The Ringer-Verse - 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance II' and a Quarter Century of 'The Sims' | Button Mash

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Ben, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James banter about whether the console wars are over and whether 'Marvel Rivals' will keep the crown that 'Overwatch' once wore. Then (19:50) they give their spoiler-free reviews of the immense, fascinating, and frustrating action RPG 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.' After that, Julianna Ress and Khal Davenport join Ben to reminisce about 'The Sims' and reflect on the franchise's legacy on its 25th anniversary (48:30). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Steve Ahlman, Matt James, Julianna Ress, and Khal Davenport Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimfire radio.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. Visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom.

I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer and liege lord of button mash. With me today are two trusty companions. First, Midnight Boy and Junior Mint, Steve, the Almaniac. Alman is here. Hi, Steve. I'm actually an Earl now. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

Congrats on the promotion. My name is Earl. Also along for the ride is Ringer Deputy Art lead, Matt, the Mattster chief. James. Howdy-how. Wow, thank you, Ben. Yeah, how about that? They figured.

We're about to talk about Xbox exclusives or suddenly non-exclusives in just a moment, so it seemed fitting. But we have lots to talk about today. Later in the episode, I will be hot-swapping heroes. I'll be bringing on two other ringer colleagues to discuss a quarter century of the Sims. Yes, the Sims franchise turned 25 this week, and we will reminisce and reflect on its legacy. But before that, Buttonmash meets Bohemia as we discuss Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, the sequel to 2018's Kingdom Come Deliverance that was developed by Warhorse Studio and published by Deep Silver on Tuesday for Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox.

First, though, a couple of quick news items. I just mentioned PlayStation and Xbox, almost a distinction without a different. these days. No longer are Sony and Microsoft that wore like King's Wensseless Loss and Sigismund in Kingdom Come Deliverance. Did I get that right? Hopefully. I'll say yes. Yeah, a lot of proper nouns, a lot of names in this game. We'll get to that. On January 30th, Xbox announced that the latest game in one of its longtime tent pole franchises Forksa Horizon 5 would be coming to PS5 this spring. This is the latest and maybe greatest former Microsoft exclusive to make the leap to PlayStation, following in the footsteps of grounded, pentamence, sea of thieves, high-fi rush,

plus announced PS5 versions of Doom the Dark Ages, Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, the Outer Worlds Two, and Age of Empires. A port of Forza feels like the floodgates opening, and perhaps a prelude to ports of Halo, Starfield, Fable, Gears of War, and more. Xbox CEO, Phil Spencer, has said that there are no red lines when it comes to which former Xbox exclusives could be coming to PlayStation. He's also said that Microsoft plans to support Switch 2. Matt, with Microsoft more or less capitulating to PlayStation on console exclusivity and Nintendo not really fighting on the same front as Sony hardware-wise.

Can we declare an official end to decades of console wars? Man, it sure seems like we're closer than ever to that. That's for sure. I mean, PlayStation getting Xbox games does feel like a watershed. at moment. It does feel like that first time that, you know, you saw Sonic on a Nintendo console which seemed impossible for decades. And then all of a sudden now, you know, it's very normal. But, you know, you have to consider also that at the same time, PlayStation has been putting plenty of their games on PC. This is just the way it's going to be right now. I think,

I think that, you know, when you're talking about console exclusivity, I think for a lot of games, it's going to be more of like a timed exclusivity. And before I think it was like that, but now I think it's really obvious that things are just going to be exclusive for months at a time, maybe even less than a year before moving on to another platform.

Because, you know, Phil's saying, you know, no red lines, well, yeah, that's the goal for their company is to keep out of the red. No red rings. of death, please. Black lines, yeah, we're trying to be profitable. Yeah, even Sony brought Lego Horizon Adventures to switch. And we're seeing this across the culture, not just in video games. We see movies coming to theaters and then hitting streaming.

We see TV shows on streaming services going to other streaming services. There's just a general lack of exclusivity out there because there's just such a competition for attention, really. We're all just competing not with your direct corporate rivals, but also with every other form of entertainment out there. And so so much of it is about maximizing eyeballs or ears, for that matter, even Spotify. Our parent company has evolved toward more of a everyone gets to be on every platform sort of situation. So that's just the way the things are heading. And video games may be the most notable example, just because the console wars were so fierce. And now Microsoft seems to be seeding the field altogether. So my question then becomes, why buy an Xbox console?

Now, on a recent episode of Gamer Tag Radio, Spencer reiterated Microsoft's commitment to hardware. They have said that they're developing the next gen Xbox. He called that fundamental to Xbox, quote, it's not lost on me that box is in the name of our brand. Good point. In the position that I'm in, I look at hardware as a critical part of what we do, but we're not trying to gatekeep the games off of other places for the benefit of it, asked why people would buy future Xbox hardware, if not for exclusive software, especially as a in the midst of the Everything is an Xbox marketing campaign, Spencer said, I want people to pick

hardware based on the capabilities of that hardware and how that fits into the choices that they want to make about where they want to play. And we want our hardware to win based on the hardware capabilities that we have. So he added, let's go build innovative hardware that people want to use to play, whether that's in their hands, whether it's on the television or even other places. Steve, are you still in the market for an Xbox success? Well, I think that's an admirable stance to take for Phil, like knowing that the PS5 and Sony have kind of eaten their lunch this generation, and Microsoft kind of wanting to pivot to a bit more of a focus on platforms,

and I say platforms in the sense of where you can get games that are made by Microsoft and Xbox and how you can consume them rather than the place that you buy them and play them on. And that seems to kind of be a priority knowing that GamePass has kind of been their massive model that they have been actually ushering in through these generations. This was a problem when they introduced Xbox One thinking that TV and a multi-platform console system was going to be there, like, break out into a multi-household type of format. But instead, it was a hyper-focused graphical fidelity-laden Sony that came in and wanted to wipe the floor with it. them with interesting and fun games. And the idea of, you know,

the mascot brand recognition disappearing once we know that Master Chief is going to be on my PS5, you kind of got to make some concessions in being like, well, we're going to be about making games and our brand recognition will be the type of quality that we put out when it comes to games and not just the machines that we put them on. I like that, but it's going to be a minute before I think about

a hard and fast console, but I'm still intrigued by GamePass for PC and the things that are offered to me by Microsoft. It's not out of the question. As of now, even though you can stream from the cloud on lots of different devices, GamePass not available on Switch or PlayStation, so that is still a red line.

For now. For now, yeah. And of course, Xbox is positioned to just be one of the biggest publishers, even if it's multi-platform, what with the acquisitions of Xenamax and Activision Blizzard. So it can still be, dominant or a major player in that sense, and maybe we're just moving beyond the need for a physical

box. I guess you could say that PC won the console wars, maybe. Maybe Sony and Nintendo won in different ways, and they're just sort of divying up the empire among themselves. You can say that Microsoft lost the console wars. I think that seems safe to say at this point, although these things can always change. I wonder, though, whether it's just that PC swooped in and is now just the dominant market and platform, or whether we're just going to be shifting from home console wars to handheld wars, because of course we've got the Switch to, we've got the Steam Deck and all of its competitors,

and both Sony and Microsoft have expressed a desire and attention to develop their own portable systems of some sort. So maybe it's just that the front is moving from the living room to on the go or in bed or in the bathroom or wherever we're playing. these games, though. Maybe that's what changed. Maybe there's still some sort of competition here. I'm intrigued by that. I really think that this feels like a definitive generation for making these own brands, like, actually stand out, knowing that the idea that the switch to is going to come into a marketplace that exists with the Steam Deck and all of its competitors, that's actually

going to be a very big impact that they want to make knowing that, okay, well, this is going to be where you can get Mario and this is on par with something that we can have. like that. And Sony making sure that maybe if we don't sell you a $700 console that may or may not just give you a little bit more performance, that might incentivize them to make something that's actually more impactful for their premium home console experience. Microsoft is kind of feeding into both of those, and that's very interesting. We think about competition or like competition breeding innovation, and it feels like they're kind of on their own islands making their own innovation because they've kind of carved out smaller, more niche markets of specificity

for us because everybody's playing games now. Yeah. And I'm happy to keep purchasing every system as long as they keep making it. As long as they give me a reason to, I do this stuff for fun. I do it for work. And I'm not a partisan person in this war. I don't have a horse in the race. I've owned every Xbox console and I would continue to buy them if they continued to give me

reasons to buy them. But in the absence of exclusives, that's just a tough sell. Because to say that we'll give people the best hardware or the best way to play, what does that even mean these days? Because at this point, hardware, pure processing power graphics, those just aren't really the differentiators anymore because we just see that going from one generation to the next. The upgrades in graphical fidelity, it's just not that big a difference. We're splitting hairs here at this point.

