Highlights
- The Sims 5 aims to address the franchise's shortcomings and reach a wider audience through its free-to-play model and increased accessibility. One flaw to focus on would be Genetics.
- The Genetics mechanic in previous Sims games has been impressive but imperfect, often resulting in children who bear little resemblance to their parents.
- By revamping the Genetics system in The Sims 5, Maxis can differentiate itself from the upcoming competitor, Life by You, and offer more realistic sim babies for players.
With its free-to-play business model and increased focus on accessibility, The Sims 5 looks set to be a fresh start for the iconic franchise whenever it arrives. As Maxis Studios continues to release new information about The Sims 5, codenamed Project Rene, it’s become clear that it hopes to address some of the series’ shortcomings with the upcoming entry to help it reach a wider audience. While Maxis has given gamers a glimpse of how features like Build Mode and character customization work in The Sims 5, details about how it plans to address one prominent problem with the franchise have yet to be revealed.
One thing that’s made The Sims a perennial hit with players worldwide is the ability to customize nearly every aspect of the game. This carries over into the game’s take on parenting, allowing players to create child Sims that reflect the physical traits of their in-game parents. Although a great idea in theory, the imperfect implementation of The Sims’ Genetics mechanic has long been a sore spot for some. Overhauling the system for The Sims 5 would not only address this longstanding complaint, but also help it stand out in the face of new competition.
The Genetics Mechanic in Previous The Sims Games is Impressive But Imperfect
Introduced with The Sims 2, the Genetics mechanic is meant to produce in-game offspring that share a resemblance to the Sims who parented them. Whereas in The Sims babies had randomly selected features, the arrival of Genetics with the release of The Sims 2 allowed players’ virtual kids to inherit traits ranging from eye color to facial features to personality. However, even as this mechanic has been refined with each subsequent release, complaints have persisted about children sometimes looking nothing like their Sim parents.
Despite the Genetics mechanic in the latest game being an improvement from its predecessors, it’s not uncommon for children in The Sims 4 to bear little to no resemblance to their parents. For players intent on creating their ideal in-game family, this can be frustrating and has become a frequent source of complaints from some series fans. As the franchise prepares to face what could be its biggest competitor in years with the release of Paradox Interactive’s Life by You, adding a more robust Genetics mechanic to The Sims 5 could help the series maintain its role as the preeminent life simulator.
A Revamped Genetics Mechanic Would Set The Sims 5 Apart from Life by You
Releasing in early access in 2024, Paradox Interactive’s Life by You offers an alternative to The Sims franchise. Featuring a robust character and world creation system, it represents the biggest threat in years to Maxis’ domination of the life simulator genre. But while Life by You’s Human Creator promises to let players design their perfect in-game avatar, little has been revealed about how childhood and other life stages will work in the game. This gives The Sims 5 a chance to differentiate itself by introducing a retooled Genetics system.
This could be done by adding more variety to how traits are expressed in The Sims 5. Instead of inheriting traits like hair color and texture from only one of their Sim parents, for example, children could have features that blend each parent’s traits to produce a more realistic mix of the two. The same could work for the physical features of Sims, which currently either show up as nearly identical to one parent, a roughly half-and-half mix, or entirely unlike either. The Sims 5 could blend physical traits more subtly, letting Sims inherit a feature like prominent ears from one parent while getting more of their features from the other, for example.
By revamping the Genetics system in The Sims 5 to give in-game children a better blend of their parents Maxis could resolve one of the longest-running problems with the series and produce more realistic Sim babies as a result. This would not only please long-time players, but also give the game a competitive edge over Life by You when it releases.
The Sims 5 is in development.