I had this little idea for an expansion pack, I think it seems kind of cool. Imagine having a neighborhood taking place in the 80s, or how about the 40s? 20s? 50s? Even 19th century ect.
Say you pick the 80s decade. Only certain tvs will be available, only a very bulky computer, 80s style archetecture/ furniture. And of course all of the townies would have that awesome 80s style, with the high hair, colors ect. It would be very big on atmosphere.
So, sims 3 time periods, love it or hate it?

In theory, I think this would be a cool idea. In practice, I think EA would botch it to hell.

One downside is that you'd have to have a whole new batch of objects and outfits for each time period (which EA wouldn't charge cheaply for). You'd also have to have some way of keeping those period-centric objects from flooding one of your different 'hoods. The objects you could pick and choose what to put where, but clothing is set as either random or not and the game picks from the whole of the random options to clothe new NPCs/aged up sims (which gets some odd choices now depending on what you've got in your game - an 80s miniskirt in a 19th century 'hood would a serious eyesore).

I think it would be on the boring side but there may be others who enjoy the idea!

Too hard to execute as an expansion pack. I'd say it could be workable as standalone games, maybe, but I don't think it would be marketable enough to support that, especially for multiple time periods.

Pft, not to mention their lazy attitude in developing The Sims Medieval-- they seem proud of the fact that they refused to do any research about the era and just happily made stuff up based on movies and imagination... which is fine if it were The Sims Fantasy Adventure! or something, but when you start pointing to real life time periods, you had better doing your homework. It's one thing to know that XYZ was really like this, but we consciously decided it would be more fun to do it like that; it's another to not want to crack a book at all.

All that said, I would love to have a pure 1940s (+/- a couple decades) game.

Sounds more like a stuff Pack to me but I like the idea. If they put out a pack with things from the 40's I'd like that -- a few outfits, a few hairs, a phonograph, old style camera, period car, tickertape machine, old exercise equipment.

I think it's definitely best suited to a stuff pack. That being said, I love the 20's stuff from the Store!

Every time I see some period clothes or costumey stuff at the store, I ask myself, "Do I want everyone in the neighborhood to age up wearing this?"
As it is the WA tourists spawn wearing the wrong outfits (Chinese tourists in Egyptian clothes, or worse, sweater and a speedo and hospital slippers), and I have way too many neighbors running around in the Chinese and Egyptian outfits. I can't imagine EA doing this in any way that would keep the period clothes segregated to a particular neighborhood. Unless they did, there's no way I'd buy it.

I think it would be very neat to have "Adventures in Time" -- similar in structure to WA, but using the time machine to access three different time periods instead of countries ... each with period- and culture-appropriate adventures as well as crossover arcs.

Daydreaming's okay here, right?

The 80s are an age that probably shouldn't come back :P

You don't even need a SP if you want to make your hood appropiate for a certain time period. All you need are period appropiate clothes, furniture, and the right hacks. But then you'd still have to deal with such nonsense as cell phones. I always hated how in TS2, if you wanted to make a medieval neighbourhood, for examplpe, you needed huge amounts of CC. So, even if EA does make a period appropiate EP/SP they would still need to add in a lot of items, maybe even go as far as changing the behaviour of the game. At this rate they might as well make a completely new game.

Sadly, The Sims 3 is so messed-up time-wise, I doubt they would even be able to THINK of this.. At least in Sims 2, the clothing started off early 2000s, and then progressed over the course of the game.. I don't even know what half of the clothing in Sims 3 is, let alone what period.

There's some great 50's themed CC from Lisen801 And there's some cat eye glasses and a 50's dress somewhere here.
I think it would be a great CC project for a website to take, a couple users make CC stuff for each century.
And I much prefer CC with this kind of project then EA, because regular users like to make sure everything's accurate, while EA wants to make money and make everything look shiny.

I assume Sims 3 takes place sometime in the late 2000s. The reason the clothing is so random is because there were very few trends that originated in this time period; most were minimally tweaked revivals or hybrids from past decades.

However, the way they have released content [store and expansion packs] is throwing a large amount of random-period outfits; 60's, 80's, sci-fi, Medieval.. When in Sims 2, there was a higher percentage of "Normal" clothing within the theme [Comfy cottage-y type dresses in Seasons, Leather Jackets with Apartment Life, Uni-themed clothing in University] And the more 'themed' stuff came from the Sims 2 store, which only held one or two individual sets. The Stuff packs generally gave MORE normal un-themed clothing - H&M, Glamour, Mansion&Gardens..

Of course they are not going to do that and I cannot blame them, to start gender equality is a modern concept, now try to create a game with gender inequality ... I remember that Arcanum did that in relation to stats and it got chewed.

When you say "they are not going to that," "that" refers to...? Basic research? I already said it's one thing to do the research and then decide to ignore it in favor of what works better in a game. The key is to do the research first. Even if they didn't want to stir the pot on gender issues (and so on), they can at least get, say, costumes right. Or put some actual work into it and use the time they saved not implementing a build mode or generational game play to include some all-important horses.

For a '50s game, maybe that would mean leaving out the Communist/nuke scare along with the cell phones.* I could respect the decision if they looked at how much that affected the culture but still decided they could work around it to keep the game from being too serious. It's something else entirely to just shrug and decide that having watched a few episodes Leave It To Beaver 10 years ago is enough "research" to respect the subject at all, which was basically their approach to TSM. (And, once again, if it's a real topic or time period under discussion, reality should be considered before being discarded.)