So that in itself will give you the most souped up system. That's just not going to cut it, especially when PC is an alternative. Okay. Speaking of rivals, let's spend a few minutes on Marvel rivals and its own war with Overwatch, too. Ever since Nettys' Marvel rivals arrived in December, it has been beating Blizzard's Overwatch at its own game. Almost literally, Marvel rivals owes a clear debt to its hero shooter forebear, but it's

built up a buzz that Overwatch hasn't had for years. We can't compare player count. because most Overwatch players are on Battlenet, not Steam. But we can say that Overwatch's player counts on Steam have been halved since November. We can also say that Rivals is much bigger on Twitch, where its peak and average viewership over the past week have been several times the size of Overwatch's streaming audience.

It would seem that Blizzard is feeling the heat because the company just announced an Overwatch 2 spotlight for February 12th, And with almost Trumpian bombast promised groundbreaking changes to the PVP experience that will be unlike anything you've seen before, many people are saying, along with new maps, heroes, and more. Steve, initially, it seemed possible that Rivals was just the new hotness, that its popularity would wane, it would peter out, and that Overwatch would reassert its supremacy at some point. but could it be that with apologies to Dwayne Johnson, the hero shooter hierarchy of power has permanently changed and that Rivals has just eaten Overwatch's lunch? I wouldn't actually say that.

I kind of disagree with the idea that Marvel Rivals is killing Overwatch because I think that Overwatch killed Overwatch. And NetE's came in into a market that was more or less in actual need of something that was placating to a fan base that was underserved. And knowing that Marvel rivals can dominate in such a way, hearkening back to the peak days of Overwatch's popularity, this actually was the shot in the arm that Blizzard needs.

I think that the reasoning behind this exactly, like there's no way to not act like this incentive to make Overwatch 2 more relevant again isn't because of Marvel rivals. It's unignorable. But the idea of why I like this is because of the fact that there are actually some adults in the room thinking about the fact that, oh, we're not actually just going to be resting on our laurels

and kind of underserving our player base for the Overwatch heads for a while now. Now that we have something that could legitimately make us go dark and lose all of the acclaim that we have, they're actually going to be stepping up their game, hopefully, and seeing if this isn't too little too late. I'm frankly impressed by the fact that they are, are responding because we've actually never seen them respond even when they are this much

on the back foot because they've never needed to. Yeah, you're right. Monopoly's typically bad for consumers competition good, which is really the only reason why I'm wary about the end of the console war, so to speak, just because more options, so people competing against each other generally good for gamers. Matt, how do you handicap this competition? Well, I'm just curious about what Overwatch is about to announce. Like, I'm half expecting them to announce that they partnered with DC Comics,

and we're going to have Green Lantern and Batman in there. Oh, God. Could you imagine just, and it's just like a Zenata skin? Like, it's not even... Yeah. Multiversis died so that Overwatch, too, could cannibalize all its characters. I think that Overwatch is at a huge disadvantage here, because Marvel Rivals just has a built-in infrastructure

to keep getting people to come back to it with every update because every time they can just like announce a new character in Marvel Rivals and there's already a built-in fan base that loves that character that's going to return, that's going to check it out. And you don't have the same thing with Overwatch. You have Overwatch characters that, sure, they've become beloved, but a new one, a new Overwatch character almost dilutes the experience, whereas a new Marvel Rivals character completely reinvigorates fan base.

And there's not as much lore as people would like surrounding those Overwatch heroes because that promised story aspect of Overwatch 2 just hasn't really materialized. Yeah, and it bounces off the idea that any character that comes out in rivals has immediate brand recognition, and you will know exactly who that is or be excited about what that character can do. and the amount of content that they have to seemingly, not even so much blast out at us with new seasons, but drip feed us constantly. Like, a new skin for Captain America

just came out today, this morning, and it's his Infinity War, like, Nomad Cap outfit that I don't even play Cap, and I want this skin. And it's like, they can do this infinitely, with the Marvel movies and all of the fandom that's been built around the MCU in general. It's a massive infrastructure that can only feed itself for like already longer than Overwatch ever can. They have infinite amounts of capital

to spend of fans' goodwill and already a good game on top of it. It's not entirely predatory with its microtransactions. The game is fun enough. There's a modicum of a PVE mode that something that Overwatch tried to do and never actually delivered on. At every turn, it's like, okay, let's take the playbook that Overwatch did and make sure we do every opposite thing. and it's been that successful from the jump. Yeah. Flooding the market has never backfired for Marvel. So that should go well.

Just keep pumping out heroes indefinitely. But really, the incumbent advantage that Overwatch should have had by being so established for almost a decade and having been the leader in this field has been overcome by the brand awareness of Marvel, just by the power of that IP and the pace at which they have pumped out new heroes and new content, depending on how. how Overwatch responds here, there may be more Marvel rivals heroes by the end of this year than there are Overwatch heroes despite years of a head start. So there's less of an incumbent advantage these days across the board, certainly in politics,

but in games, in games there's a big incumbent advantage. It's really hard to overcome the established titans of the genre, as we've seen with Concord and Ex-Defiant and others. And yet Marvel Rivals has done it incredibly quickly. thanks to that leg up, as Matt said. It's not just an original roster of heroes in a new universe like Concord was. It's literally Marvel.

So between that and the fact that Overwatch has been floundering for a while, just kind of coasting along on name recognition, brand loyalty, the lack of a superior direct competitor, putting out Overwatch classic to remind people of the glory days, but sort of stagnating. Of 2018? I know, right.

Ancient, ancient history. but just sort of stagnating in terms of how they have evolved that game, which hasn't been helped by layoffs at Blizzard, of course, but now they really have to step up their game if they want to try to retake the lead or even pull even. I think the biggest thing that this has to overcome is I think the systemic problems that Blizzard has, not just with Overwatch, but company-wide as to why things like Diablo

haven't been as successful as they could have been. Overwatch as well and a million other projects that seem to have gone by the wayside. The reasons that Blizzard has kind of prioritized certain aspects of all of their games isn't the problem with Nettys because they might not exactly operate under the umbrella of monetize season pass, content, exploitation, et cetera, et cetera. They don't have the same sort of ethos that Blizzard has. And knowing that that can change per game rather than just company one, is probably going to be tested now for the first time since Overwatch started

because Marvel rivals is such a one-to-one comparison. As always, time will tell. We will continue to track these trends. All right, switching gears. Late January brought a bunch of big new games, some of which we'll cover in a future episode about Match, new dynasty warriors and sniper elite, Eternal Strands, Citizen Sleeper 2,

Ender Magnolia Bloom in the Mist, which Matt mentioned on last week's Ringiverse recommends, And even with Assassin's Creed shadows delayed to next month, February is stacked. And the release onslaught has started. So we may be Ben, Matt and Steve, but today you can call us Henry of Scalitz, son of Sir Radzig Kobola, and bodyguard to Sir Hans Capon of Perkstein, heir to Rattai, an envoy of Lord Hanish of Leipa, because we've been immersed in 15th century Bohemia as we work our way through one of the biggest games of the month.

