The Sims 4 team working on improving babies?!

Simmers have been shouting about wanting improved babies in The Sims 4 from (what seems like) the beginning of time but, alas, 6 years into this edition of the game, babies are still glorified objects.

I’m not bitter… honest.

Some *new* code seems to have been found in the game since Snowy Escape was released.

After last week’s patch I am seeing something new in the sims tuning/coding – BABY!!! BABIES!!! This ‘test_global’ snippet is used to test the age of a sim for an interaction… and there was never a baby tag before… sooooo just saying!!!!! pic.twitter.com/tFub0vGBJH

— RAVASHEEN (@RAVASHEENCC) November 15, 2020

Although, alongside many tweets saying a similar thing, I am seeing conflicting tweets.

Regarding the apparent “improved babies” leak: sorry to break it to you all, but it’s nothing new. Plenty of interactions have “BABY” tags. All it means is that the employee who coded the interaction didn’t uncheck it in their internal tools because ages are checked elsewhere.

— Zerbu??? (@ZerbuTabek) November 15, 2020

Hopefully there’s a reason that babies aren’t being unchecked! 

The Sims 4 Nifty Knitting stuff pack brought us knittable onesies for our baby objects but that’s the only ‘improvements’ we’ve seen since the release of The Sims 4 back in 2014.

This seems like a huge missed opportunity and I can only pressume that, given the sheer demand for babies that function, 2021 could see either a free update (we deserve it) or a pack that focuses on babies heavily. A combination of both seems more likely to me.

Generations perhaps?

Personally I would love to see strollers if nothing else! I really miss taking my babies out in a pushchair like we did in The Sims 3 Generations . It really helped me connect with my sims and become fully involved with their lives and experiences. 

Toddlers were a late and well received addition to The Sims 4 in 2017. That’s 3 years after the base game released! That still shocks me. 

They were free which only reinforces the fact that they absolutely should of been in the base game.

Thank goodness we got them in the end.

The reason I mention this? Well, have babies even been added?? Sure, they exist (as objects) but is that just because if a game launched without babies AND toddlers there would of been absolute uproar.

Would I rather not have them at all? No. But I would like EA to stop cutting corners. It’s incredible to get free updates but when it’s things we should of had in the game already, like skintones, toddlers, etc, I find it hard to get excited without being a little salty because we’ve already paid for these things really. We just didn’t get them.

I love that they continue to improve things. I love that they aren’t just abandoning the game, of course! But the majority of free updates seem to be adding in things that were very obviously lacking since launch (years later) and fixing things they broke whilst adding them.

I anticipate that babies as a functional lifestage will come (maybe next year) and for free (if they are paid there will be riots!) but I also think there will be some kind of paid pack to expand on them even further (like generations). That seems to be how The Sims 4 content delivery works. This way they get a huge social media blast because it’s something highly anticipated and it’s free. This way people go wild for it and that in turn advertises the pack that releases alongside it. A very savvy business move that is hugely insulting to anyone sepnding money long term on the game.

I saw recently a tweet that said The Sims 4 costs £700+ to own the base game and all it’s packs at full price. So if you bought them all at release that’s how much you’ve spent. How do you feel about that? Would you have spent £700+ on this game your playing today?

It’s INSANE how The Sims has normalised spending £700+ on a single game with all the dlc’s??? If you look at other games in the genre, they have like 3-4 dlcs max. God I hate capitalism

— shroomboi (@shroomboii) November 14, 2020

To me The Sims 4 feels more like a live service (alpha) game sometimes.

Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Sometimes those of us who are most passionate about the game (like I know so many of us are!) are the most critical and disappointed when it comes to how The Sims 4 is going. We each have different playstyles and babies will be important to some and not important at all to others but I’m sure plenty simmers will agree we deserve better.

Time will tell but I do feel excited for 2021 because they literally have nothing left to deliver but the things we have been asking for for years XD