Expansion Packs Influencing Everyone

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As I explained in past posts, The Sims is a game that is continuously growing through what it offers. Many expansion packs have been designed to interest consumers to purchase the games; because of what the expansion pack offers. 

When EA games come out with a new expansion pack for the The Sims, I believe they are looking to attract more consumers to buy their game. The main game “The Sims” may look attractive to a particular group of gamers but when you add for example “Showtime Katy Perry” it attracts another group of people to playing the game. The picture below is the cover of The Sims 3 Showtime Katy Perry; it definitely is an eye attractor for girls and fans of Katy Perry Music. This strategy EA Games is playing is Ideological Myth where they are influencing consumers to be drawn to their game through the use of including ideas and other sources in the game. To finalize the Katy Perry example, this game and cover attracts many females and in particular little girls who like fashion, music, and ultimately a Katy Perry fan.

The Sims Community grows constantly with the fact that EA games is always looking for a way to grow their game and their consumers. The game currently has a wide variety of games where it draws many gamers to The Sims because of what features and ideas the game has to offer. Katy Perry may attract the female community but probably not the male community too much. An expansion pack that I find most appealing to males is The Sims World Adventures. It is an expansion pack where you as a gamer can travel the world to areas such as Paris, China and Egypt. Don’t get me wrong, it does attract females to playing it; what girl wouldn’t want to find a boyfriend in Paris for their Sim. But, mostly this is attracting to males because it’s a game with missions and adventure. On the cover below it shows many different situations in the game, romance, fighting and treasure hunting. The fighting and treasure hunting is the focus to guys being interested in this expansion pack of the game.

To conclude, the expansion packs for the Sims is just “an add” on to the regular Sims. The expansion packs just offer more to the virtual world. Ultimately, when different expansion packs influence different social groups and types of people, it is influencing the gamer to play The Sims.

Game Cover with Explanation

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The Sims is a game where the gamer creates and rules the life of their virtual person and family. The cover of the first version of the Sims explains quite a bit of what Sims can be and what they can do. The top left image of the cover (image above) shows that a gamer can make the Sim live its life as sneaky burglar. If the gamer wants to be more just and more respectful the gamer can choose to make its Sim live a life in the military such as the solder in the bottom right corner.  The Sims is all about creating and living out the Sims lives in any realistic way we can do in life. The cover shows a great example of what the game has to offer for the virtual Sims and I believe was a good illustration for the first game.

The reason why I believe the first cover of The Sims was so great is because it signifies and shows gaming consumers what The Sims is about. The signifier of the game cover would be all the different images of The Sims. Every Sim is different by occupation and age. Another signifier of this cover would be the title text “The Sims” with a roof of a house above the letter “M”. This signifies that the game has to be about building a house or living in a house. To look at these signifiers in a syntagmatic way; we would see that both signifiers come together and show the viewer that this game is about creating virtual people and houses.

Covers for virtually every video game on the market requires an attractive and narrative cover to draw in gamers to try out the game. As I stated above, The Sims was right on target with their design of their first cover in explaining what their game was about. EA Games created many new versions of the game; which allowed gamers to have more objects and locations to play with in their virtual worlds. The Sims was once again on target with advertising those new versions with covers that modeled and explained in an illustrative way what those games would feature. Below you can see a select few of the newer versions of the Sims that illustrate beautifully of what the game is about.