The Sims 2: On Television
Here's a little more on the Sims 2 television show that I mentioned in last night's discussion of Electronic Arts (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01/18/news_6116565.html):The Sims is about to get a little more into The Real World. Electronic Arts has reportedly been pitching the idea of a reality television show based on the life simulator... While no plans have yet been given the green light, EA does have a few ideas on what a Sims television show would be like. Jan Bolz, vice president of marketing and sales for EA Europe, told Reuters: "One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing.'
It's like I've always said: there's nothing more compelling than watching television and voting to decide whether a character should go to the kitchen or the bedroom. That makes 24 sound dull. Add the dining room as a possible destination and you're talking entertainment magic!
Companies are strange creatures. Like I said yesterday, people inside the company, particuarly as you move up the management chain, develop shared assumptions that go unquestioned, and since many of them are wrong, it makes many of their conclusions totally ludicrous. But that's never discovered until the idea is taken outside the company, and many companies don't listen to the general public, anyway, because only top management has the "vision." That vision, by the way, is often constituted of--shared, erroneous assumptions. So even though this idea should be on Tony Asshat's Top Ten List of The Stupidest Ideas in Television History, it probably sailed through internal discussion without a scratch.
Although I still think it's a good idea for Jan Bolz to update his resume--and quickly.
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