How's a longer title than the person on the Iron Throne has. They make it more digestible than that in the game. Yeah, let's abridge our title here. This title is Kingdom Come Deliverance to, and if you start playing it now, you probably won't finish it in February. It's a short month, and it's a long game. Wisely, Warhorse sent review codes out fairly early

because this is just a gigantic game. Not early enough, arguably. Yeah, I at least have not yet finished. So no spoilers. But the reviews have been largely glowing, 88 on Metacritic as we speak, up from 76 for the first game in the series. Will we agree? Let's discuss this is our entry point to the series. None of us played the first game in the series.

So we are just jumping into the deep end. And it is deep because there is a lot of game in this game. Matt, what have you made of? your experience with Kingdom Come deliverance to, which, by the way, it's an action RPG, and I would describe it. My elevator pitch would basically be Elder Scrolls meets Dragons Dogma meets for honor. It's just a medieval RPG with just a gigantic map and oodles of side quests. Have you been enjoying your ample time in this game?

I am 60 hours into this game. So halfway. About halfway. I did. I am early on into the second map of two maps in the game. And I have to say, my experience with it has definitely evolved throughout my playtime. Because sitting here right now, I can tell you that I absolutely love this game. And it's a game that I'm going to remember fondly for years.

However, 10 hours into this thing, I was half expecting to kind of fall off this game. and just going to let it fall by the wayside. It's like a streaming series. Just wait till season two. It's going to get good. Wait till hour 15. I mean, yeah, it's actually around hour 15, honestly. And again, we haven't played the first game.

We generally knew what to expect. And what you should expect in this series is that right out the gate, this game kind of rubs your face. base in the dirt. You are almost powerless. You start with like no money and no clothes, essentially after a quick opening segment. And you're bad at everything. And it's a pretty unforgiving world. You suck at everything. Yeah. And you suck at everything while you are learning the systems of the game, which are not complicated, but there are many systems. And many menus. Many menus, and there's a lot to digest while the world is being very punishing towards you.

But I have to say that it's entirely worth it to push through. But at the same time, there will be people that this game is just not for. And Ben, you mentioned Dragon's Dogment too in describing it. And I think that is a great comparison that I've made because I felt that that was a great great game, but I also understood that there were people who did not mess with that game. And this could be the same for some people. Now, there is fast travel in Kingdom Come Deliverance too, but at the same time, you are going to spend a lot of time following characters while they're talking, picking up sacks of things to carry them over to another place and drop them

multiple times. There is like labor in this game. Manual labor. The immersion, yeah. The immersion is the key here. They want you to have some degree of

suffering, to feel inside the mind of this character. And I think it's very successful and it pays off every time it rubs your face in the dirt. It's for your own good. Yeah, I'm not used to a game-giving

me this kind of tough love for this long. Kingdom Come, like, this was the, like, the aptest comparison that I immediately wanted to make, or at least what I thought that I could get from this game, was immediately thinking that it could be something like a Skyrim, or a, like, something closer to, like, an immersive sim that's, like, a bit more slower-paced,

a bit more depth to it. But I can say that this has the depth of an ocean, while being as maybe wide as like a river. Because if Skyrim is like as big as an ocean, deep as a puddle, this is what Kingdom Come is. Because I was actively fighting this game for so long as to not only find the fun, but to find a semblance of a play style

that I actually both enjoyed and could kind of like cling to or make sense of because I kind of approached it the wrong way with most RPGs that I was used to. The most in-depth thing that I'd come off of something like a Balders Gate 3, obviously very different from this, but the idea that I'm trying to like imbue

a character's playstyle and philosophy onto them rather than kind of being a thing that I am pushing forward with how I care to play. And I know that might sound a bit complicated, but the idea that I want to kind of emphasize is how much I really love this game's story that actually

pushes me forward to gameplay that I occasionally actively do not like. And I have to say that like this will very much not be for some people. And I argue, and I'm still not even sure if it's for me because I don't know if I had fun necessarily either in combat or finding my day-to-day tasks or quests that enjoyable other than knowing where this story could go. I think Henry is a very interesting character and the world that they put us in is both immersive, funny, occasionally like very dower and sad and gorgeous. And there's a really like, this does not feel like any video game story that I have seen in a very long time because it is both optimistic and heartfelt and fun and funny while also kind of

like trying to hammer home that medieval times in the Holy Roman Empire was terrible. And I like and people finding like the joy and intimacy in the spaces between that is actually very compelling for the way that this game presents itself. Last thing I'll say before I throw it to you, Ben, this is this has the best loading screen. I've ever seen in my life. Menus of the year. How about that? We'll reserve that category for our end of the year pod.

But I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I'm the epitome of the person that this isn't for. So I was wearing. There's no card games, man. Okay. They're dice. A lot of dice, though. It starts like half an hour into this thing.

Do you want to start playing dice? No, I do not. Even though it was to get food to feed your dog, which I was very much in favor of, not so much that way. So I really thought I might be bouncing off this one. And it was the story that pulled me along. And I was also daunted because I thought,

well, I'm just jumping in midstream here. I haven't played the first game. And there's no previously on in this game. However, it does a great job of conveying past events without any kind of just recap or montage. And sometimes it's kind of inartful. It's just you're riding along with someone who basically narrates your entire history as a character. And so if you have played the first game, then maybe some of that will be old hats.

Though, again, it's been several years since that first game. But they incorporate that via flashbacks and dreams and references to the main beats of your backstory, to the point that I really felt like I knew what was happening. And I understood this character early on. So that was done, I would say, quite elegantly. And you can just tell that there was an enormous. amount of historical research done here. Oh, yeah. Most of which is probably lost on us as non-scholars of 15th century Bohemia, but you can just tell that they put the work in. And they also put the

work in in the sense that this game reputedly has a 2.2 million word script, which beats Baldersgate 3's total, and all of it is fully voiced. Now, do they reuse certain voices and characters and models, yes, perhaps, but I think we can excuse that. And it's good voice work for the most part. It has a very mature story and a mature tone and mature language. There's lots of cursing, but it's not trying too hard. And there is a lot of levity too. There's also great music. There's really interesting quest and side quest design a lot of the time. So yes, sometimes you are carrying sacks from one place to another. But once you get into the real side quests, each one is pretty memorable and it's not usually just a pure fetch quest. And even that stuff that is really just

granular mundane activities, it does a great job of just grounding me in this world and making me feel like I'm playing a role, which is what you want from a role-playing game. For instance, early on, you brew a medicine and that's called alchemy in this game. And you guys know how I feel about crafting. And so, boom, instantly. Yeah, thumbs down. But this almost goes so far beyond the typical crafting process that I just have to hand it to them.

I have to respect the degree of difficulty and complexity here because you just have to brew up a medicine. You got to go get some sage and some chamomile for your pal and brew it into some wine. But it's like a whole separate mechanic and mini game almost where it's not just like you're in a menu. okay, let's put this thing onto this thing's box and it'll join. It'll form this new substance. You go into this little hut and you're like picking up each flask and vial of substances and you're lowering the cauldron closer to the fire. And then you're pumping the bellows to bring the boil harder.

