The Sims 3

The Sims 3 introduces many more character customization options than its predecessor The Sims 2.

The player has a larger selection of body types for Sims as muscle and body weight sliders have been introduced. However, toddlers do not have the option to have their weight customized. Additional options were added over time in free updates, for example sliders for breast size and muscle definition to coincide with the release of the Late Night expansion pack. The Sims 3 offers a wider range of skin tones than its predecessors, ranging from realistic Caucasian and black skins to fantasy green and purple colors, each skin tone can be further customized with a light to dark slider.

The base game includes 22 female hairstyles and 17 male hairstyles although many more were made available in later expansion packs, stuff packs and content packs from The Sims 3 Store. Hats and accessories may be applied and may also have their colors and textures altered. Each Sim's hair color can be chosen from one of eight basic colors, or the hair color can be customized using a color wheel to choose the base hair color, roots, highlights or tips.

The Sims 3 offers many more character customization options than its predecessors. With the addition of "Advanced Mode", players can focus on single features on a characters body to modify, allowing for detailed customization. Players also have the option of giving freckles, beauty marks, and tattoos to their Sims. [12]

The Sims 3 puts a greater emphasis on custom content and mods with a variety of tools available both in and out of the game to aid mod makers. With the addition of third party mods it is possible to add many more hairstyles and clothing options.

There are several skill-dependent abilities, such as more social interactions available from high charisma, special songs for guitar players, and appliance upgrades (self-cleaning, more TV channels, etc.) for high handiness. Sims can begin building skills as early as their toddler days. While skills do not show up in the meter right away, using skill building objects is rewarded once the toddler grows into a child. The basic skills include Logic, Cooking, Painting, Gardening, Writing, Guitar, Athletic, Handiness, Charisma and Fishing. New skills were later added in expansion packs. When Sims reach level 10 of a skill, they will get a certificate in the mail.

Each skill has a tab in the skill journal detailing the level of the skill, statistics, what the challenges are, and sometimes other special information. Various challenges are also available in the skill journal. When a challenge is completed, Sims can earn rewards. All of these rewards earn some kind of benefit, such as quicker completion, better results, etc. With the Ambitions expansion pack, the skill journal shows hidden skills that a Sim has learned.

Many of the careers from The Sims 2, and The Sims, such as the Law Enforcement and Athletic tracks, are in The Sims 3. The careers in the core game are Business, Culinary, Criminal, Journalism, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Music, Political, Science, and Professional Sports. Professions in the Ambitions expansion pack include Firefighter, Ghost Hunter, Investigator, Architectural Designer, and Stylist. The part-time jobs available include such positions as a Bookstore Clerk, Grocery Store Clerk, Spa Receptionist, Spa Specialist and a Mausoleum Gravedigger. Part-time jobs have a lower pay than full-time jobs and do not give career opportunities. Part-time jobs are available for teen Sims after they attend school. The Ambitions expansion pack also introduced professions, careers that allow the player direct control over their Sims' work and how they spend their days, and the ability for Sims to register at City Hall as self-employed in a skill career.

Sims can look for these jobs in the newspaper, the computer, or apply at the "rabbit hole" building where they would like to work. Sims are also able to make a living at home through their skills such as selling their own paintings, writing novels, playing guitar for tips, or growing fruit and vegetables. Jobs such as nectar making is also a profession with the Sims 3 World Adventures. Sims can also buy out businesses and receive a percentage of the profits they earn.

Advancing in a career still depends on mood and skills, but with the addition that relationships with colleagues/boss and even certain goals that have to be fulfilled. Players now have more control as to their Sims work, with the option to "Work Hard", "Take It Easy", "Suck Up To Boss", etc. Depending upon which of these the Sim is directed affects the performance bar. If the performance bar is maxed out, this will help to increase a Sims chances of being promoted.

A new feature The Sims 3 offers is branching careers, which allows Sims to choose a certain path in their career (such as a Sim in the Music career can eventually choose to specialize in Symphonic music or Rock). These branches are generally offered around level 6 of a career, depending on which career the Sim is working.

Neighborhoods are now being officially referred to as 'worlds', or, when moving, towns, possibly due to Electronic Arts' use of the Create a World tool and the neighborhoods scale. Worlds are now 'seamless', open to exploration between lots and are affected by a new game mechanic called story progression. The primary world in the game is Sunset Valley, while an additional world called Riverview can be obtained for free. All expansion packs to date (except Generations and Seasons) have included a world, and additional worlds can be bought at The Sims 3 Store for sim points.

