I'm slightly less than a week late with this news, but I've been scanning the forums to see if anybody has been discussing this and I haven't found anything, so here I am. If someone did beat me to it, sorry about the redundancy.

But for those of you who haven't heard, Maxis is apparently beginning a thing called Maxis Monthly where they stream once a month to talk about the game and upcoming content. The first one is set for this upcoming Tuesday, October 2nd at 11 a.m. PDT.

According to SimGuruKate, they'll be teasing upcoming content for the game (about damn time). What do you guys think of this new tactic? Any speculations as to what this new content could be?

Behind The Scenes at Simlish from The Sims 4's Upcoming Content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBkl6Zx8Ug8

This is for or part of this:

CNN’s “Great Big Story” Filming a Special for The Sims 4

https://simsvip.com/2018/09/23/cnns...ing-the-sims-4/

But this has nothing to do with Maxis Monthly, does it? The voices could be related to the upcoming content they want to tease, but so far it was never mentioned in combination with the stream afaik.

I just hope they can stay consistent. It wouldn't be the first time they've talked about some sort of way to communicate with us and then things don't go as planned. I'm just going to sit back and wait to see what happens. However, if this is something they DO stick with it will be nice to be in the know again with what is coming up and hopefully it makes up for the lack of teasers.

Seems wasteful.

> Tease an upcoming announcement
> Announce game with press release
> Promote Game
> Live Stream Demos
> Launch Game

This all seems so superficial and shallow.

I agree. It's not the first time they wanted to use a "new improved communication strategy" and there have never been any changes. Oh, wait! Last time they said it they went silent for nearly three months and took away quarterly teasers! I'm complaining about this too much but it's ridiculous
I also wonder what it means to "tease at upcoming content" - Will they talk about future patches like they mentioned the garden overhaul? Or will we get a teaser video for an actual pack?

With them you just never know sadly. To be honest I wish they would have just kept the quarterly teasers. There was nothing wrong with how it was in the past. I'm a strong believer in the phrase, "If it ain't broke don't fix it". But this is them were talking about so we're just going to have to wait and see what they do and... not get hyped 😂 (I couldn't help it lol)

I see this so often with various companies now that they think that new branding and communications strategies are the remedy when simply having a convincing product would actually be the best approach.

It actually makes "logical" sense why this mistake is made.

If you've ever seen the marketing numbers for a company, there's a LOT of money in play. It can sometimes be astounding how much money marketing plays with compared to the value of the company or product.

This unfortunately means that often companies prioritize promoting the marketing people instead of the designers, precisely because the marketing guys theoretically hold more responsibility in regards to money. The problem is eventually this hits a point where the company loses sight of it's entire purpose and focuses far too much time and effort on marketing, all while the product or service suffers. Imagine a meeting talking about ways to improve revenue for the year, except everyone present is from the marketing department or originated from there. You have no one in the room checking if the product or service will suffer based on their choices, nor do you have anyone vouching for it's importance or voicing opinions about how to improve the company via the product.

Basically, marketing gets promoted more frequently than it should due to it's financial responsibility and the ability to constantly come up with new marketing strategies. A product on the other hand...? New innovations are less common and often it's assumed they can just keep doing what they're doing and be fine. Indirectly, this leads to no one defending the quality of the product since it lacks a voice.

I can say that at my workplace for example, one of my two bosses is infamous for more or less being incompetent. However, I can say he knows his stuff when it comes to anything involving marketing. Exact same problem: he goes through and tries to manage people and give orders regarding their current project, but he's constantly TOO focused on the marketing aspects to even see the value of alternatives, such as what's better for the customer. Very often, his decisions are a plus for marketing but a loss for the customer, while simultaneously often being a management nightmare for the workers.

Now, imagine if we got a business expansion that reflected those same ideas and principles.

“We can invest in the business, but do we invest in the consumer, the employees, the product, or the marketing?” Then, seeing how all of these elements shape the business overall.

