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961. New Server Running [Update]

Written on Saturday 13 November 2004 at 13:37 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

As you read this, we're running on a new, faster server, with a lot more bandwidth too. You may have experienced a few hours downtime but we're back and running now. The new server has far less sites running on it, as it's almost dedicated. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a few DNS-related problems which cause thesimszone.com to be offline at the moment, as well as thesimszone.co.uk without www (all other subdomains work fine). We hope to solve these problems as soon as possible, until then please just use www.thesimszone.co.uk or the subdomains there. We apologise for the inconvenience and hope to have everything back soon.

[Update 15:15] The entire thesimszone.co.uk is now functional, even if you don't use "www." now. TheSimsZone.com should be back within the next few hours, that's a matter of waiting.

962. EA Employees sue Company [Update]

Written on Friday 12 November 2004 at 19:42 by ChEeTaH - 6 comments.

Some employees of Electronic Arts, including members of the Sims 2 team, have filed a lawsuit against the company. The employees have had to work overtime during crunch-times (rushes before the major deadlines), which meant working 12 hours a day 7 days a week, with occasionally the Saturday evening off. The group of employees claims they didn't get paid for the extra hours they worked, nor did they get extra hours off, or extra vacation days in return. EA's attitude towards this is said to be "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." The details are revealed by the spouse of an EA worker, in a blog post. "This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable." The spouse claims EA's actions to make employees work too long - almost 90 hours a week - is "unethical" and "illegal." Another part says the turnover rate in engineering at EA is approximately 50%, which means a lot of people leave the company constantly, and new ones join.

GameSpot further investigated this issue, and brought up that Attorney Robert C. Schubert, partner at San Francisco law firm Schubert & Reed LLP, has "initiated legal proceedings to start a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of EA employees." EA claims the employees fell under the Californian exemption law, Senate Bill 88, which does not apply to the entertainment industry and only to specialty employees earning at least $90,000 annually. The claim "Jamie Kerschenbaum vs. Electronic Arts, Inc." was filed 29 July of this year. Jamie was part of the Sims 2 design team, although his current employment status is unknown. "EA will not retaliate against employees for exercising legal rights, including by participating in the proposed class action." More about this can be read in the GameSpot newspost or the EA Spouse blog.

[Update 22:20] More posts by former EA employees have been published. See the read more area (or read on below) for the details about those. Read More!

963. First Expansion: University? [Update]

Written on Friday 12 November 2004 at 18:29 by ChEeTaH - 2 comments.

Sims have been made smarter with the upgrade from the Sims 1 to the Sims 2. But could it be the first expansion pack will take it even a step further? Over at GameStop a title has appeared on CD-Rom, that's called "The Sims 2: University". Its release is set to 1 May 2005, but that's likely to change as EA's CEO Larry Probst had already stated it would be released in the first quarter of the next year. Any more details are not yet revealed but we'll keep you updated. Also see GameStop's product details for more. Thanks to James Magenta for the link.

[Update 18 November 2004, 23:25] With thanks to James for the new link, GameStop has removed and put back the product details for the pack. Remarkable is its price tag, of $39.99 ($10 more than Sims 1 expansion packs), but also the new release date which matches what EA CEO Larry Probst told earlier: it's now set for 21 March according to GameStop. We'll keep you updated!

964. SimDay: The Strangerhood [Update]

Written on Thursday 11 November 2004 at 13:43 by ChEeTaH - 1 comment.

This week's SimDay is more like a StrangerhoodDay. But first, MaxoidKane has sent out a private message to all registered members. Maxis will be cleaning out the exchange, by removing unpopular files from the database. That way, Maxis hopes to make it easier for people to find what they're looking for. Anything that was posted "in the last 21 days, featured items, frequently downloaded items, and rated content" will be kept, anything else will be removed. It's recommended to make a local back-up copy if you fear your content will be deleted, so you can always reupload it:

"Our creative and talented Sims 2 community has been growing at a fantastic rate and in turn the Exchange has been growing at a rapid rate. We've found it has become difficult for users to wade through the incredible amounts of content. We think that regularly removing unused content from the system provides a benefit to users looking for quality content.

"Beginning next week, we'll be pruning the Exchange database on a regular basis in order to help users trying to locate quality content and to provide space for more content in the future. Content added in the last 21 days, featured items, frequently downloaded items, and rated content will be retained. Content that does not meet this criteria will be removed. Rest assured, we have adjusted the criteria for the length of time the content has been on the exchange. If you're worried about your content being removed, please back up a copy of your content locally. We'll conduct regular cleanings of the Exchange following this criteria from now on."

Furthermore, there's some Strangerhood news. Tonight at 3pm PST (11pm GMT, midnight in Europe) a chat will be held with two creators of the series, Burnie and Matt from Rooster Teeth Productions. You can join the chat to ask them questions about writing scripts or creating the movies. The auditorium will open approximately 10 minutes before the chat starts. You can find it on the chat page. Rooster Teeth has also made a second episode of the series, titled "The one with the Premise". It's just under 5 minutes and comes in DivX, Windows Media and QuickTime format. You can download it from the Strangerhood Archive.