The Create a World tool allows players to make their own neighborhoods with custom terrains similar to Sim City 4. A game patch, released in conjunction with the release of Ambitions, also allows players to manipulate pre-made neighborhoods to a limited degree, such as adding or removing lots and scenery. As of Late Night, worlds are divided into "Sims 3 Towns and "Late Night Towns". There seem to be important differences between the two, like the Sims they can spawn, etc. Up to now, Bridgeport is the only pre-made world to be cataloged as a city. The rest, including the exotic destinations from World Adventures, are considered suburbs.

On March 19, 2008, EA revealed open world, a new feature, for The Sims 3. Players can explore the world outside their Sims' homes without having to face strenuous loading times. Every house lot is now synchronized with the main neighborhood time. In previous Sims games, the time of day was separate and different for each house lot. Players can interact with every building and amenity in a city. Although players are unable to see inside of certain commercial buildings often called rabbitholes (grocery, bookstore, theater, police station, school, etc.), they are able to enter and retain limited control over their Sims' actions while in these locations. The player has complete control in some other commercial buildings – such as the gym, library and the beach house. All occupied residential buildings can be entered in the same manner as a Sims' home, provided that the buildings are not empty or it is not too late at night.[13]

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version of the game does not have a seamless open world, and gameplay is interrupted by loading screens when players travel to different parts of the world, but when going to work, the player can choose to stay at home to not have to load a new area.

The build and buy modes have received their own makeover. The square tile outlines that appeared on the ground in previous Sims games' build and buy modes are now a quarter of their original size to give the player more liberty to place objects where they want. Alternatively, it is possible to place objects freely without square tiles, an option that was missing in previous Sims games. Players can re-color and re-pattern the furniture and other items to specific shades and patterns with the new Create-a-Style and make houses with five levels (basements of up to four floors deep). Another feature that introduce is the game is the addition of family inventory: a space where objects that are too large to be held in a Sim's personal inventory are kept. Certain opportunities may make an object available in the Family Inventory. When a Sim family moves, if "pack furniture" is selected, all objects in the household will be placed in the Family inventory, to be moved and rearranged in the new house.

Like in previous game, it is used mainly for furnishing and architectural work. The two modes retain most of its main fundamental tools from the previous games: hand tool for picking and rearranging any objects, eyedropper for duplicating bought objects, and sledgehammer to delete one or even multiple objects at once. The designer tool from The Sims 2 has been upgraded to a more advance tool — create a style tool. Introduced in patch 42, blueprint mode (entered through either buy or build), allows players to choose from pre-made rooms to place down within two clicks. A player can place down blueprints anywhere furniture can go, and after "realizing" them, have the blueprints automatically laid out. In some situations, both modes may become disabled during game events (such as during a fire, burglary, or other major event) to prevent modifications to the lot that allows the player of overcoming these challenges.

Build mode can be used to do many things including adding walls, paint/cover walls, add doors and windows, lay down flooring, create foundations and raised decks, create basements by using either foundations or the Basement tool, add columns and supports, create pools, raise and lower land, create ponds, build gardens and landscape a lot, add fireplaces, add additional floors/stories to a building, add stairs, and add a roof.[14] Some expansion packs released after The Sims 3 add extra build mode features such as ceiling construction and designing the terrain, Players cannot build or place objects outside the limits of the lot. Walls and foundations cannot be placed within one tile of the outer limit of the lot. Fences can be placed all the way up to the edge of the lot and all structures built by the players are limited to five above-ground stories as well as four basement levels. Buildings can be modified to appear to be taller than five stories, either using shells (introduced in Late Night) or by use of the constrainfloorelevation false cheat, which disables the requirement for above-ground floors to be uniform in height and level. There will, however, still be only a maximum of five usable above-ground floors.

