Earlier today, I was able to participate in a conference call hosted by Rachel Franklyn (The Executive Producer in the Sims studio) and Ryan Vaughan (Producer of Sims 4).

While the trailer was leaked earlier today, the conference call gave us some very juicy details about the first full expansion pack for The Sims 4.

The first expansion pack this coming April will be titled “The Sims 4: Get to Work”.

It is being touted as a combination of The Sims 2 Open for Business and The Sims 3: Ambitions

There are three new careers being added with this expansion pack, but not in the traditional sense. The three careers are Medical, Police, and Scientist. This helps explain the absence of these staple careers from the original game. Rather than include them as vanilla rabbit hole careers, the devs opted to save them for this pack which makes sense since they are being done in Sims 3: Ambitions’ style. Where as some of the other careers chosen for vanilla rabbit hole careers (such as secret agent and astronaught) would not be as feasable to do as a hands-on Ambitions style career. It also points to that they haven’t forgotten about the original careers that have been around since the Sims 1, they just wanted to expand on them.

The first of the three new careers is Medical. This is what we were told about it:

Your Sim will be able to diagnose and cure illnesses at a brand new hospital venue. There is a new surgery table item that a skilled doctor can use. (No word on what happens if a non-skilled Sim tries to use it). And for the first time in Sim’s history, your Sim can actually deliver babies! No details were given about the possible benefits of the new hospital births versus the home births but it DOES hint at possible story progression. If the game is to generate ‘ailments’ for your doctor Sim to deal with while on the job, presumably it will need to include women in labor. While this could just be random female Sims who are generated, give birth, and vanish from existence once they leave the hospital, the potential is there for townies or other non-player Sims to randomly get pregnant and need to come in for a delivery.

The second new career is the Detective career, an echo of the old Police career from earlier installments. Here, your sim is tasked with investigating crime scenes, finding clues, and will receive a new police station venue where you can interrogate suspects. This also hints at possible story progression as the game would have to generate crime scenes…and criminals for your Sim to investigate and interrogate. Just as burglars of the olden days existed as real NPCs in the world even after being generated just to rob your house, the same could be true with the criminals.

The third career is Scientist, who can experiment and craft new items with the brand new invention constructor. To quote Ryan Vaughan, “It [the invention constructor] is like a combination of a 3D printer and Jarvis from Iron Man”.

While it doesn’t look like this career will have its own venue, the complexity of the objects and the inventions sound like it will be vast. No confirmation of being able to make servos, but he did say you could “use your inventions for good or evil”. We will have to wait for more details to come in the following weeks to know exactly what kinds of inventions can be made.

Open For Business

The fourth new “Career” is that of a business owner. By every sound of it, this is exactly what we got from the original OFB in the Sims 2 and that is a GOOD thing. You can make ANY kind of retail business, from clothing to art galleries to bookstores. It sounds like you can sell both build mode items as well as your Sim’s own creations if you wish. You can hire and fire Sims, set prices, and shmooze the customers into buying. It was not made clear if restaurants where Sims order food or ‘club’ style venues where Sims pay a fee just to enter and stay on your lot will make a return, but with or without them, this is going to be a very awesome addition to the gameplay (and likely the subject of my next challenge).

Two New Skills

There are two brand new skills being introduced with this expansion pack. Baking and Photography.

Baking sounds like an expansion of the cooking skill in the same way that gourmet cooking is, and ties into the OFB, where your Sim can run a bakery to sell their wares.

Photography has me the most excited. When giving feedback about the announcement on the call, I presented a hypothetical idea of a Sim obsessed with toilet paper able to make an entire business selling it. Rachel Franklyn added “You could sell toilets along with the toilet paper and then use the photography skill to take pictures of toilet paper and sell those too.”

Let’s break that down a moment. “…use the photography skill to take pictures of toilet paper and sell those too.” If I am interpreting this statement correctly, this means that portraits are back in the game. If you are able to capture something via Photography and make it into an object depicting the subject originally captured, this missing bit of functionality could be making a return. There was no mention of painting and if it will be able to capture portraits for paintings the way that photography could with the camera, but presumably yes, if they’re developing the technology to accomplish that. Again, this is just speculation.

More information will be coming out in the following weeks so keep your eyes peeled. This is a very exciting time for the Sims 4!