The Sims Online is a veritable exercise in boredom lovingly and carefully wrapped in fun’s clothing by Maxis and EA, two companies that have struggled to make this a great online experience but have, for the most part, failed at creating the kind of virtual world any Sim would want to reside in.

I joined the Beta Test in mid November and played all the way through the product’s completion, even enjoying some of my “two free weeks” that Maxis and EA had promised beta testers, but ultimately this game became the electronic equivalent of an afternoon re-run: Sure, it might bring back pleasant memories, and it might even hold your interest for some time, but after awhile you realize it really, truly is just retreading the same old ground.

An Ambitious Plan

The idea behind TSO is simple: based on the engine and variable system at work in Maxis’ rabidly popular Sims games (and multitude of expansion packs), Maxis believed it could successfully launch an online, interactive world where people could design Sims and live out their lives in a classic, massively multiplayer online game.

To give credit where it is thus due, it is indeed worth noting that some of the concepts employed by TSO are nothing short of revolutionary. After you create a Sim, the game is completely open-ended. It is entirely possible to live off the land as a sort of roaming social magnate, making enough money to afford your hobbies, food, or whatever.

But, of course, the prospect of owning land is too exciting, and this where Maxis’ game design begins to botch up.

Another Manic Monday

So let’s say you decide its time to buy a house. Okay, no problem: look at the massive virtual map and pick a spot. But, you better be prepared to spend some time looking, because many of the locations on the map have long since been swallowed up, or are out of your financial reach (so much for the lakeshore home).

After your find a home, moving in is not as easy as it looks. Sure, you might have what seems like an ample amount of money, but after buying the actual lot, you’ll find that you don’t have a lot of money left for the actual building of the home. Maxis has curtailed this problem to some degree by making many items cheaper than their counterparts in The Sims. Wall sections, for example, that would have cost $79 a pop now run for $3 in TSO. Windows run for around $20 apiece. Flooring and wallpaper is in the single digits. Sounds like a dream, right?

Wrong. Reductions in building costs are offset by increases in appliance cost. This is because Maxis is trying to encourage people to get together and pool their cash. Thus, major appliances are much more expensive, entertainment items even more so (a big-screen TV that ran for $3,500 in The Sims will set you back around $10,000 in TSO), but the queens of expensive items are the high-end job objects, such as the much-controversial CODE machine, which can be yours for the low, low price of $20,000.

Resourceful players quickly realize that if they pool their resources, life will be easier. Thus, TSO allows a Roommate system, whereby up to seven friends can move into your home with you, sharing the cost of ownership, maintenance, etc. This also makes expanding your piecemeal lot into something less Spartan—because as you acquire more roomies, expansion costs go down.

But if you can’t send your Sims to work, as you could have in past games, what can you do to get money?

Monetary income in TSO basically arrives from one of two sources: Job and skill objects, and Visitors. Of the two, money that TSO gives you for attracting visitors to your home (called a “vistor bonus”) pays far more, but when you’re just starting out, this source of income ranges from inconsistent to nonexistent.

Your best bet at the beginning, instead, is to home your Sims’ skills in one of several unique areas. Mechanical, logic, and body are used more than any of the others, because these skills tend to pay more, and are used on the almighty CODE machine. Once again, TSO fails in this aspect of Sim development: woe be it for the Sim that attempts to emphasize charisma, cooking, or creativity. Because these skills aren’t in “the big three”, less players tend to learn them, and because the speed at which you learn a skill is affected by however many people are learning the same skill on the lot with you, it’s common to see a situation like one I saw the other day: Two poor souls over on the mirrors, practicing charisma, while ten Sims pounded away at logic over on the computers. The speed rate of the Logic-oriented Sims was 99%. The Charisma-seeking Sims weren’t breaking 49%.

Thus, what we see is an online environment with a bunch of power-users, seeking as much payout as possible, and largely neglecting the other skill sets. This trend continues when you actually work on job objects to make more cash.

Sim Employment

Sims earn “simoleons” by working on job objects, such a solving and selling problems off a blackboard, or carving wooden gnomes. The more people working on the same type of object on the same property, the more cash everyone will make. Again, this system excludes the Sims that didn’t emphasize logic, mechanical, or body: because it is so difficult to get Sims of the lesser skills together, they tend to make far less money.

