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" The fourth expansion pack for The Sims 3 is looking to add something for everyone. While previous offerings added new careers or holiday destinations, this adds a series of pivotal moments for Sims of every age group, and allows them to be shared across social networks. We sit down with producer Graham Nardone to chat treehouses, imaginary friends and other new features coming in the expansion. How are the new events in The Sims 3: Generations incorporated into the game? &amp;quot;The Sims 3: Generations is really about this rich spectrum of life experiences for all the age ranges of the Sims, and really seeing how that affects their lives. When we talk about the generations, it&amp;#039;s really about what the Sims do and how it personally affects them. So for the children, you&amp;#039;ll see this imagination fuelled world, where they&amp;#039;re very creative and playful, then for the teenagers they play a lot of pranks and get into trouble, and have prom dances, and it&amp;#039;s really nice for them. As you grow up you&amp;#039;ll go on dates and get married under the wedding arch, and they have mid-life crises when they become adults now. And for elders, it&amp;#039;s really fun because you&amp;#039;ll see them hobbling round on a cane and see them pulling out pictures of their grandkids, and really proud of these new experiences that they&amp;#039;ve gone through in life. It&amp;#039;s really a great new thing for our players there&amp;#039;s just so much new content for them to discover.&amp;quot;  Will the events be available from existing Sims 3 save states? &amp;quot;So if you&amp;#039;ve been playing The Sims 3, whether it&amp;#039;s the base game or some of the expansions, when you purchase Generations all this will automatically integrate into whatever you&amp;#039;ve been doing. It&amp;#039;s not like you&amp;#039;ll need to start a new game - you can play with the Sims that you&amp;#039;ve already created. A lot of our players get really passionate and involved in their save games, and they&amp;#039;ve built these big families that already have generations of Sims, and now they&amp;#039;ll be able to explore that even further.&amp;quot; Are there any new skills available? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no new skills specifically, but some of the new objects require skills to progress in them. We have the chemistry table, and it&amp;#039;s this really cool thing now, where as Sims progress through to the logic skill, they&amp;#039;ll be more and more involved and be able to build these cool new potions. Some of the Sims make great potions that help other Sims, and some kind of get destructive with it. There&amp;#039;s a lot of really fun ones. One of my favourites is drinking a potion and turning my Sim into a ghost for a few hours, and he&amp;#039;ll go around and scare their friends and family and then turn back later. It&amp;#039;s funny as you can spike drinks with some of them, so he&amp;#039;ll pour into another drink, and another unsuspecting Sim will come along and drink it, and suddenly he has to go to the bathroom constantly, you&amp;#039;ll see him running back and forth, and it&amp;#039;s really funny. But there&amp;#039;s all sorts to spec the gameplay with it, and build on the skills you&amp;#039;ve already developed.&amp;quot;  What do you think is the most exciting new feature in the expansion? &amp;quot;For me, I really love the treehouses. The treehouses are pretty fantastic. My favourite one is this sci-fi tree house, because kids can dress up in different kinds of costumes now. So I&amp;#039;ll dress them up as astronauts and send them out to this sci-fi treehouse, and it&amp;#039;s so cool, because there&amp;#039;s a UFO built onto the top of it, so not only will kids go up and play and have their friends in there, spy on the neighbours outside, but they imagine things now too, and go into their own world of creativity. In the sci-fi tree house, if they start to imagine they&amp;#039;re playing in there you&amp;#039;ll see the engines of the UFO turn on and starts spinning, and it&amp;#039;s really awesome. Each of the treehouses are so unique because they have different ones, but it&amp;#039;s so personal to what you want to have in your game. It&amp;#039;s really cool to see, there&amp;#039;s so much you can do in them.