Hey, you're turning. We heard you like to whittle. Do you want to. Yeah. They got that mortar and pestle. Mortar and pestle. You're turning over an hourglass to see how. how long this thing will boil. And I'm like, is this even going to heal me? Like what? This is more preparation that I do in real life

for things that I consume. And it seems like it would be tiresome and maybe eventually it will be like I'm someone who went through Breath of the Wild without cooking. Yeah, I hate that's insane. I hate the cooking in that game.

I did hate cooking as well. And you're just and you're just throwing apples and meat into a pot and then you can eat it. Clink, clink, clink, clink. Yeah, satisfying sounds, but at least the first hundred times. I got into cooking and tears of the kingdom. Sure. That's beyond the point.

This is just so beyond anything like that that I've done that I almost just had to abandon my resistance and just say, well, I am Henry and this is medieval times. And this is what you have to do if you want some wine mixed with sage and camomile. So if you thought that Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2, for instance, was meticulous. in its simulation, then strap in because the degree of the friction here that you will encounter performing any task, including combat, which we should discuss, is just far beyond anything that you typically encounter. But if you surrender to that and you're willing to make that investment, it does pay dividends because it really does deepen your investment in this character

and your attachment to this world. Yeah, I think, you know, you talked about the storytelling being excellent, and I think that really is what carries you through the difficult parts at the start of this game, and it only gets better and better as you go along. The performances in this game are so incredible. The characters all feel so distinct, and they're voiced so well, and the facial animations are excellent, and this game has some times where it is very visually impressive. Some of the natural outdoor settings are at times

just stunning and the faces, as I said, look great. There's also a good amount of jank in this game. You're going to see guards in places just like stuck on a wall for a few seconds or like they're outside and people

are having a hard time navigating the terrain NPCs. But mostly funny inconsequential jink, at least in my experience, not game-breaking books. No, no. And nostalgic jank.

Yeah, like classic Bethesda style. Exactly. Just like that Bethesda style. Nothing that takes away from the game. Like, even if there's a way to enjoy this game thoroughly while being moved by a character's performance,

while they are simultaneously caught in a doorway. There's a really great moment that I had in this game where there's a prologue moment where it throws you into combat, very quickly in the first like 10 minutes of the game. And you don't really see that level of like frantic combat for a very long time. And I felt like absolutely blubbering and I had no idea what I was doing.

And then there's like the next time that I get a crossbow. And I could only imagine that the experience that I had with a crossbow is probably anybody's experience with a crossbow in the 1500s where I'm just like, I don't really know where this thing's going. And I guess I might hit something. And that's pretty much exactly the experience that I had. had with most combat here. And suffice to say that it could be fun,

but it feels so, like, inelegant and, like, not an exact science to me as, like, somebody who's very action-oriented and, like, used to playing in a sort of, like, power fantasy or at least easier sense of play, this is very challenging, and a sort of, like, Simon says, rock, paper, scissors level of knowing how to block slash parry, guard, all of these different stances

when you're looking at having to deal with this sort of like Blair Witch symbol of like where your opponent is going to hit and where you should be hitting. It feels in elegant and occasionally clunky but I kind of still feel immersed in what the game's trying to sell me. At no point and am I like

this is the game's fault? It might just not be for me. And I think this might be be the game that I'm the most okay with that and still going with it. It's so weird. Yeah, it's like sword play simulator. It's like I'm not good at this, but also, why would I be good at this? I don't know how to swing a sword. So there is an art to it. And yeah, it's kind of granular. Again, you're not just swinging wildly. It's way better than say a Morawind's style combat or melee. There's a depth and a skill level to it where you're aiming, you're, aiming, you're

anticipating the blocks. It's not purely timing, but also looking for unprotected areas. I would say that the visual feedback that I get from the combat is not adequate for me. It's just, it's very deliberate combat without much reaction from your adversaries. Like, give me more blood and decapitations. It's not really that kind of game, but it's just, it's sometimes hard for me to tell. Like, did I land that hit? I don't know exactly. And it's just, and you only know when the guy falls down. That's how you know when you won. Sometimes they'll tell you, oh, I'm struggling.

Oh, yeah. Yes. Again, that's how this game would be very funny at times. Yeah, and I'm not asking for a health bar. I'm just saying maybe a little more visual indication of whether I'm winning this battle. But again, I do just sort of respect it. Like, they just really committed to the bit. And when you get more proficient at it, I don't know that I feel that I've mastered it to

this point. And it helps when you level up. And there's kind of a cool perk system. I am kind of mystified by the menus just in general, but there are cool perks that you can use to upgrade your character. And you really do have a high level of customization over how you allocate your skills and what direction you go down. But you at no point, at least in my experience, feel like you are just like unstoppable. Oh, you'll get there. Okay.

Great. Whenever that happens. You'll get there. I want to talk about play styles really quick because this has like a lot of different ways that like the game incentivizes you to try and play. And I'm the type of player that has kind of like gets stuck in their ways and like if I find out that something works, I will stay with that until it doesn't. And I like to play these RPG characters like typically like I like if I can talk my way out of situations if I can bribe somebody, if I can avoid a fight, if I can do stuff like that. I like playing it like that. the way that the world reverberates that attitude from me and throws that back in my face,

not as sort of a punishment, but as an adequate reaction to how I deal with it to invoke its other challenges. I try to be a slick-talking, like, charismatic person to kind of make it easier for myself, to avoid fights. But there will be other ways that this game gives me a challenge to people that I just want to talk to. and that is like something that I've never found in a game before that I found fascinating. The idea that as I keep trying to bribe somebody, the fact that merchants and stuff will kind of hear tell of me and actually try to fleece me for more.

And I have to kind of like whittle back that attitude and actually kind of project toughness, sometimes not saying anything deeply offends people. I like the level of interaction between characters in the world is to me the thing that's wanted me to stay with this. And I've wanted to actively avoid combat altogether just to see how My Henry bounces off of other people in different ways. Yeah. And it's not some sort of simple just binary good or bad morality system. It's not like a fable kind of thing. There's just a level of complexity and unpredictability to it that you get

in real-life interaction, interpersonal interaction. And it just feels like a fairly realistic simulation of that. And I think that's another quality that it shares with Dragon's Dogma, too, and another thing that differentiates it from a Bethesda game where often you feel like you're the main character and everyone is giving you quests and everyone is aware of you. And in this game, I very often feel like a bit player in this larger conflict. Like there's a part early on where you show up at the door of the castle and you knock on the door and you announce yourself and, hey, let me in. I'm a noble. I've got an important message. And there's a part. And guards just dump a pot of poop on your head. That is what this game will do to you fairly often.

Sometimes you'll feel like I'm the main character, but sometimes you'll feel like, no, I just have main character syndrome. And I'm actually just doing my own thing in this larger world that may or may not be paying much attention to me. So I really respect that about this game and it's storytelling, too. Yeah. And the way that the world reacts to how you as a main character, or a bit character, really, present yourself is so exhilarating. Like, Steve, I also play a lot, like, I want to talk

my way out of things. I want to, you know, use the gift of the gab to get through stuff. And the way that this game, like, if you're trying to persuade someone of something, if you're wearing nice clothes, if you're clean, like, you have to literally, like,

wash in this game or you'll offend people. By the way, there's a conspicuousness stat in the, in your character sheet. And that goes up and down based on how much you feed yourself, you clean yourself, and who you have sex with. Which is another thing that I typically hate, not having sex, but feeding myself. You know what? In games, more immersion. More immersion, great. Yeah, in games, I'm like, I don't want to feed myself. I don't want to drink anything. Yeah, this is the mundane task. This is the chore that I have to do in real life. I want my empowerment fantasy. Yeah, you can turn into CJ from San Andreas. You can pack on some pounds, but it's just...

