, and you have slim hips and no stretch marks,? says Goldstein. Even better is the motley crew of wordsmiths that Goldstein hangs out with in the game; when she met them at a gathering of EverQuest fans in Houston, they turned out to be a college professor, an accountant and an aerospace engineer. ?They?re people I would select as friends in the outside world because you can easily tell who has the gift of gab and who?s clever,? Goldstein says. But it?s not always about wit and wisecracks. After the September 11 attacks, international players from as far away as Australia expressed their sympathy for the United States, culminating in a virtual torchlight vigil for those who had lost their lives in the real world. ?Very few people of my generation understand any of this,? says Goldstein. ?They don?t know a thing about parallel lives, or a life lived partially online, which is second nature to anyone under 25.?
SOCIAL INTERACTION, WITH GUNS
In other words, online games are succeeding not just as an outlet for competition but as a forum for social interaction. Even shoot-?em-ups can benefit from adding a social element. The most widely played online action game is the first-person shooter Counter-Strike, in which you play on one of two teams, Terrorists or Counter-Terrorists, in a variety of scenarios like rescuing hostages and planting or defusing bombs. Every night, without fail, there are 100,000 or more people online playing Counter-Strike, like 23-year-old New Jersey commerce student Ron Cheng, who pays $50 a month for his own server to host as many as 12 players. Or six-hour-a-day player Christy Rogge, 23, an unemployed mother of two and leader of an all-female team of Counter-Strike veterans called Girlz Clan. ?We?re planning a trip to Great America sometime next year,? says the Knoxville, Tenn., resident, who even met her current boyfriend while playing the game. How?s that for social? |
