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Archive for the 'Nancy Smith' Tag

The Sims goes bargain hunting at Ikea

May 15th, 2008, 6:00 am by

The Sims meets IkeaLast year, it was H&M.

This year, it’s Ikea.

Announced today, the Swedish retailer of inexpensive furniture and home furnishings is the latest company to open shop in The Sims, the extremely popular computer game where people play house and make sure their virtual characters are fed, rested and regular.

The Sims 2 “Ikea Home Stuff” software pack includes all those unpronounceable names, like the VIKA HYTTAN table, the HELMER drawer unit and, can’t forget, the LACK zig-zag shelf system. Some screen shots of the game, gratis Electronic Arts, which publishes the game (click for larger images):

The Sims meets Ikea The Sims meets Ikea

Last year, The Sims added clothing from Swedish fashion shop H&M, which was a huge hit online and offline. When I interviewed The Sims president, Nancy Smith, last month, she mentioned that as part of the H&M promotion, they organized The Sims 2 H&M runway event online with clothing designed by fans. Broadcast on Yahoo, footage ran for six weeks and attracted 50 million views. More big news about this partnership is expected this summer.

However, there’s no mention if the Ikea/Sims partnership will continue to collaborate outside of the game.

Ikea Stuff goes on sale for $19.99 on June 23 in North America, June 27 in Europe and June 20 across the Asia-Pacific regions.

Related stories:

The Sims Carnival: Design your own game for free
OCRegister, April 2008: OC native is head of The Sims

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Design your own game for free

April 15th, 2008, 9:25 am by

Create your own games with Sims CarnivalWhile working on a story about Nancy Smith, president of EA’s super-popular The Sims games, I learned about a new site in the works: Sims Carnival. Just as Sims players can create and customize anything from fashion to furniture, the new Carnival site will let people create games.

Although it’s in a closed beta, a big green button on the site invites anyone to sign up and “become part of The Sims Carnival community.”

Dreaming up games sounds like fun but oh so complicated, especially for people like me with no programming experience. Carnival has managed to simplify the process. The company invited me into its beta test so I’ve been playing around with game creation for a few hours. Just follow the step-by-step wizard to “create” a game. Choose what type of game you want to build — shooter, racing, action and puzzle — and then add features like time limit, amount of ammunition, speed, etc.

Create your own games with Sims Carnival

The site also offers a downloadable game creator kit. This allows users to customize what actions happen if, for example, players hit the space bar or an object collides with another object. You can use the free art and sound effects or add your own. With the kit, you can also download other creator’s games and see how they did it.

I don’t know a thing about programming a real game, but I created a game, which I deleted because it was lame. I want to do better. Perhaps I will revisit the site and develop my own game. One expected caveat: the game can only be played on the site. (Hopefully, you don’t give up all rights to the game if you happen to create the next Tetris.) It’d also be nice if they let you embed the game into your site/blog. Is that even possible? Sims Carnival is slated to launch “in the next few months,” the company told me.

Design your own gamesIn the meantime, if you have a hankering for some easy-to-use game creation tools, Sploder.com is another simple, web-based game creator site. Also check out this list of software for non-programmers. If you have others to share, please do. I’d like to check them out myself with all the extra time I have …

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