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.
Going off the Katy Perry example, Popularity sells and right now Katy Perry is a hit with many. What if something happened and she was no longer popular in our music realm? Sales of this game would plummet.
ReplyDeleteThe world Adventure pack sounds awesome and not at all because I could obtain a boyfriend in Paris and I am a girl...just saying. =)
However, I do agree that EA Games is targeting different social groups and largely targeting American teens.
That's very interesting that the Sim's gained so much notoriety that they can make extra money from these expansion packs. I find that also interesting that enough females play the Sim's to the point where releasing a game targeted specifically for females would make a profit. It shows you that in this day and age girls can play video games too!
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