So the apartments and everything we put in there was a really nice fundamental change to how people play. The Sims, really, it’s all about the day-to-day life, and if we don’t shock that, if we don’t change that every now and then it can get a bit repetitive. It was also something that – players have been playing The Sims 4 for a couple of years now, and the apartments were a really cool way to sort of shock the day-to-day lives of Sims. We sort of have a rough stack ranking of things that our fans like, and then some of those have longer technical investments they require, some of them have different – basically have different tech requirements – and we were ready and able to do the city around this time. So we always try to look toward the past, like we look toward the expansions that we made in the past that were ones we enjoyed making and that our fans tended to like. With all the available ideas and different ways to do expansion packs, why a city? What was your inspiration? This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
In a recent conference call with reporters, Maxis Producer Grant Rodiek told us all about City Living’s new content, why certain elements were left out of the pack, how this expansion pack fits in with previous ones, and more. The Sims 4: City Living, the game’s latest DLC pack released a few weeks ago, takes the focus away from suburban home life and into city apartment life.