In Buy mode, the player can purchase and place down new objects: such as appliances, electronics, furniture and vehicles. Some items that would be considered to be in build mode, such as counters and lights, are actually in the buy mode section. Buy mode largely focuses on providing objects that tend to one or more of the Sims needs of hierarchy. allow them to build skills, provide some sort of utility, or purely to act as house decoration. The descriptions of many of the objects available for purchase in the game (namely the least expensive ones) involve humor, sarcasm, insults towards the player, and wit, and serves as comic relief in the game. For example, one of the cheapest cars available in The Sims 3, the "Big Lemon", notes that although the car's doors are jammed and its ignition is faulty, it is still worth buying. Another example is the outdoor entertainment item "Foot-and-Hand Ball" used to train the athletic skill, which references and pokes fun at American football, which, despite its name, rarely involves contact with the ball via the feet.

On October 29, 2009, Electronic Arts announced "Create a World" (CAW), which is a game world editor that allows players to create their own custom cities from scratch for use within the game. Players can customize lots, choose terrain patterns and add roads, vegetation and neighborhood accents (such as water towers and lighthouses). CAW also allows players to import designs from PNG files for use in their worlds. Users can upload their worlds to The Sims 3 Exchange for download by other players. The editor tool is offered to players as a separate download, and was released on December 16, 2009 as a beta version. EA will offer technical support and updates. Players are able to share their neighborhoods as with other content. The Create A World tool is available for Windows-based PCs.[15]

On October 31, 2008, two teaser trailers were released by Electronic Arts featuring a comical view on the 2008 presidential election in the United States. Candidates John McCain and Barack Obama were included along with respective running mates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.[24]

In April 2009, Electronic Arts began to post billboards in many areas in advertisement for the game. Many of the billboards covered skyscrapers in densely populated areas, most notably Times Square in New York City.[25] The costs of these billboards was estimated to be $10 million a month.

On March 23, 2009, The Sims 3 was threaded throughout the storyline of an episode of One Tree Hill.[26]

On April 19, 2009, Target released a promotional disc of The Sims 3 that features a Ladytron band poster, The Sims 3 theme song music download, and a $5 off coupon. The main menu includes screensaver downloads, videos, Create-A-Sim, Create-A-House, and much more. There is no actual gameplay involved, but it describes what playing feels like.

On July 14, 2010, Ford Motor began a promotion at The Sims 3 Store by allowing players to download their newest car at the time, the Ford Fiesta Mark VII.[27] The car also came with a collection of street signs. On October 27, 2010, the download was updated to include the Fiesta Hatchback.[28] The 2012 Ford Focus was made available to download on June 8, 2011.[29] The car included one male Ford T-shirt, one female Ford T-shirt, a stereo, and a set of neon lights, all for use in-game. The Focus pack was available to download on Mac, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms.

Music for The Sims 3 was composed by Steve Jablonsky. Scores were recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.[30] Music for the game's stereo and guitar objects was produced by others, including Darrell Brown, Rebeca Mauleon, and Peppino D'Agostino. Additional music was produced by APM Music.[31] Two soundtracks have been released for The Sims 3 base game, The Sims 3 Soundtrack and The Sims 3 – Stereo Jams. The soundtrack includes theme music and the Stereo Jams album includes music from stereos in game. All songs on Stereo Jams are in Simlish.

Several musical artists partnered with EA to perform some of their songs in the language of Sims, Simlish. Artists have ranged from Katy Perry, Lady Antebellum, Flaming Lips, Damien Marley, Depeche Mode, Nelly Furtado, and Flo Rida.[34] }}

On February 3, 2009, it was announced that the release date of The Sims 3 would be delayed from February 20, 2009 to June 2, 2009 in the US, and June 5, 2009 in the UK.[35]

EA Singapore launched The Sims 3 with a large launch party[36] which was held on June 2, 2009 at the new shopping mall Iluma in Singapore. At the event, The Sims 3 T-shirts were available for purchase. In Sydney, Australia on June 4, 2009 a fashion event to show off the freedom and self-expression in The Sims 3 was held by Electronic Arts Australia, and included a performance by Jessica Mauboy.[37]

The game was released as both a standard edition and a Collector's Edition. Both the collector's edition and the standard edition of the game comes with a coupon for 1000 Sim Points to spend at The Sims 3 Store.[38] The standard edition contains the first release of the core game, while the Collector's Edition includes the Sims 3 core game, a 2GB The Sims Plumbob USB flash drive (preloaded with wallpapers and screensavers of the game, and the main theme as an MP3 file) with matching Green Carabiner, an exclusive European-styled Sports Car download, a Prima Tips and Hints Guide (not the actual Sims 3 Prima Guide), and Plumbob stickers. Those that pre-ordered the game also got a Vintage Sports Car download, The Sims 3 Neighborhood Poster, and a quick start reference guide.[39] A preview CD with more information about The Sims 3, such as music samples, family descriptions, and career information, was also released.[40]

