Mar 02 2008
EA Land
One of the first guides I did for IGN was for The Sims Online. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game, but I didn’t continue the subscription after the first month was up because I just couldn’t afford it at the time. Some time has passed and I was wondering how the game was doing and learned that the development team had more or less abandoned it.
That’s pretty disappointing considering it is one of those subscription games, pay $10 a month or whatever it was. If I were a subscriber, I think I would have abandoned it as well. Keep in mind that TSO came out in December of 2002, so it’s been around for a long time now.
Well, just recently EA announced they were relaunching the game, and calling it EA Land. That’s one of the lamest titles I think I’ve ever heard of. In addition to keeping the subscription business model going, they’re going to introduce free players to the game. It will allow people to play the game and perhaps end up paying for it if they enjoy it. Many of the features will be locked out, of course, so free players, for instance, won’t be able to make any money.
The money making angle is intriguing. I don’t remember ever being able to “cash out”, turn Simoleons into Dollars, but I heard it may be possible now. I’ll have to look into that more though.
Still, from the little bit of research I’ve done on the game’s advancement, I’m not very impressed yet. I have yet to hear of a feature that makes me want to play it again.