Oh, is it time again to bitch about Grant? I want to join! Like in the last week he threatened multiple fans to block them because they were using the running gag that Grant's tweets are hints about University/werewolves/witches. One day he also came online, saw someone asked about any announcements or hints, and he said something along the lines "And that's how you lose me. Good afternoon." and went offline again.
How did that man-child get his Twitter position back? You would think after the Pets disaster someone would keep an eye on him. But maybe they're just glad that Grant keeps us talking.

I don't have any issues with Kate (from what I see she actually is respectful and nice to fans, and can ignore people who annoy her), but Jesus, that was one hell of a long Twitter thread. Did that ever find its way into the official forum or is it just normal to post such wall of texts on Twitter now? Oof. But yeah, preaching about respect when your colleague is acting like a spoiled brat who threatens to block fans for their excitement or simple running gags is... ironic.

All big companies do this.
Ask the engineers how much to fix it.
Ask the marking how much to sell it without the fix.
Go with the option with the most profit.

Most of them better take some time off and put some serious hours into learning how to play the game then, if they want to look competent while trying to sell it in their videos. Nothing worse than a Guru bumbling through the game on camera, mumbling questions and thoughts out load about why sims are doing awkward things - or nothing at all - due to lack of playing experience. There's been too much of that for comfort.

It's truly ironic when she talks about "insulting" devs but no one bats an eye at how rude and downright disrespectful Grant is to simmers.




Hahaha I was just saying this before I saw this!

I like how most of the people who responded to that tweet were like "Omggg lol Grant you silly goose hahah so funny!! #savage!"

It's not funny. If he was trying to be "funny," it was a pretty cringeworthy attempt at humor. If he wasn't, he's a Grade A douchebag (then again, that's probably true regardless).

Can Grant just disappear already.

There is nothing sassy or quirky about his attitude... He is just rude.

I find that weird, too. Even under posts where he threatens to block people everyone thinks he's savage and funny. And I'm 100% sure he's not kidding.
Maybe everyone who actually called him out on being rude is already blocked, so you only have his fans and corgi lovers left

While Grant jokes that he will block someone for mentioning witches and the process of studying (strange humor, if it's honest), in 2003 fans, joking, sent Maxoids, which were called simply Maxis, to work:



https://web.archive.org/web/2008052...at_09_13_03.php

I sometimes just LOL with these chat sessions. Most importantly, Maxis are not offended. They understood the humor. What kind of people, such and games. That's why Sims 2 is such a humorous game and Sims 4 is so boring and meh.

It's a breath of fresh air to read that... it's really sad that we're stuck with the back-sass of a man-child on twitter.

This thread started out really well. @DeservedCriticism your comments are always on point and thought provoking. Sadly, it's turned into yet another SimGuruGrant thread.

Grant is like the next SimGuruDrake. Or maybe worse than her. Can't remember how he was back then. "I don't care" seems just plain rude response. Real passion here, not even tried to worded it out better even ]If you're that lazy to check with the staff/co-workers who created Bella Goth Oh, I forgot what the context was. Of course he doesn't play the premade, because who plays the game on their free time? No, but really - who plays it? Nobody from the staff? Nada? Explains why the quality suffers even more by adding the factors from just the studio part alone.


Kate seems like a rational person. If I had twitter, I would comfort and address the behavior of Grant to her to provoke some thought into her and understand as to why maybe the fanbase is roasting their team in general.

Let's be real. it's not like endless discussions about:

1. EA business practices
2. PR tactics
3. Game quality

Are more original talking points than Grants behaviour and the team. They are all part of a endless discussion that has been going on since.... Well I remember it being like this early TS3 era so.

It's just more intense now because there is a drought of information about TS4. Who can blame people? Before the Gurus were happy to play along on hints and thing. Now you get smarmy replies or get told off

I only paid attention with one ear, but October patch is cancelled because they want to polish new features and the teaser was a free active career we'll get - fashion career where you can sketch on a mobile tablet and change Sims appearance in CAS.
But the really great thing - TERRAIN TOOL! October 11 may have more infos then.

Picture from Reddit: