Thursday 16 November, 2023

On the latest episode of One More Life podcast out now, host Rob Leane, Gaming Editor of RadioTimes.com, is joined by Lyndsay Pearson, the Vice President of Franchise Creative on The Sims 4 and its upcoming sequel, The Sims who gives revealing insights into the upcoming The Sims 5.

As well as exclusive reveals re The Sims 5, Pearson discusses with Rob Leane on One More Life her own gaming journey, from being an avid player of The Sims, to becoming one of the franchises main creative talents scenes. Pearson discusses “unusual things” that gamers have done with their Sims, and she shares her memories of growing up as a gamer with a very cool grandma.

Discussing The Sims 5, Pearson tells One More Life:

“We definitely want to introduce multiplayer, and not multiplayer in the big, scary ‘jump in a world full of strangers’ kind of way. But literally, how do you and your friends want to do some play together? And there’s a lot of different flavours that could take, so we’re exploring a lot of different spaces there. Because playing together can look like so many different things, right? Even our chat now, we’ve talked about, like, trivia games to fighting games to racing games, playing together and social can mean so many things.” …

“So, what does that mean if you and I do that together? And how do we figure out how to make a little bit of that chaos, a little bit of that fun and a little bit of that positivity all come together in a way that feels Sims-y?”

Pearson also revealed to One More Life that The Sims 5 developers: “talk about Animal Crossing all the time, because it is such a good example of my little space, my little island, but I can invite you over.

“And we’ve seen throughout the last few years of Animal Crossing, people inventing ways to play together that the game doesn’t specifically support, but they’ve made up scavenger hunts or whatever, which is amazing.

“Or people who hosted talk shows on Animal Crossing, I think is incredible, right?”

Pearson add: “We actually look at a lot of games that are doing multiplayer in clever ways, like Among Us even, which is this sort of mystery thing, but you have to talk about it and solve it.”

Pearson responds to Rob Leane’s question in the One More Life interview as to whether a Sims-themed multiplayer horror game would work, saying: “I like your example of this horror game. But what is the Sims-y version of that?

“What is the reason that, like, I could be trying to do something, I could be trying to get my Sim ready for a specific thing, and then you might be able to come in and mess it up somehow, or help somehow, right?

“I think that’s exactly the kind of feeling that will feel right for me playing with, like, my close friends.”

Listen to the full interview with Lyndsay Pearson and host Rob Leane on the One More Life podcast, available on all good podcast apps and via this link.

New episodes of One More Life will release every Wednesday between now and Christmas.