The Sims: Livin' Large Preview - Part 1: Items
The official expansion to Maxis' people simulator provides a virtual IKEA's worth of new household goods for your Sims. Find out exactly what it has to offer.
Livin' Large: Part 1
It's no secret that Maxis' The Sims has been immensely successful since its release in January of this year. The game manages to take designer Will Wright's unique gameplay philosophy of creating your own world to a level never before attempted by anyone, and the results are better than anyone expected. To date, The Sims is the second-best-selling PC game in North America, second only to Disney Interactive's Who Wants to be a Millionaire line of home trivia games. This success can be attributed to The Sims' broad appeal and accessibility. So it came as no surprise when, on the first day of E3, Maxis announced that it would be building on the success of the game with an expansion pack called Livin' Large, to be released toward the end of summer 2000. GameSpot broke the story on this add-on a few days before E3 in an interview conducted with the game's executive producer, Sinjin Bain. In that interview, Sinjin revealed only some of Livin' Large's upcoming features, including information on the new interior decors and careers.
We've since been given a playable build of Livin' Large for preview purposes, and we've been busy introducing our Sims to the new objects and features of the add-on. Livin' Large boasts five new additions and enhancements to the original game: new characters, more than 120 new simulation items, three new decor and architecture styles, ten new careers for a total of 50 new jobs, and the ability to maintain ten neighborhoods - that's 50 Sim families - at once. Our build contained a little more than half of the themed items, yet there were more than enough to illustrate the sheer number of items the final product will contain. Interestingly enough, not all of these new items were created by Maxis - some user-created skins will be included in the retail version of Livin' Large. These skins were put together by fans of the game, uploaded to TheSims.com, and hand-selected by the designers at Maxis for inclusion in the game. This is part of Will Wright's goal to constantly empower users with the ability to change, customize, and mold Maxis games into their own product. Maxis PR manager Patrick Buechner had this to say about Wright's intention: "He was emphatic about getting the early tools out to users before the game was released. He had a sense that the fans would drive this if they were given the ability to customize [The Sims] and tell their stories via TheSims.com. He was also insistent about the need for interesting 'failure states,' like not making it to the toilet on time. For as many people that find it mundane to send their Sims to the toilet, there are many more who take joy in not sending them there." Such real-life catastrophes are plentiful in The Sims.
We'll be splitting up our preview of Livin' Large into three parts. Today we'll take a look at several of the new items and household goods that will be available in the add-on. Next Friday we'll closely examine the game's new careers, and we'll wrap up the preview with a one-on-one interview with the legendary designer Will Wright himself in two weeks.
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- GameSpot Score8.1great
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