THE SIMS SOCIAL

The Sims Social “Ask a developer!”

Questions Answered!
BEHIND THE SCENES:

What’s the process for developing new content? How long do you actually spend developing a new “week,” and how many people are involved?

The team meets every week to brainstorm features and content ideas. This group includes artists, developers and designers in order to combine as many weird and wonderful ideas as possible. We like to innovate to provide surprises but we also look at what’s proved popular in previous weeks and suggestions from players.

Once we have a long list of ideas, it’s up to the group who are working on that week to condense the list into an appealing set of features and content. The art team start with concept work to ensure the art direction is spot on. Once the art direction is finalised, the items are created and animated which takes 2 weeks.
Adding the art to the game and writing new code to support the features takes a further 2 to 3 weeks. And the new content will be in your hands shortly afterwards.

Having been a Sims fan for years now (Sims1) do some of your ideas for content come from some of the designers in the Sims world or are they from EA company and your self only, and where do you get the ideas for the different quest.

We work closely with the Sims team, and some of our content is inspired by the core games. The Ultralounge furniture range from March was based on content from The Sims 3 for example. Having said that, we do try to create custom experiences within The Sims Social that you won’t find elsewhere. The Dragon Tower is a good example of something unique. We hope Sims fans will play The Sims Social alongside the core game.

Does this game have an producer with a vision (direction) for it? If so, what is that vision?

We aim to keep Sims fans entertained and delighted with exciting new features every week. We’ve moved the gameplay from simply decorating your home with new items, to engaging quests and challenges.
On a less sexy, but equally important note, we’re working hard to ensure the game is stable and runs more smoothly than it has done in the past.

Are there more female or male on TSS team?

We have a diverse team, with over 20 nationalities represented. I’d say it’s almost a 50/50 split between boys and girls. In fact we believe we have one of the most balanced development teams in EA!

Would you give us a sneakpeek on how a design is made into a vector, and WIPs too!

Sure, here’s some upcoming content being created by the art team. What do you think we’re working on?
And here’s the concept artwork for The Dragon Tower, so you can see the design process:

What’s it like working for Playfish and The Sims Social? What’s the best part of your job?

The best thing is working with a dedicated and passionate team. It’s great fun working on a live title, because you get to release your ideas quickly and get feedback from millions of fans once they try them out.
The other cool thing is that everyone on the team has their own skillset and perspective on how to do things. We have team members who previously worked on big console titles through to small mobile games.
We also have an unlimited supply of bananas which are useful for those late evenings. Here’s our lead animator dressed as a banana. (It was his birthday after all!)

Self magazine Publisher Laura McEwen sits in her office in the posh Conde Nast building overlooking New York’s Times Square and does nothing but play video games for at least an hour or two a day.
She isn’t goofing off — she is doing market research for “Self Workout in the Park,” a video game she helped create to capitalize on the explosive growth of advertising in social games like the ones played on Facebook and other online networks.

Once on the fringes of digital advertising, social game ads are now the hip newcomer for Madison Avenue, with McDonald’s Corp paying for players to build restaurants in Zynga Inc’s “CityVille” game and Unilever-sponsored Dove spas popping up in “The Sims Social.”
The number of people who play social games has ballooned to hundreds of millions globally, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spending in games are up for grabs. Researcher eMarketer expects social game ad revenue to soar 80 percent to $672.2 million by 2014. Zynga’s $28.2 million in advertising revenue in the first quarter, more than double the amount a year ago, underscores the growth potential of social game ads.
Advertisers like the size of the audience, how they can target specific demographics and how users can spend several uninterrupted minutes a day playing a game.

Publishers such as McEwen also like how social games can lead to branded advertising opportunities. The Self video game allows for the magazine to sell advertising on virtual weights and treadmills, for instance.
“All of these things can be branded and new things can always be created to be branded,” McEwen said.
Giant consumer products company Unilever recently signed a deal to advertise a range of goods in Electronic Arts’ Facebook games. Players of “The Sims Social” game, which number about 16.4 million per month, can now stock their bathrooms with Dove soap or eat Magnum ice cream cones, earning rewards for using Unilever products in the game.

Unilever is also in talks with Zynga to promote Lipton products, according to Amanda Richards, the company’s Global Media Director of Refreshment.
She said Unilever, the No.2 global advertiser behind Procter & Gamble, has made social gaming a priority in its digital advertising budget because gamers can get directly involved with its brands, and they often do so by choice.
“The gaming space gives you a significant amount of face time with consumers because when you’re in a game, you’re pretty much not doing anything else,” Richards said.

EARLY DAYS

Overall, social game ad spending is nascent compared with other forms of online ad spending such as search advertising, which hit $15.36 billion last year, or banner ads, which generated $7.72 billion in 2011, according to eMarketer.
Social game ads are in their infancy and there is no industry standard for which to measure their reach. Conversion rates, or the rate at which people buy products they have seen advertised, are also low, according to eMarketer analyst Paul Verna.
Still, proponents of social game ads insist the results are there, just perhaps not in monetary form. Bounty paper towels was quite pleased with a campaign it had in an EA game called “Restaurant City” that generated more than 500,000 “likes” on its Facebook page, the company said. The growth potential of social game ads has caused small companies to sprout up along Madison Avenue to serve as conduits between brands and social gaming companies.

Mitchell Reichgut, for instance, left the big advertising agency world to start the Jun Group, a 30-person company focused on video ads. Jun Group has already placed video ads promoting Pinnacle Foods’ Aunt Jemima brand, Claussen Pickles and ConAgra products in social games.
Other agencies focused on video game ads include Appssavvy and WildTangent.
Media agency Mindshare has even hired a digital gaming specialist, Geoffrey Greenblatt, whose full-time job is to advise his firm’s accounts on gaming.
“Nearly all of our brands are involved to some extent and I only see it growing as they increase their spending in the space year over year over year,” said Greenblatt, who wrote a 125-page book on video game advertising that Mindshare gives to clients.
He predicted that advertising in mobile games that friends play together is the next growth area. One big move in that area was Ford’s “Word of the Day” campaign in Zynga’s mobile hit, “Words with Friends.” Players get rewards for spelling words that Ford displays in a banner ad under the game.
“That’s the first step and you’re going to keep seeing brands get more innovative in mobile,” he said.