When the game was released on June 2, 2009, it featured both versions for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X on the same disc, unlike the previous games in The Sims series, which were ported to Mac by Aspyr and released several months later after the initial release date. The Mac version was created with the help of Transgaming, Inc., who licensed Cider to developers in order to make their games Mac compatible by emulating Windows APIs. However, playing the game on Mac often results in poorer performance than in Windows, especially on higher-end systems, and it is incompatible with macOS Catalina due to it being 32-bit. The Mac version, albeit receiving the same patches as the Windows version, remained virtually unchanged when the game was brought onto EA's Origin service in 2011. On October 2, 2019, EA announced that they would release an updated 64-bit version of the game, titled The Sims 3 (64-Bit & Metal), with compatibility for macOS Catalina, and that users who register the game on Origin would get the new version for free.[41]

A player editing a Sim in Create a Sim (smartphone version).

A version of The Sims 3 was released on iOS, Android, Bada, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone on June 2, 2009. The iPhone game works similar to that of the PC version. In Create-a-Sim, instead of Lifetime Wishes, there are personas. Personas decide which lifetime wishes your sim will have, as a persona is the largest factor in a Sim's personality. Sims start out with a small house. The house can be expanded every five sim days if the player can afford it.[42] There are four careers in the town: biology, politics, business, and culinary. As in the PC version, Sims can also learn skills. There are nearly 75 wishes in the game.[43] When all of them are fulfilled, Sims unlock the criminal career and have the ability to purchase a car. In some events, such as appliances breaking down, the player must play a minigame to solve or do the action. The game was updated on November 30, 2010, to add support for the Retina display of newer devices.

An expansion pack for the iOS version, World Adventures, was released on April 2, 2010. Unlike expansion packs for the PC, this is a standalone application. World Adventures adds tombs, new challenges, personas, and careers, new places to explore (Egypt, China and France), clothes and new furniture. A second expansion pack, Ambitions, was released on September 16, 2010.[44] As with World Adventures, the game was a standalone application. Ambitions added new skills (firefighting, painting, parenting and sports), new community buildings, and the ability to have children. On November 6, 2009, EA announced the release of a vampire theme pack for the iPhone. The pack included Live it or Wear it Sets with Vampires and Werewolves, Castle and Campus Life themes. "Live it" sets contain car, furniture, decoration, wallpaper, and flooring.[45] "Wear it" sets contain clothing, new CAS options, and hair styles. It was shut down on August 11, 2017.

The Sims 3 was released to game consoles on October 26, 2010, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo DS and the Wii platform on November 15, 2010. The game was released for Nintendo 3DS on March 25, 2011.[46]

The game allows the player to take on up to three friends in the Life Moments Game on the Wii, upload and download content on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, including furnishings, houses, and player creations or experience a full life simulation on a handheld with Nintendo DS. Reviews for the game ranged from average to moderately positive. Sims can age and die, but life cycles can be disabled optionally as well.[47] The Sims 3 features a new Karma system (similar to the influence system in The Sims 2).[46] Sims can interact with child Sims around the neighborhood, or have children of their own.[48] Unlike the PC version of the game, the console versions have loading times when moving from one area to another, and when accessing build / buy modes.[49]

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received mostly positive reviews. On Metacritic, it holds an average score of 77 and 76 out of 100 on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, respectively. Game Informer gave the 360 and PS3 versions a 9/10, praising the new Karma system and The Exchange. GameSpot gave the game a 7/10, noting that "the game lacks fluidity, but is fun in its own right."[50] In a positive review, IGN praised the game for its controls on consoles, but said they were disappointed by the fact that there is only one town in the game, as well as bugs, including a glitch where the game will not save once a certain week has been reached.

The Sims 3 expansion packs provide additional game features and items:

Stuff Packs only include new items e.g. furniture, clothing, hairstyles. They do not add any new functionality to the game. Stuff Packs are compatible with both Windows and OS X as with the main game and expansion packs.