Oh, and in terms of gender issues in particular, they sure didn't seem nervous about bringing mandatory maternity (and only maternity) leave into TS3, a pretty regressive step from TS2.
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*Technology plays a large role in the game and it would be nice to have official work-arounds. In TS2 I downloaded a couple of the computers made to look like typewriters, but they just really aren't the same, and you don't want just a decorative typewriter if you play rather than decorate, because so many entertainment and interaction functions are hinged on the computer. I dunno, I can envision really neat things for a retro standalone game that will never happen (trains and telegrams to connect a rural backwater to the downtown city right out of a noir screenplay with shiny suburbs in between...)
ETA: and TVs that don't broadcast anything but a test pattern in the middle of the night!

This mirrors real life. There are plenty of subcultures who choose not to wear contemporary clothes as much as they can help it.



I was under the impression that the Sims is a somewhat humorous franchise, and as such, they drew much inspiration from the light-hearted pop culture ideas about medieval life. It's not like this is National Geographic doing a medieval game, I would not remotely expect to learn anything from it.

I love playing my game in a themed environment however I have more fun setting my own rules for my "society" then having to follow stupid EA's. I don't see what they could possibly add to an EP for a period game that the community can't do, we can make custom careers, hide clothing, make worlds (much better then any of EA's), create clothing, what else do you need? Even EA won't do horses

No, I agree, and I don't expect them to ever make a game so detailed and accurate you would learn from it (sigh, sadface). I'm just repulsed by their seeming disdain for the mere thought of cracking a history book.

It's just...sad...that something so simple as front-lacing on supposed-medieval women's wear that would be SO easy to correct--and how did it get perpetuated in the first place--and yet...sigh. I dunno. And if they just wanted another pseudo-medieval adventureland, that was more storybook than history book, they could have used a name that's not an era in history.

/nerdrage, I know


I dunno, I like the idea of not having to mod the game to all hell and back just to not have flush toilets, and I'd really prefer all the modern clothes (still taking up hard drive space, still adding to the load time of the game) to just not be there at all. I don't know what's happening in regards to TS3, but in TS2 I know I saw mods to suppress overly-modern wants (especially career ones), but I don't think I saw any new wants...maybe a lifetime desire to...I dunno, be knighted? Because of course players can only make Sims look like knights. It's also up to players to forcibly keep serfs from disrespecting the nobles and so on. The game is more than furniture and clothes.

I think you're basically talking about a better sandbox oriented TSM.....

A Time Adventure EP? It would be beyond awesome and epic. Sadly, we all know EA. If it ever happens they will do the same thing they did with The Sims Medieval, a standalone game. It is not impossible, and I wish things like these were in the range of modding since If we put our expectations on EA, we all know it won't happen. But who knows!

It would be a very hard EP to handle, and well other people already posted issues with World Adventures. Not only that but in order to achieve a better balance, imagine you go, lets say, to the 80's. In Build and Buy mode, content from modern or other times should be locked up (this is kinda optional), cellphones must be removed, and means of transportation updated to the time period. Yea, it is more than just some random 80's content in an 80's neighborhood. But nowadays I tend to wonder what the EPs will be and how many. (Not counting pets and seasons, I'm mostly thinking of new ones not seen before)

Have any of you notice the bar where the Sims 3 SPs and Eps get added? Imagine if the goal was to fill it completely? Insane right? Oh well, daydreaming maybe

It's really easy to hide content and download some 80s stuff... None of the stuff you said would be anything challenging for the modding community, FP has done several 80s vehicles. The only slightly difficult thing would be the cellphone but I'm sure something could be done about that (even if not that's one thing, not really worth an EP imo)

Yes, CC is easily done, but can you make a whole neighborhood only use that stuff? And I mean clothes, old taxis(yes, its easy to make 80's car, but if your sim randomy uses a taxi, then it would be out of place), the cell phone removal, etc. At this point, you can make an 80's neighborhood and find people using modern taxis and random modern clothes. In my opinion it would be worth an EP, assuming there is more than just CC and the things posted before. New careers (well that can also be done by modding), old band jazz, new professions, and well, maybe other stuff that I can't mention out of my head. Although a futuristic expansion would be more exciting. I would say I would love to see a medieval EP but that option disappeared a while ago.

We have to keep in mind that The Sims 3 has many ways to expand. Any new idea can be considered. (Undead world EP, ZOMG ZOMBIES! lol) If the modding community could solve the previous problems, then I believe we would be able to create a custom modded EP...i guess.

Wojtek..there is the problem with a time period EP. Queuing up for toilet paper and/or meat is very much a cultural thing. In the US in the 80's we never had do to this and I only understand what you need because I visited Russia and the Ukraine during that time period. The problem with making something like this is it would never live up to the time period of everyone's specific culture so would have to very ethnocentric, probably the US version of the 80's and 90's.

It's not, and never has been, universal. Simlish obviously resolves a lot of issues, but the nature of the roads, suburbs, most of the useless holiday knickknacks, cars, and even the mailboxes and various NPC uniforms (the fact that there's a pizza delivery person at all) screams "Made in U.S.A." to me.