There are these growing pains that you have to go through with it of like figuring out, like, okay, first of all, if I'm going to convince this person of something, I have to look like I know what I'm talking about, right? Or look at the part that you're trying to play. Like if you're trying to act like a noble, you've got to dress like a noble. And it's not just like putting on a better hat.

It's putting on like the most expensive hat that you can find and keeping it clean. Yeah, washing it. And the game allows you to have, this is what I think, this would be terrible if they didn't give you three specific loadouts. You can swap between these loadouts at any time. So what I've found, and I guess what most people will probably find, is that your first loadout is going to be your combat loadout,

where you maxed out your armor and everything. You have a second load out that is focused on charisma for talking and convincing people of things and appearing well to do. and then you have your third loadout, which is like ultimate stealth mode, like, I'm wearing all black, nothing notable, like, and I am wearing things that won't make noise that will alert, because all of these stats matter for what you're doing. And it's so cool. Like, you constantly have to be aware of how you appear to the world. Like, if you kill someone in the woods, and then some guard comes around and it's like, hey, did you kill that guy? And you're just like, no. And then it cuts to you. And like, you're covered in blood. They're not going to believe you.

I don't believe you, guy covered in blood. Yeah. Yeah. It's got a great villain too. And if you're thinking, look, at times it gets too talky. And you can skip forward so that you don't have to hear every single sentence pronounced. But I would encourage people not to skip the cutscenes. I consider that anathema in any game, really, although it's top.

at times in this game because there are so many of them. And I looked up just a YouTube video of the cutscenes and just the story. And the story alone of this game, 19 and a half hours running time on YouTube, even when you cut out all the gameplay. So that's what we're talking about here. So it's a tough sell in that sense. But it is worth the investment in time, not for everyone, but it won our affections. and it was hard won affections.

It overcome our resistance. We stuck with it where we could have bounced off. But ultimately, that was rewarding. And I would recommend it. And I would advise people not to be scared off, give it a chance. And by a chance, we might mean 15 hours, but at least dip a toe in and see if you think the water is warm. And it's a tough time to say that because February is busy.

There are a lot of big games, a lot of other action RPGs. You have avowed. coming up in a couple of weeks. You have Monster Hunter Wilds at the end of this month. So there's a lot of competition and a lot of competing demands on your time, and we understand that. But don't sleep on Kingdom Come deliverance to 97% of critics on Open Critic recommend the game. And I guess we can add three more to that number.

For the people who this game is for, you're going to love this. Yes, yes. It will be memorable one way or another. And before we get too talky, we can cut this segment. Not short, but maybe medium. Thank you, Matt and Steve. Talk to you guys soon. Thanks, bud.

All right. For what it's worth, everything I've read about Kingdom Come suggests that the new game is significantly more accessible than the first one. So, yeah, not sorry I started with the second. Bigger and better. What more could one want from a sequel? Okay, let's tease some upcoming podcast sequels from the Ringerverson House of R. On Friday, the Midnight Boys, Poo-Pew, will be releasing a sequel to the sequel to the sequel to their Lord of the Rings all-black recast by performing the same exercise for Avengers Infinity War.

On Monday's Mint Edition, Jess, Steve, and Patrick Majomes, will be playing Monday morning podcaster reacting to trailers from the Super Bowl and the first three episodes of Invincible. And next Friday, the Midnight Boys will be back to give you their Captain America Brave New World reactions. Over on House of R, you can check out Malin Joe's Fantastic Four trailer reaction, followed next week by a winter mailbag and a sure-to-be-titling romanticese-smut pod. But MASH will be back late this month for a franchise speed dating episode, where we will whip through a bunch of big games in storied series whose latest sequels came out or are coming out in January or February. Dynasty Warriors, Sniper Elite, Civilization, Like a Dragon, Monster Hunter. Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can contact us at Ring Reverse Gaming at gmail.com.

As a number of listeners did last week to suggest some movies and TV shows, Jomi and I missed when we were naming the best movies, TV shows, and novels about video games. The two most popular listener submissions were Code Monkeys, the 2007 animated G4 show that's now on Peacock, and the 2006 contemporary bomb-turned cult classic of stoner cinema, Grandma's Boy, which is now on Hulu. Apologies for the oversight, I had not seen either. Two holes in my media knowledge that I rectified this week. Both of them do indeed revolve around game developers and game development. Here's what I'll say. They are two of the most aggressively made in the mid-2000s things you'll ever see. in some fun ways, but also a lot of

this hasn't held up well ways. I guess they're important time capsules in that they preserve the prevailing inappropriateness of the era, particularly in gaming culture for posterity. So had I seen them when they were new, I might feel more fondness for them, but slightly tough first watches in 2025,

despite the presence of my true love Linda Cardalini and Grandma's boy, it's not her fault, much as Star Trek Section 31 wasn't Michelle Yo's fault. Anyway, both important parts of the lineage of video game development stories that culminated in Mythic Quest. So thank you for flagging them.

And while we're talking 2000s, let's set up our second segment by taking it back to a TV spot from Y2K. Lovable, unpredictable, programmable. It's the Sims. Hey there, sport. What's all the racket? It's fusion, daddy.

The key to a cleaner burning fuel resides in this. You create the characters and design the surroundings anything's a possibility. The Sims. It's a new game every day. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech.

Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on. doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today.

This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, market peach, apricot, rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses.

predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Okay, content warning. This segment may make you feel old. On February 4, 2000, Electronic Arts published The Sims, a social simulation follow-up

to SimCity that was developed at Maxis by Will Wright. The game, its three sequels, and its multitudes of expansions and compilations have been played by about half a billion people and sold something like 200 million copies, making it one of the 10 best-selling game franchises of all time. To mark the 20th anniversary of the Sims, EA gave players a free hot tub. But the publisher has more than made up for that lackluster celebration five years ago, in honor of this Sims silver jubilee, EA re-released the Sims and the Sims 2 on PC,

published a bunch of Sims 4 updates, created an in-game blast from the past event in Sims 4, put lots of Sims stuff on sale, and hosted a 25-hour streaming marathon that features some celebrities, including Doja Cat, who's been playing The Sims since she was nine, and said,

this game is more than filling houses with ovens, making toast, and torturing people. That is true, although torturing people is also pretty important. I won't torture my next guest by extending this intro any further. I'm joined by a pair of Simmers, Ringer writer and fact-checker. Juliana Ress, welcome, Juliana. Thank you for having me. About time, we got a fact-checker on this podcast.

Feel free to correct me in real time. And Ringer, Senior Editor Cal, back on Buttmash for the first time since our GTA-6 trailer reaction 14 months ago, which was just about the last time we got any new info about GTA6. It has been a while. How you doing, man? Good to be back. Good to be back. Good to have you back. I would not describe myself as a simmer. A sinner, certainly. Simmer, not so much. And that is why you two are here. You go way back with this franchise. And I want to hear your memories. And Cal, you go back to the OG, which dates you maybe, but that's okay. That's what we're doing here. So tell us, That's how you discovered the Sims.

What do you recall about your initial Sims experience? And please express your answer in Simlish. Hey, I don't know. I was actually watching some videos on Simlish, and it's crazy to think how that even came about. I do not have good Simlish. Ah, you're not fluent, even after all this time. I don't want to embarrass myself.