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s a really smart way to see what they&amp;#039;re imagining. &amp;quot;Absolutely. Treehouses are one of the big ways to bring that out. There&amp;#039;s also imaginary friends as well, which we&amp;#039;ve never had in a Sims game before. As a kid you&amp;#039;re growing up, you have this doll that you really love and spend a lot of time with, it has the chance to turn into an imaginary friend for you, and it&amp;#039;s this great chance to interact with the game that you haven&amp;#039;t seen. Kids will play with this friend, as soon as you switch to another Sim, the friend completely disappears because it&amp;#039;s really personal to the child that believes in them, and very unique to them. It&amp;#039;s great seeing other Sims react to them, they see their imaginary friend and the other Sims don&amp;#039;t, and so it&amp;#039;s really fun and great for the kids to play around with.&amp;quot;  When you start designing new expansion packs, which directions do you take? How do you decide on a theme? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s kind of a blend between looking at what our community is asking for, and having these new ideas of our own that we&amp;#039;ve always wanted to explore. With Generations, it&amp;#039;s a theme that we really wanted to do for a long time, and we haven&amp;#039;t had the chance to previously. It&amp;#039;s this brand new experience for fans that they&amp;#039;ve never seen this in an expansion before. Of course we&amp;#039;re always listening to fans for the feedback that they have, and you&amp;#039;ll see as we go through different expansions [that] we&amp;#039;ll focus on different ways, where for some it&amp;#039;s what the community asking for, and like, for Generations, it&amp;#039;s about providing these new experiences that they&amp;#039;ve never had before.&amp;quot; How do video cameras work? &amp;quot;The video cameras are really awesome - it&amp;#039;s actually one of my favourite new things in the expansion. If you&amp;#039;ve been playing The Sims, you&amp;#039;ve been so used to seeing them from this traditional top down perspective, and watching how things are playing out in their world. But with video camera we put you directly in the eyes of your Sim, and now you can walk around in the neighbourhood and see what they&amp;#039;re seeing. And it&amp;#039;s really exciting, because it&amp;#039;s this brand new immersive way to experience the Sims that nobody has ever seen before. So I&amp;#039;ll be walking around and I&amp;#039;ll see what Sims are doing, and it&amp;#039;s such an exciting new way to see things and experience the game. And of course, at the same time they&amp;#039;re recording all these videos, so they can watch them back within the TVs within the game, and just have these great moments that they&amp;#039;ve captured on film now.&amp;quot;  You&amp;#039;ll also be able to upload content to The Sims website and Facebook? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s part of our new Memories system. We&amp;#039;ve kind of had Memories in previous games, and fans really enjoyed that, but now with all these new life experiences, Sims will have these big memorable moments in their lives and they&amp;#039;ll be able to capture that in their scrapbook. But, as a player, you might have something that&amp;#039;s really funny or enjoy something that your Sims are doing, and you can capture that moment and you&amp;#039;ll have a screenshot and you can put your own title and description in there. But the really great new thing that we&amp;#039;re introducing is that you can share that with your friends and the community. You can either upload that [to the Sims 3 website] or push it immediately to Facebook from within the game. It&amp;#039;s a great way to keep people on top of what you&amp;#039;re doing - things that are really exciting for you.&amp;quot; Do you think you&amp;#039;ll experiment more with social networking with The Sims in future? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s kind of an interesting thing. You&amp;#039;ll see that we&amp;#039;ve taken advantage of these media channels, where our Facebook site has been very popular - we have over four million fans on there - and we&amp;#039;re always interacting with our community with those methods. Then our YouTube channel for example, it has over 37 million views now, and one of the top sponsored channels of all time. It&amp;#039;s kind of crazy. We see these things and they&amp;#039;re a really big opportunity for us, so we&amp;#039;re always kind of examining how we can bring these kind of things into the game, and have social integration for our players. So it&amp;#039;s always something we&amp;#039;re considering and having in our minds.&amp;quot;  Sims 3: Generations will be available for PC and Mac on May 31 in North America and June 3 in Europe. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/the-sims/interviews/a315455/graham-nardone-sims-3-generations/>