Back on 2 Nov 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it was beginning work on The Sims 3 (working title) for release in 2009 (according to EA CFO Warren Jenson), not a bad legacy for a game Will Wright had a devil of a time convincing EA to make in the first place. As each generation of CPUs and VPUs becomes more sophisticated, and the interest in The Sims franchise continues, I wonder what lays ahead. Pixel shading and improved fast-render engines may well make the next generation of Sims games look more real than ever before, but, really, what good is visual quality if the game play is limp? It really would turn the game into little more than a cheap rendering software, and though there may be some that want that, it would certainly lose out on the gamer-market. There has been a certain degree of limpness in playing The Sims 2 that wasn't there in The Sims. It seems to me, that the more I add to the downloads folder, the less there is in the game. EA released skin packs for The Sims that have no parallel in The Sims 2: Command & Conquer Renegade Skins Packs. Though largely unlovely as packaged, they certainly were a great benefit to all us skinners who wanted to make motorcycle gangs from the 27th Century. And really, there was a devilish playfulness in the development team that wasn't afraid to try different things that isn't quite present in the current run-up of the game. Plastic milk shipping carton furniture is a stock item of university campuses all over the USA, yet not a single item in the University EP along these lines. Ramen noodles are a staple of the university student diet, yet these are conspicuous by their absence from the game. Even the beer-can sculpture was more real than the bizarre "2007" glasses and chicken hats. Many of the features of The Sims Hot Date EP were a lot of fun, the dance cage and the stage lights were IMHO a lot more entertaining than the bizarre and contrived "Smustle". I don't mind goofy behaviour in my sims, I still love the original game for the animations in Superstar EP and Makin' Magic EP, but this "Smustle" thing >_< There are lots of legitimate reasons for us to want the ability to make new animations. New dances, new poses, new interactions. Sure, there will be those who use them to more nefarious ends, but that is the nature of all communities that grow around any game. Doom 3 was the only game I ever knew where duct tape was the first mod, we all know what the first one was for every other game. If EA really wants to make this a game about user customisation (as it keeps claiming), they need to start operating with more transparency toward the modding community. If we wanted to just make movies we'd probably buy The Movies, if all we wanted was a house-building software we'd probably buy some 3D Home Designer software; but we didn't want those things, we want a game we can take hold of and shape into exactly the world we want. So how about it EA? How about you start coming up off the secrets so we can blow the roof off this game? How about we get back to the good old days of you taking a gamble on silly idea that aren't stale, but are genuinely clever... even a repeat of an old joke is better than a lame new one!