Worse, these job objects are completely anti-social. It’s entirely possible to set your Sim at work on a blackboard, and go grab a coke and come back later, while the Sim plods through the problem. This leads to a depressing online environment, which I’ll hammer at in a moment. You also can’t speed up the action, so get ready to sit and watch your Sim more than half the time.
Some job objects are more puzzle-oriented. The CODE machine is the most favored of these, but gets old fast and many players use cheat sheets acquired off other websites. My favorite job object was the pizza-maker, which I won’t go into much detail other than to say that it actually seems to be the one object oriented towards teamwork.

Now Sims have a way to get money. Now they can focus on the rest of the game, right? Well, guess what? Money is the meaning of this game.

The Failure of TSO

The problem with TSO is ultimately that the entire online system is too money-oriented. Everyone is out to find skill and job objects and make cash. Because of this, Sims are essentially wage slaves online, and they’re far more inclined to visit homes specializing in job objects more than anything else. This means that the landscape of TSO’s numerous cities is dotted with ubiquitous “skill houses”, and you’ll get sick of the stupid little names for them: Skills and Money, Skill Central, Skills N Thrills were just some of the horribly uncreative names I saw.

Want to start something different? Go ahead and try. You’ll fail. I saw a stand-up comedy club, a play house, and several restaurants during my time online. My own house was maxed out on roomies and we were a humor hangout for friends from a major message board (www.truemeaningoflife.com). We got visitors, sure, but this was nothing compared to the raw throughput that homes specializing in job and money objects received. Owners of creative-themed properties complain about this across the board, while the cookie-cutter skill houses stretch across the Simland like rows of military housing.

By focusing so strongly on money, Maxis shot its own system to pieces. Social interaction is of secondary importance in the game: although Sims are encouraged to socialize and take care of their needs, often it takes the form of “greening up” just to get back on the job objects.

This makes for a dull, vapid playing environment: I’ve been in skill houses where sixteen Sims were present and three were talking. I’ve had Sims ignore me before, for “talking too much”. Huh? Isn’t social interaction the point of the game?

You might, however, also be somewhat relieved that Sims don't interact more: every single interaction is overdone. When my Sim solves a chalkboard problem, the result is the kind of personal fanfare that would get him kicked out of a football stadium. And it happens every single time I work on a job object.

That brings me to the other major problem with TSO: The Community. Although nice Sims abound, by and large the players present are mostly mercenaries, wandering from one cash-oriented location to another. Worse yet, people bring their offline hang-ups to online games. My character, in Loganville, was called “Purple Ant Sadist”. I was a parody of a bad 50’s B-Movie alien invader. My all-caps character description was “I HAVE COME TO TAKE YOUR VALUABLE RESOURCES AND RAPE YOUR WOMEN, HUMANS!”. Anyone with half a neuron could see this was an obvious joke.

And yet, one Sim chastized me for “rape humor”. Many others told me I was nuts for thinking I was an alien. That’s right…because Sims requires so much free time to develop and maintain a Sim (did I mention Skill decay?), a vast number of players are teens or below. You’re more likely to be discussing with a fourteen year-old Jennifer N’Sync fan than a thirty-year-old physics expert.

There are many, many jerks in the game: I saw three cheat transactions over my time in the game, was insulted by more people than I could count (often with no provocation), was spammed by “come visit my house” messages on some properties, and generally dealt with a strata of people I would describe as lacking humor, intelligence, or any kind of class.

All these problems are perhaps best summed up by what I heard one skill-house owner say: “Man, I hate being rich. There’s nothing to do.”

Ultimately, the Sims is a diversion but not a passion: After awhile, the same things people want to leave behind in the real world become all too apparent in this online game.

And that, my friends, is a more depressing conclusion for such a promising game than any Sim could have ever imagined.


Game Stats:
Online (Cable/DSL recommended, frequent drops for 56k users)
Tested with an Athlon XP 1900 processor w/ 256MB DDRAM, GeForce2 MX400 graphics card
Price: $45 (retail), plus $9.99 per month


Recommended: No