I did not come prepared with any notes in Simlish. No, but if the game came out in February 2000, so I was introduced to it that Christmas by, of all people, my aunt, like my, my, the youngest of my aunt's, she was playing the game, I guess, for months at home. She, she doesn't go out anymore. That was all she was doing for a while. And she was begging me to install the Sims on my PC at the house. So when they came over for Christmas, she could play it. And I knew what Sim City was. I'd heard about that. I mean, I wasn't a big PC gamer at the time, but when I tell you, she sat there for like five hours and she was

detail. Like it was, it was so intricate the way you could, because you could, you could, you could literally simulate everything. The floors, the walls, where the windows go, where you want the kids bed. Like, there's so much you could do. And what got me interested, though, is my cousins. They're younger than me, maybe like 10 years younger than me. And they showed me how they would put the sim in the room with like a fireplace and then edit the door out. And then everything catches on fire and the sim passes away. Yeah. Leave it to the kids instead of just burning ants with. the magnifying glass. So just do it to the Sims, which is maybe more humane. They're not actually alive. They figured it out. And I was, I was intrigued. The thing is, is it's one of those games,

like I said, because it gets so, you can get so into detail, I usually ran out of money before I was able to complete a lot of things that I wanted to do. And at a certain point, I had things to do. Like, I was, you know, going to school. I was looking for a job. So it was hard to sit at the computer and worry about where my kids were up against Don Lothario and his family in the game. No, it was definitely probably like early 2001. And over the years, it went from, I definitely played Sims 2. I think the thing was, like I said, I wasn't a PC gamer. So when they started becoming readily available on like the PS2 and all the different consoles,

it was probably a couple of years after it came out. It was definitely discounted at that point, hopping in. And because the game is so, and I mean, I don't want to keep harboring on it, because there's so much you can do and so much custom content that people added to it, By the time I revisited it years later, it was almost like a totally different world. I hadn't realized that you could pump so much into the game. And I think that kind of scares me. Again, I don't have that much time to dedicate to that.

But I remember years later, hearing that Sims 4 is, you know, 10 plus years old at this point, I would keep up with a lot of that content through YouTube. A lot of it was, all right, here, I'll create my family and then, well, you know, do like three or four episodes, maybe six, 10 episodes on how they progressed in the sim life. And again, just seeing how vast the world got through that way, it's very intimidating. Kudos to anybody who can have a kid grow up, you know, have careers and whatnot at this point, because I can't even get through Heist and GTA at this point. Yeah.

So you're saying that you abandoned your Sims creations to focus on your own real life. Seems selfish in my minds, but... It went from Sims to IRL. Yeah. You started a physical family. family, a flesh and blood family, which, I mean, compared to the Sims, that's easy, really. You had your training wheels in the Sims, and then you took the training wheels off and had an actual kid. So we all know just how easy that is.

And, Juliana, you came along a little later, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, because, again, you're a fact checker. So you started with the Sims 2, which was 2004, but unlike Cal, you have stuck with the series ever since, it sounds like. So walk me through your own introduction and evolution. with the Sims. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Sims 2 was the first. I actually also played my Sims, which was like a spin-off game for a DS that was kind of a copy of Animal Crossing. That might have actually been the first real Sims game I played, but Sims 2 was definitely the first of like the mainline series I played. I would say my introduction to it was I had a very common younger

sibling experience with video games where my older brother played games on the console on the TV. and I played games on the family computer in the same room. Yeah. That helps with the sibling harmony if you don't have to share the same screen. Exactly. And I was obsessed with anything like simulators or anything like you could customize anything. So that started off with like when I was really young, like playing flash games that were like Barbie and Brats games. And so graduating from that to like the tycoon games like the roller coaster tycoon,

Maul Tycoon played those. And then going into the Sims from that, like Cal said, it felt like a whole world was opened up to me. Like I had never experienced a game that felt that big, that there was so much you could do in it. And so, yeah, I have stuck with it ever since. I would say Sims 3 is the one I played the most. And after playing Sims 2 on the family computer, I eventually got Sims 3, which for some reason we decided to put that on my mom's laptop. And that laptop did not work for anything else. after that. I pretty much just claimed the Sims 3 on that laptop, and that was my laptop after that. How would you say that the series has evolved or not through the official releases? We can get into the modding community and just all the ways that that has shaped the game. But in the mainline

releases, how would you say the Sims sort of leveled up or in the expansions for that matter? I would say, I'm guessing that the jump from Sims 1 to Sims 2 was probably the biggest of the series. because when I think back on Sims 2 and 3, I don't feel like the game was totally different, but there are things that have definitely been added via expansion packs that were things that fans were asking for a long time. Like with recent expansion packs, there's been like they added apartments,

which was something people asked for for a long time. There was like interactive jobs, which I always wanted in the game. That's now in the Sims 4, where before you would just send, your SIM off to their job and like fast forward and then they'd come home. But now there are certain careers where you can actually go and like interact. And some of them are even like design careers. Like they have interior design career in the Sims 4 now. And there's also like interactive school,

which you can take your SIM to school, which was the same thing before where you would just send the SIM off to school fast forward and they'd come home. Now you can actually go with them. But again, that's all via expansion packs. Helicopter parenting, just like in real life. Yeah, it's a multitude of options. And I wonder, how looking back at reading some of the retrospectives that have been published this week, the BBC did a deep dive in the New York Times, interviewed Will Wright. And it's striking that there was doubts and there was resistance to the concepts, the premise of the Sims, which in retrospect, now that we know it's a massive success, seems like a natural extension of the Sims brand. Okay, you build a city.

why wouldn't you want to populate that city and then control those characters? But there was a lot of skepticism that people would play this, which in retrospect seems preposterous. Yeah, I guess this would have predated second life and things like that. When I think back,

I can't think of too many games that allowed you to do this, almost kind of like similar to games like GTA where it's like, you know, we're giving you unique experiences, kind of dropping you in a sandbox and allowing you to explore. Like, we're giving you the sandbox

and the sands like in a bag over here and you can scoop however much you want in here and you can put some rocks. Like, you know, you're really able to get in there and do what you want to do. The other interesting part about the beginning of the series, I hadn't realized. At one point, they were not sure if they wanted

to have same-sex relationships in the game. And I guess at some point there was a programmer that came and that had no idea about that concept. So they, you know, they were working on, you know, having same-sex relationships in the game. It was at EA where they, had a simulated wedding in 1999 and randomly, I guess they didn't realize that two of the women

in the wedding party, they were starting a relationship during the wedding party and had a kiss during E3. And that ended up being the biggest thing that got people, you know, to come over to their booth. So it's interesting. I guess a lot of that trepidation probably was because, like I said, you know, it was uncharted waters for them for a lot of people, you know, you really weren't getting games like this. So hearing them break down how, like, you know, they created Simlish and, you know, coming from, like, you know, comedians who were doing, like, you know, improv conversations that,

you know, were really just full of gibberish and them turning that into stuff. Like, it's really fascinating to hear how they put all this together. But, yeah, it was one of a kind at that time. And it's funny to see a lot of the clones. You mentioned my sins. You mentioned a lot of the different things, whether it's expansion packs or whole other games, you know, Animal Crossing. I don't know.

Did the Sims walk so Animal Crossing could run? I mean, I think there's definitely a path between those two. Yeah, I think you could even say something like Minecraft or Roblox where it's just sort of this sandbox environment and you build what you want and then there becomes a creator economy and the company puts it out there and then the players take it and run with it and just endlessly creates new stuff to do in that world. I think the Sims was sort of a forerunner of some of those phenomena that we have today. And I think some of that trepidation was mainly about, yeah, what would the target audience? be with this appeal to the dude who was seen as the main demographic of gaming at that time. And I think that's been one of the strengths of the Sims is that it does appeal to a lot of people across many demographics, age, sexual orientation, gender, race.

