The-Sims-3 posts

While aging has been in Sims 3 since the game was released, most of the options for a particular character were focused around their young adult and adult life. The newest expansion, Generations, aims to give those looking for more variety in young and old age some new goodies to play with. This trailer shows a few of these by focusing on the life of one couple. They play together as children, go to parties as teenagers, get married and raise kids, and eventually pass into old age while watching their family grow.

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Electronic Arts keeps cranking out the expansion packs for its hit people sim game The Sims 3. Today the publisher announced that the latest such addition to the game, The Sims 3 Generations, will be released sometime this spring.

This expansion pack goes all over the age map as players will be able to have their sims take ballet classes as kids, go to parties as teenagers and even deal with rumors of marital infedelity as middle aged adults. One new feature is an in-game camera which can be used to take snapshots of the game world. Those shots can then be uploaded to your Facebook address for all to see.

The PC game industry owes a lot to The Sims franchise. Developer Will Wright's people simulation series, an extension of his Sim City games, remain some of the biggest PC game ever made, sales wise. But there might actually be one or two of you who haven't played the games.

Direct2Drive is making it easier this week by putting all of the previously released games in The Sims series on sale for 40 percent off for the entire week. That includes the latest game in the series, The Sims 3, along with its expansion packs. The next game in the franchise, The Sims Medieval, is due out later this year.

Not too many brick-and-mortar retailers have Black Friday sales for PC games but one of them happens to be GameStop. The ad for the retailer's Black Friday 2010 sales event has leaked ahead of November 26's big sales day. On that very you can buy World of Warcraft for just $4.99 and get a $5 gift card. Excluding taxed that means GameStop pays you one cent back when you get the game from them.

Other special sales deals include Lego Universe for $19.99, Supreme Commander 2 for $9.99. World of Warcraft Battlechest for $9.99 and Fallout New Vegas for $29.99.

Will Wright may have left the day-to-day business of making games but the creator behind Sim City, The Sims and Spore is moving on to his upcoming interactive TV show that he and his team at Super Fun Club are making for the CurrentTV network. This week CurrentTV launched the official web site for its Creation Studios which will allow viewers to interactive and contribute content to Wright's TV series.

The series itself is called Bar Karma and Wright himself talks about both the TV and the interactive portion in a video on the site which has a 1950's retro look and feel. Wright says the show is a cross between Cheers and The Twilight Zone. The video, which has some straight-faced humor, talks about how the viewers will contribute to the game's plotlines and decide which plots will be used in upcoming episodes. Bar Karma is set to start in February 2011. You can check out the video with Wright after the jump.

It's been an interesting week so far. Civilization V came out, a web site said it was shutting down and then came back and Grey's Anatomy had its season premiere. Oh wait, that last one didn't have anything to do with games. Our bad.

• The indie game hit Eufloria will be ported over to the Mac (along with the iPhone and iPad) in early 2011.
• The downloadable expansion pack Escape to Barnacle Bay for The Sims 3 is now available from the game's online store for 1,650 Sims Points.
• Bungie co-founder Peter Tamte challenges Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick to release just the online portion of Call of Duty: Black Ops for a fair price. Yeah, we are not sure why either.

With all of the excitement behind today's release of Civilization V, you can easily miss some mid-week PC game sales that appeared today. Over at Direct2Drive they have two games that have price cuts from now until 1 pm Eastern time on Wednesday. One is The Sims 3 World Adventures expansion pack for just $14.95. The other is the gold edition of Company of Heroes for a mere $7.50.

Over at Steam, they have their mid-week madness sale from now until Thursday the puzzle game Droplitz is on sale for a mere $2. That's an 80 percent cut from the game's normal price.

It's Wednesday and that means its time for the PC game download site Direct2Drive to offer up a new set of games on sale for just $6 as part of its sixth anniversary this month. From now until next Wednesday, the list of games that are on sale for $6 each include Zombie Pirates, Fallen Earth, Sid Meier's Pirates, SWAT 4, Disciples II Gold, Frontlines Fuel of War, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, Fort Zombie and Crayon Physics Deluxe.

In addition for today only, Direct2Drive has put The Sims 3 on sale for $19.95 along with the expansion pack The Sims 3 Ambitions for #14.95.

The Sims 3's next expansion pack for the PC, Late Night, is all about going to clubs, partying and having a good time. So its appropriate that the people sim game will be getting some new tunes in the game's native "Simlish" language. Entertainment Weekly's web site reveals some major names in the real music industry have gone ahead and re-recorded some songs in Simlish for the EA-published expansion.

Among the artists that are participating are Travie McCoy (Need You) My Chemical Romance (Na Na Na), Soulja Boy (Speakers Going Hammer) and Kelly Rowland (Rose Colored Glasses). The expansion pack is due out in October.

While vampires are currently hot on the pop culture meter, pirates still remain popular among a certain group. Now it looks like The Sims 3 is going to go after that audience with a newly announced downloadable expansion for the people sim sequel. The Sims 3 Barnacle Bay was revealed today for a fall 2010 release via the online Sims 3 Storm (pricing was not announced).

The expansion will add Barnacle Bay, a new location for your Sims characters to check out when they are not talking in that weird language. From the description and the screenshots the new location will have a pirate theme with the Sims able to eat at The Wanderer's Watering Hole along with visits to Smuggler's Beach. There's also some kind of mystery at Barnacle Bay; why else are there ghosts in one on the DLC's screenshots?