(Below are my first impressions of The Sims 4: Get to Work. If you’d like to see the game in action, my wife, ImaginingMystic and I will be livestreaming an early access version of the game from EA on her Twitch.tv channel tonight at 8pm EST.)

When The Sims 4: Get To Work (aka GTW) was announced my number one point of excitement was the reintroduction to a *proper* business aspect. The Sims 2: Open for Business (aka OFB) is a stand-out in my mind as the greatest expansion pack of the entire Sims franchise because of the the gameplay it introduced. Comparing the old retail system of OFB with the new one introduced in Get To Work will be the topic of this article.

Starting a Business:

Pick up the phone and start one! In both OFB and GTW, starting your business can be done over the phone. OFB did allow you the option to start a home based business, where as GTW requires that you purchase another lot. That said, any lot can be made into a retail flavored lot. While there is a new neighborhood available for use in your business, you can easily start one in the home neighborhoods too. It does require a loading screen to get to your business, but given the much shorter loading screens of TS4 compared to TS2, it is hardly a downside.

Picking what to sell:

Both OFB and GTW’s retail system is extremely flexible in what you sell. Sim-created and buy mode objects are all available to be sold. The developers of TS4 have gone on record that all future expansion packs/stuff packs that they release will all be primed to be included in the retail experience. This allows for crafting a very wide variety of stores. It is notable that the ability to sell tickets and have Sims pay you hourly for the privilege of being on your lot was not seen in GTW, but the retail system is still there in force.

Once an item is placed in the world, you can click on it and select ‘set for sale’ This allows you to tell the customers of the store what they can buy and what items are there for just decorations or functional purposes. In both games, you have various price levels that you could set based on the normal retail (buy mode) price of the item. Being able to mark items up to very large amount or sell them on the cheap. The only difference is that OFB allowed you to set price levels for different items within the store. Price levels in GTW are global store-wide. Granted, I didn’t really use the different pricing levels back in OFB so it’s absence doesn’t really impact the experience.

The sale:

In both OFB and GTW, customers will stroll in and pick items they are curious about. Interacting with them will display a special bar above their head to indicate how close they are to buying. You can help influence this bar by doing sales interactions. This is where GTW really expands and improves the retail experience. GTW has a ton of new options for even the most unskilled sales people…rather than unlocking new options, higher charisma sims simply succeed more often with their sales. Just with normal conversations in The Sims 4, the conversation has a mode set to it. “From Flirty Exchange” to “Friendly Conversation” now several new modes have been introduced to allow increased variety of sales tactics. Sales are also a lot more reliable (but certainly not perfect). In OFB, a rejected “Hard Sell” would cause all sorts of lost relationship points and customer loyalty points and was thus a very dangerous sales interaction to use.

In OFB, setting an NPC employee to a “Sales” duty was basically insane. They’d use the most risky sales techniques possible and badger customers repeatedly even after getting rejected. Having your NPC employees be sales people in GTW is a much more realistic and rewarding move that can actually help, rather than harm, your business.

One confusing aspect of GTW is that you must purchase the cash register to call your business complete….but it isn’t actually used to check out customers (from what I’ve observed). Once a customer decides to buy an item, they must be checked out. Checking them out involves clicking on them and saying ‘ring up customer’. This causes your sim to pull out a tablet PC and ring them out there on the sales floor.

Employees:

You can hire 1 employee at first, but up to 3 total with the right perks in GTW. Each employee seems to have a level of skill similar to the badge system in OFB. Employees will increase their skills over time by doing the associated task enough. Have them do enough restocking and their restocking skill will increase. There is another “Work Ethic” skill that determines how often they slack off. I was not able to see how or if that is able to be increased.

You can interact with your employees in a wide variety of ways, checking up on them, praising or yelling at them. Giving them raises or demotions (which impacts their rate of pay). They do seem limited to an 8 hour day and will depart after that amount of time citing labor laws, which is pretty reasonable. You can certainly keep your store open for longer if you wish. They perform very well in the sales and restocking tasks, but seem to be too distracted to ring up customers in a timely manner, even when that is their assigned task.

Perks and Rewards:

In OFB, you had business levels, and each level you received allowed you to pick from a tree of perks. This meant you really couldn’t get ALL the perks available. In GTW you accumulate business reward points for pretty much everything business related you do. Sales interactions, selling an item, ringing up an item, restocking an item all give you reward points similar to Lifetime reward points you get for fulfilling whims. The perks you buy are all related to the business. In fact, in order to make your own family members do certain business tasks better, like restocking or checking out faster, you can’t improve those with skill over time, you improve them with perks. Once purchased, the perk applies to all non-employee household members working the business. Other perks can unlock new items, give you new abilities and even give some temporary (but powerful) bonuses like making restocking items a lot cheaper for a 12 hour period. It certainly allows a veteran business to run more smoothly and effectively than a brand new one.

Overall Impression:

While missing a *few* things that OFB had, GTW’s retail side has a LOT going for it and definitely feels like an honest recreation of the classic Sims 2 OFB experience. And this isn’t even mentioning the new interactive doctor, scientist, and police officer careers that were introduced with GTW.

Keep your eyes peeled for a challenge related to the retail side of the game soon!