This has been a strength of the series at times that it has allowed same-sex relationships or, you know, sometimes it wasn't something the game supported initially. and then the community stepped up, and the game was slower to embrace that, but the options were out there, whether it was providing a greater range of skin tones, for instance. And so a lot of players could see themselves in The Sims. And also, it's a game that I think is accessible

to people who may not normally be gamers or consider themselves gamers. And nowadays, with mobile gaming and everything, a lot of people consider themselves gamers, even if they're not necessarily playing on PC or playing on console. the barrier to entry is lower. But you said a cow with your aunt playing, right?

And then younger relatives or your sibling, Juliana, were you someone who played a lot of games and then found the Sims through that? Or was this unusual for you that you got hooked on this particular game? I would say my experience with games was very limited at the time. Like the games my brother was playing on the console. I didn't play until now I've gone back and played as an adult. but at the time I didn't. So the Sims definitely felt like,

oh, this is a big game that also is kind of mine in a way that I didn't feel about other games back then. It felt like, oh, this is actually a real game. Like, I haven't played many games like this. Yeah, it becomes a gateway, or at least for some people it did. Or it just becomes in itself kind of a lifelong passion because you just keep playing new Sims or the same Sims.

Speaking of which, EA announced last year that there would not be a Sims 5, that Sims 4 is just a perpetual product, that they will continue to support it and provide new content for it, but will not be releasing a sequel. And, Juliana, what did you make of that decision to not just keep pumping out sequels,

but to accept the reality, really, of this game is an ongoing game. It just lives forever. Sims 4 came out in 2014, so it's almost like Grand Theft Auto, where you get 2013 GTA 5 and then GTA online becomes such a lucrative product and something you could sink so much time into that the impetus to make a sequel just wasn't there and EA eventually conceded, yeah, we're just not even going to do that.

So was that just sort of accepting the reality that already existed or the inevitable? Or was there some part of you that was sad to see that? Yeah, I can't say I was surprised by that decision considering like it's not Sims 4 is clearly a game. they are working on regularly. And like in the past two years, there have been like five full expansion packs that are of full price. And, you know, clearly people are playing those

and buying them. Right. Because the game itself went free to play in 2020. And so they get you in the door and then they sell you more stuff. Right. And as someone who kind of pays attention to the Sims community a little bit,

I even get the sense that I can't speak for everyone, but there wasn't too much disappointment in the announcement that there wasn't going to be a Sims 5 because if you're someone who has all these expansion packs, you've spent well over $1,000 on one game. And so I think there is a thought of if Sims 5 came out, would that be like starting over? Because, you know, there were things from the Sims 3 to Sims 4

that didn't carry over that had to be reintroduced in Sims 4 via expansion packs. Would it be the same with Sims 5, where it wouldn't be all these features we've gotten used to from the Sims 4 expansion packs would kind of be starting over again with Sims 5 and we've invested so much into this one game already. Yeah. How have you historically

treated your Sims, Julianna? Are you a benevolent God? Are you treating them humanely? I would say I am very benevolent. I am not a torturous simmer. I'm someone who I don't even really use cheats that much. I don't do Control Shift C

mother load very often. I would say I try to do like a rags to riches type story when I'm playing a lot of the time. And going from playing as a kid to playing as an adult, because there were definitely periods in between where I kind of got off of it and then got back into it. Now the side of the game that kind of appeals to me more is like the architectural design because that's how I got, that's kind of how I got back into it,

was seeing videos of people designing genuinely these like beautiful homes in the Sims. Now that's kind of the part of the game that appeals to me that didn't appeal to me as much as a kid. And Cal, when you stopped playing as actively, were you still sort of keeping a finger in the Sims pie just by following what other people were doing? Because that's become a big part of the Sims experience. As you said, Julianne, is sort of staying in touch with the Sims community, just watching on YouTube, just seeing what people created, even if you're not personally playing as much anymore. Yeah, again, because I'm more of a console gamer, I keep up with a lot of the PC. I was, especially at the time I was keeping up with a lot of the PC side via YouTube, especially like, I remember GTA with all the cheats.

I was every day there was a new video with people getting money and then getting their accounts were taken away. Juliana mentioning the people doing jobs, I forgot that the first time I saw a simmer, I believe they were a firefighter. And I was like, oh, I didn't realize they're up the pole. They're, you know, they're ready to go, you know, shoot water and everything. Like, it's been really amazing to see that. And I think to echo what Juliana was saying earlier, it's definitely not a surprise.

that they went in this route, I think a lot of the video game IP that's able to have like sustained worlds and sustained communities, it's forever online. I think GTA's done it, Fortnite's done it. There's a lot of games that maintain that, that free-to-play aspect, and then they, you know, they gouge you on the packs and the DLCs or whatever. But yeah, it makes sense. Like, when would they come with the Sims 5? Is that, because I'm thinking, like, we're also in a time.

I don't want to get too big brain, but, like, we're in between the time. of there's going to be a new console coming soon. Like could part of it be that they don't want to put a game out to then have to reconfigure it in another couple of years when like the new, you know, PlayStation 6 or whatever comes out? I assume that like Rockstar, they would be happy to keep releasing new versions that people will buy in perpetuity

as long as those things keep selling. So I think it's more just a recognition that this is a platform more so than it is an individual game and that that platform can keep evolving. And sometimes you put out a sequel. We were just talking about Overwatch and Overwatch 2 earlier in this podcast. Sometimes that doesn't go the way that you want. And sometimes there's a question of why did this even need to be a sequel as opposed to just continuing to tinker with the original?

You mentioned Fortnite. And there have been some IP crossover efforts to the Sims, like a Star Wars content pack for Sims 4. There's been a little less of that than certainly in Fortnite, which is just realistically the close. this thing that we actually have to a metaverse other than maybe second life, as you noted. And that's just nonstop kind of constant crossovers. The Sims maybe has been a bit more measured and it's maybe more about creating your own thing than having some skin of some popular property. And of course, there are mods so you can just do whatever you want, find whatever you want.

Have you explored the modding options much, Julianne? Or have you just sort of admired them from afar but continued to work? with the vanilla base game for the most part. In terms of modding, I haven't really gotten into that world. However, like, there are modders and creators in the Sims community that have now, like, collaborated on expansion packs with the Sims that have come out. And so there are some of those that I've played with a little bit. Like, I know there's a creator named Zarela who worked on the Modern Lux kit and, like,

just some beautiful furniture in that kit. And you can tell when a Simmer is collaborating on a little. kit because it's things that people actually notice in the game are missing and needed. Like, I know there was a piece of furniture in that kit that was curtains with a rod with no curtains. So you could make the curtain as long as you want. And this was huge news in the Sims community. This was a big deal.

Yeah, there's been a lot of that. That's a fascinating trend in my mind's the collaboration between the community and modders and the actual original makers of the game. which sometimes is very harmonious and sympathico and symbiotic and other times can be kind of exploitative. It's just make stuff for us and we won't really pay you and it'll make us money. But the Sims, again, probably fairly early when it comes to that trend of, hey, look at all this cool stuff that the community is making. Let's incorporate that into official releases. And you could probably lump in Valve and various Half-Life mods into that trend as well.

So at this point, the Sims is so established and so dominant that it's tough to unseat, tough to topple. And we talked at the top of the pod about the incumbent advantage when it comes to, say, Overwatch and how hard it is to come at the King. If you come at the Sims, you best not miss. You better have that Marvel IP to give you some sort of hook. So if you have the Sims, which has just dominated this space for decades, then how do you break? into that world. And a number of people are trying. People have been kind of wishcasting a Life Sim Renaissance. One potential rival called Life by You was canceled last year when its creator conceded that I don't think that it was actually clearly better than Sims 4 in any of its main areas,

which seems like a problem. That's not a selling point if it's not better than the current dominant game. And you also have some challengers to the throne recently arrived. or soon to arrive. And maybe we can just list a few of them and you can tell me which you're looking forward to, if any, or whether these will scratch some itch that the Sims is not scratching for you. So first up, there's a game that I believe is pronounced in joy.

