6/17/2008

17/06/08 - Sims Carnival Open Beta


Today EA decided that enough stress testing was enough, and that it was finally time to release the Sims Carnival into the world.

The open beta should provide room to see if there's enough of a willing responce from the gaming community for a real surge of development in the area. Progams like DarkBasic which claim to make it easy to design your own creations have been around for a while now, but never really took off.

The Carnival system is a set of wizards, with a few advanced options, for constructing...well, I'm not sure to be honest yet, without some serious further investigation and exploration, but pretty much anything, judging by the selection that's appeared during the closed beta.

EA know that the Sims brand holds a lot of power and recognition with a group that don't normally play games in anything approaching the way your average bedroom coder would. It'll be interesting to see what the takeup will be like with the Casual Gamer crowd.

Soon I'll talk up in more detail the potential of Carnival, possibly with a guide to go with it, but for now, experiment yourself at the Sims Carnival homepage.