The Sims™ 4 Lovestruck Expansion Pack
Platform(s): PC, Xbox, PlayStation
Players: Single Player
Work Contribution Period: 3 Months
Role(s): Game Designer
Tools used for role(s): Miro, Excel, Perforce, Jira, Frostbite
Summary
The Lovestruck expansion pack was my first project that I work on within the game industry. The expansion pack served as an opportunity to add new content into the game and to provide almost a complete over haul on the original date/romance system. As a Game Designer on the project I had the task of creating new and dynamic gameplay features that fell in line with the games focus on player stories. I worked on the team throughout the entire design phase, from establishing the core design pillars of the pack to the final lock in of all the features.
Role Responsibilities
Conceptualized and designed features that aligned with the core pillars of the release, providing initial designs for multiple features.
Created the design for the Romance Consultant Career which allowed players to influence the love lives of the sims around them.
Facilitated cross-functional communication between creative, technical, visual, and audio teams to ensure cohesive delivery of game features.
Championed representation and inclusion within game design, ensuring features promote a diverse and welcoming environment for all players.
The Romance Skill
The Romance Skill was created to provide multiple benefits around the pack. From the new career to romantic interactions. This was a core feature that tied the entire pack together.
Design Objectives:
Create a trait that increases the success chance of Romantic interactions
Create interactions that help increase the level of the skill
Make sure that the new skill does not overlap with the charisma skill
The Romance Consultant Career
The Romance Consultant Career was the feature that I had full control of the design. I wanted to give players the ability to affect the relationships of the people around them from advisement to matchmaking. This was a full 10 level career with a branching path between a matchmaker route and a relationship counselor route.
Design Objectives:
Create tasks that the player would have to complete for work
Design the career to fufill the player fantasy of being “cupid”
Create rewards that would be unlocked as the players advance through the career
Maintain the whimsy that makes the Sims franchise so loveable
Design Thought Process
In order for the feature to succeed, the interactions that the career provided had to be visualized on screen. Tackling this challenged allowed us to create a correct scope in terms of animation, VFX, audio, and implementation. I also did not want players to feel like they had to go significantly out of their way in order to level up through the career. The skills that get used throughout the career (Romance, Logic, and Charisma) are either very common skills that players level up or are skills that players can not go through the game without leveling up. The tasks that the players would encounter while progressing through this career are all incredibly accessible, but also allow the sims to navigate love in the ways that the players desire. I wanted to encapsulate the different ways that people may learn about love from reading romance novels to going online for relationship tips.
Above is a video by youtuber “Petey Plays It” that goes in depth into each level and all the interactions!