[Update 12 November, 1:45am] The chat transcript has been posted. If you want to know more about the series or the guys behind it, you might want to read it. Episode 2 of the series is now also available for download on the official Sims 2 site, which you can use if the Strangerhood one is slow for you. Finally, something that was posted late this simday, is a new object. The Greek "Touch of Autumn" Cornucopia can function as decoration in any Sims 2 house. You can download it from this page on the Exchange.

965. UrbzDay: Comic and Cheats

Written on Thursday 11 November 2004 at 13:29 by ChEeTaH - 1 comment.

It's Urbzday again, and now the game has been released Maxis has already published the cheats for the game. You can already find out how to reveal the gnome, get all power socials, skills and more by visiting our cheat overview. If you'd rather see the official overview check out the cheats for PlayStation 2, GameCube or XBox. And as the past few weeks, Maxis has posted a new comic. This week Jay Stephens takes Jayde to Kicktail Park. Find out what happens there by reading the Kicktail Park Comic now.

966. New Poll

Written on Thursday 11 November 2004 at 12:43 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

This week's poll is all about the performance of the Sims 2 on your computer. How well does it run? Smoothly with all settings to the max, or doesn't it run at all? Vote on the right or the latest poll page. As for last week, we asked you what you are waiting for the most. The first expansion for the Sims 2 is by far the winner; it got almost 56% of the 332 votes. The patch is second with 16%, and a new computer to play the game got 13%. Then there's a difference of one vote in favour of The Urbz on the Consoles compared to nothing of the possible options at all, with approximately 7% of the votes. The handheld version of the Urbz and a console for the Urbz were both tied at 3 votes, which is almost 1%. All the results are on the results page.

967. The Urbz Officially Released

Written on Wednesday 10 November 2004 at 15:26 by ChEeTaH - 1 comment.

The Urbz: Sims in the City has officially been released in the US today. Europe and other parts of the world will follow tomorrow or friday. The Urbz is the latest title in the Sims franchise for consoles (PlayStation 2, GameCube and X-Box) and handhelds (GBA and DS). The first 700.000 copies of the game contain with a download card with which you can download 4 exclusive Black Eyed Peas tracks from Apple's iTunes. Along with the launch of the game itself, EA has also teamed up with Atomic Toys, which has made toys based on characters in the handheld version of the game. Toys based on the console game will follow later this year. You can expect a complete review from us soon, but until then there's a preview written almost a month ago, which you can read. Of course you can also buy the game on the platform of your choice, or the official strategy guide from our shop.

968. Urbz Update

Written on Tuesday 9 November 2004 at 22:17 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

The Urbz has hit the shelves in the US - at least several shops have started shipping it, but tomorrow it'll officially be released. Several sites have posted something about the game in the past few days, including a first review. That one comes from GameSpy. It gets a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, and a "don't bother" for the multiplayer aspect of the game. In general the game is pretty good according to GameSpy, if not a little bit easy. On the technical side, their comment is that the graphics are just "average," but the camera is worse, as it can regularly get stuck behind objects. In the end it's a good game for console gamers. Read the review for all the exact comments from GameSpy.

There are also 3 short previews of the game posted in the past few weeks. The longest is from GamerFeed, is generally positive and says it will be "just as addictive as the previous console and PC titles." InsidePulse is less wild about the game, but still positive. Finally, All Game Guide just mentions the main features without much of an opinion. But there's more... Read More!

969. Pedophilia possible in The Sims 2

Written on Saturday 6 November 2004 at 14:49 by ChEeTaH - 12 comments.

A cheat (or hack, I don't know how exactly it works) makes it possible for children and teens to behave like adults, or vice versa. This means adults can end up screaming in a crib or being thrown in the air, but it would also be possible for young Sims to relax in the bed (or more) with older Sims.

The cheat was sent to JeroenZelle.nl, a Dutch site with a Sims 2 section. They were asked to publish the cheat but haven't done yet so far. Jeroen has said the cheat to make adults act like children will be published, but the other way around won't be. Harmless pictures of adults behaving like children can be seen in this overview. Dutch weblog GeenStijl has published 3 other pictures which should only be viewed by adults if anyone. They can be found through this post, which has links to the pictures (note: The Sims Zone is not responsible for the content of other sites linked to, including this one. The article doesn't show the pictures themselves but has links to them. You can view them, but doing so is at your own risk and is your own responsibility).

Maxis has already been told of the cheat and its possibilities and they've said the patch should fix this.

970. Will Wright @ GamesRadar

Written on Friday 5 November 2004 at 00:27 by ChEeTaH - 0 comments.

Will Wright, founder of Maxis and brain behind SimCity and the Sims, sat down with GamesRadar recently for an interview. In it, Wright tells about his view on the world and the human mind, but of course also about the Sims 2. The ideas behind elements of the game, and reasons why certain gameplay features were implemented are also being discussed.

"For me, robots, and games building little human, toylike Sims are the same thing. How can we learn more about ourselves? The human mind is by far the most complex thing in the known universe, we understand more about galaxies and stars than we do about the human brain. I think we'll be studying it for a long time."

The entire interview consists of 3 pages. Click here if you'd like to read it.