It's spelled I-N-Z-O-I. And this comes from the publisher of PubG Battlegrounds. It's coming next month. And the differentiating factor here is that this is built in Unreal Engine 5. It's a photorealistic open world. It just looks a lot different from the Sims, just very polished fancy graphics.

There's also a game called Paralives coming to Early Access, at least this year, crowdfunded indie open world Sims. There's Viva Land coming this year, which is more multiplayer-oriented. There are also some more pixelated lo-fi alternatives, Tiny Life, which came out in Early Access in 2023. There's Little Sim World, a 2D Animal Crossing, Star Doe sort of Sims,

like. So, Cal, any of these catch your eye? Can you be tempted to return to this world by any of the Sims competitors? You know, like these days, I do a lot of my casual gaming on the Nintendo Switch, and I've found that a lot of those, I don't know if you would consider Sims a cozy game, but I found that like, you know, I do play games that are considered cozy games. And I've, because of that, that tiny life game, if that was on the switch, that just like, you know, it feels like Sims, but it's very scaled down and like hyper-pixelated, you know, as a design choice. I would be into that. I would definitely be into that.

Again, I don't know how long my, it may be a tiny life for some of those characters in there, depending on, you know, how I get into it. But of the ones listed, that's the one that really caught my eye. I don't know about the ones that are too photo-realistic. I like the quirkiness of the Sims and, you know, some of these games as opposed to something that looks like a simulation of literally me walking around down to the beard here. Your real-life family suffices if you want photorealism. But, um, Julianna, have you strayed from the Sims?

Have you cheated on this franchise at any point or dabbled in any Sims competitor? And has any of these intrigued you? I'm definitely a Stardue Valley fan, which I don't know if you would call that necessarily a competitor to the Sims. But like Cal was saying, the ones that are a little more kind of in that art style, going for something a little more unique from the Sims, that appeals to me a little more more than the photorealistic or the Unreal Engine type of thing, like going for something completely different as an aesthetic just because the Sims has its own really unique visual

language and like really has this own like quirky world to it. So going for something in a completely different direction, that would more appeal to me than just going for like photorealism or something like that. But I will say something that is definitely grounds to innovate in the world of the Sims is the open world aspect, because that is something that I think the Sims hasn't totally evolved on over time. The worlds themselves still feel a little bit limited and you can't move freely. So I think if a game really perfected that aspect of it, that would be something I'd be interested in. Yeah. And we should note that even though EA is not going to be publishing a Sims 5, Maxis has been working on something codenamed Project Renee working title,

which has been in the works for a few years and maybe started as a Sims 5 and then spun off into whatever it is, which it's very vague. There is no release date announced. It's still fairly early on in development seemingly, but maybe is more multiplayer oriented. Maybe is more of that open world direction. That seems like it would be a natural way for this franchise to go that could be complementary without, again, just being a direct sequel, but something that could sort of, sit alongside standard Sims and give people something that the original franchise doesn't. So is that the direction that you would like the Sims franchise or any of the competitors to go? Are there any other things on your wanted list or your wish list, Juliana, that you've always wished that you could do in the Sims? Yeah, I'm open to the kind of multiplayer aspect of it. I think that too would really appeal to casual gamers too because, you know, I have friends who I've

talked to who played Sims in the past and kind of have gotten off it. And when I've like talked to them about it, they're like, oh, I wish we could, you know, play together. I kind of think in a way of like the Stardue Valley multiplayer where you can kind of work on your farm together. I could kind of picture something like that working for the Sims. In terms of things I would want to see in the game, that open world aspect I was talking about. And also, I think for careers, like there are the interactive careers, but they're still pretty limited. I think there's still more they could be doing in that realm. But overall, I think the multiplayer thing is the next frontier for the Sims. Before we wrap up, any particularly memorable Sims experiences for either of you, a particular

creation or world or family or career, anything that stands out to you from your decades with this franchise? Yeah, I have one. I remember as a kid, I was really obsessed with the Beatles also and had a like Beatles themed bedroom and I made the Beatles in the Sims and I wish I could see that now because in my mind it was like it was like

I was like had the mask machine for Mission Impossible in my mind I made the spitting image of them so I really wish I could go back and actually see if that was accurate but I remember like moving the sliders like a millimeter to be like

okay Paul's upper lip is a little more full. I need to adjust that. Yeah. Those eyes should be a little more puppy-like. We need a little more droop there. Yeah. So while I wasn't a torturous simmer, maybe I was just torturing myself by making these complicated sims. Yeah. I was not playing the Sims at the time, but if I had been, that is what I would have been doing with my Sims as well. I just, I was doing Beatles rock band instead when that came along. How about you, Cal? Honestly, this is going to sound weird as a kid who grew up trying to master all the first three mortal combats. It was that first time I saw a Sim die and the ghosts go up.

I was, oh my gosh. Again, it's one of those things where you kind of see the possibilities of something that you never really seen in a medium that I was fairly familiar with. So yeah, it was definitely the first time I saw Sim pass away, rest in peace, to whoever that Sim was. Yeah, you didn't do it. Maybe one of your relatives did, but it wasn't you. Yeah, you were perhaps negligent as a guardian, but it was not willful. It was sims slaughter, at least, not simicides.

So it seems to be that maybe the franchise was just ahead of its time in some respects, because we're talking about the multiplayer aspect. And the Sims did attempt to go in that direction. There was the Sims online, but that was 2002 putting out this massively multiplayer online version of the Sims. And it just didn't really hit at the time. And the reviews were not so hot. And it was just sort of like a, you know, bland. Metaverse environment where there maybe just wasn't that much to do and it was kind of more of a chat platform than anything else. But again, maybe if that had come along a little later, it would have resonated or like a film adaptation. That seems like, well, how did that not ever happen? And it was supposed to happen. There was a live action film announced in 2007 and it was just stuck in development hell forever and wonder, well, how does a Minecraft movie come along before a Sims movie? But maybe it was just two

soon. It was when there was still considered to be a curse on video game adaptations. And actually last year, it was announced that there is supposed to be a Sims movie now. So we'll see if that actually happens. There was, I guess, a reality show called The Sims Sparked, which ran for four episodes on TBS in 2020. I missed that one. Don't know about you too. But no idea. Yep. No idea. That happened. I guess that is how the audience responded just in general. But I'm glad that we had a couple sims savants on staff here so that you could join me to reminisce little Sims nostalgia, never heard anyone. And of course, this is still an active concern. This is still a thriving franchise and one that people are attempting to rival,

and we will see if there's any success, if anyone can produce something that is a viable alternative to the Sims. So here's to 25 more years of this franchise. And I would never strand either of you in a ladderless swimming pool. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you. That will do it for today. Thanks to my many guests, all fantastic four of them.

Thank you to Devin Ronaldo for producing this podcast. Thanks to our Juneer Remgapal for everything he does behind the scenes here at the Ringiverseverse. You can contact us at Ringiverse Gaming at Gmail.com. Tell us what terrible atrocities you committed with your Sims. Stay tuned to the Ringiverse feed for Invincible and Super Bowl trailer reactions, the Infinity War recast and the Midnight Boys, No cap coverage.

But MASH will be back later this month with a big release roundup. And to you, our lovely listeners, I say badish, which is thank you in Simlish. At least, I hope it is. Again, I don't speak Simlish that well. But I do like speaking to you about video games, so I'll be back to do that soon. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But Real doesn't start on a label. It starts at the source.

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