EA officially now has competition.

it's very short trailer... but Paradox created a Life Simulation game

https://youtu.be/ZNhV-Gnjdy8

It's... beautiful. I remembered to check out the showcase, but I completely missed the announcement while skimming through the previews on Youtube. I was so disappointed until just now.

It also looks, so far, a bit different in terms of structure and perhaps focus to The Sims. Obviously there were no clean views of the characters themselves, which means either they're still a WIP or that their customization might not be much of a focus. Still, I'm ready for anything at this point. 14 years of TS3 has been... well, it's been long enough.

Textures! I'd almost forgotten what they could be after 8 years of Sims 4

Ahh, it looks good! I really hope they keep that artstyle, I hate the Sims 4 cutesy-Disney-cartoon aesthetic so much, and Paralives is looking that way too. I am praying that they make it open world, and fully customisable- so that we can change the world the 'sims' live in, as well as their homes. I was half expecting it to be Colossal Order who came out with the next life sim, but Paradox have gone internal with this one...Keeping fingers crossed for it!

I was actually expecting it, though I was kinda worried a while back when Paradox announced they cancelled some unannounced games. But thankfully this was not among them!
I'm a bit sceptical. Rod Humble was responsible for a lot of the parts of Sims 3 I didn't care for. And it looks a bit realistic for me. But since we know nothing about this game, I'm gonna try and keep an open mind. The gameplay will after all be the most important part.
The most important part is now we're hopefully gonna have TWO games that are going to compete with the Sims series, and one of them is even backed by a big and successful publisher with a great track record (Paradox) and that's always good.

It is more aesthetically pleasing than TS4 in my opinion. I like the vibrant colours and particularly the ocean (just everything about it) and the sky effects. I would really like to know if you can change the atmosphere effects like in Cities: Skylines. The meshes are really pretty to me and especially the trees in that photo of someone's house. I wonder how will the characters look because this is prettier to me than TS4, but the characters in TS4 themselves are pretty.

My first impression isn't all that positive tbh and I'm wondering why it wasn't announced with a proper trailer like everything else? Besides cars and the open world Sims 3 vibe, the 3 tile staircase and watering indoor plants were my only takeaways. Hopefully the "announcement event" on the 20th gives a better look at the game and the direction they're taking.

It feels so good. The fact that 2020 millenelia seems promosing as we got finally COMPETITORS happening: one that has PROGRESSED and the other (this one) that comes from a BIG NAME. Even if we know or receive little of actual legimatacy of them coming to release fruitation, it's so good to HEAR we finally have something taken the opportunity to have possibly EA running for its sinking money of their shot boat by these two battle war ships.

Much like Paralives, I'm....cautiously optimistic about this. It looks pretty from the 50 seconds we saw, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited by the idea of there now potentially being THREE life simulator games to choose from. But I need to see what they have for us on the 20th before I'm fully aboard the hype train.

This was just a teaser; we're getting the full trailer on March 20th.

I just don't get why you'd ever announce a new game from a new studio with just a couple of lackluster clips spliced together without even having a logo to brand it? And then follow that up with a proper announcement only two weeks later? It doesn't make sense to me.

The only reason I can think you wouldn't announce your brand new IP with a proper trailer and then follow up that bit of good marketing with more details two weeks later is if the game isn't ready but Paradox is not going to give it all of the time and money it needs and are going to push it to market on schedule to recoup their investment instead of canceling it and cutting their losses like they did with a slew of their other games.

I hope I'm wrong and suspicious for no good reason, but like I said, it really wasn't a positive first impression for me.

It was a 34-minute announcement show where they presented or teased several new games (including Cities:Skylines 2) and dlc for their core titles. Likely it was just a teaser to hype up the proper announcement on the 20th. At this point we do not know anything. We do not know whether that trailer will announce a concrete release date and how far in the future said release date might be.

I am looking forward to seeing more about this. I am not that big of a Paralives fan as you all know, and this looks promising.

Yeah it looks janky and like an asset flip right now, but then again, Cities Skylines was basically an asset flip from earlier games Colossal Order made to quickly fill in the void that Simcity left (and it can look really janky at times)- I’m really hoping that the focus with this new game is on gameplay and the open world, with maybe some polish and refinement of the graphics at a later stage.

It looks promising, but I want to see some of the mechanics before I can make a decision on whether to keep an eye on it or not. Paradox has some really great games and they support them for a long time. My only concern is the amount of potential DLC. Europa Universalis IV came out in 2013 and it still getting full priced DLC and Crusader Kings III has expansions that cost 30 bucks. If Life By You follows the same DLC model, expansions will be numerous and expensive. But depending on how good the game is, it might be worth it.

It's interesting, but I didn't like the coloring and materials. I felt a through back to TS3, especially in the apartment. Strange glossy floors, and that 3 tile staircase is actually illegal in most countries. Also I didn't like the nature photos from the beginning. All the colors of trees are blue-greens, very few yellow-greens, nature just doesn't look like that. Also the ambient colors in the apartment made me feel sick. The girl walking is looking bulky so maybe the characters are more natural looking, but I'm not conviced that is going to grow on me. Somehow I think taller and slimmer characters look more pleasing and I'm playing a game after all.

Very nice with some competition though, and I'm looking forward to the event.

Not much difference from The Sims 4 then, with the number of expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs and kits that this game has. :-)
I have more faith in Paradox releasing expansions that continuously make an actual difference though.

I'm very careful before going excited. Looks promising, but I need more information.
One thing I really like, it seems there going to be open world again. That's super cool, because sims4 is a real downgrade for me because of those loading screens.

If this is for real, then I'm definitely all in it. But I know a good chef can make food LOOK good. But the proof is in the tasting, right?

It looks nice. I'll see how it will play.
I'm funnily not sure I'm ready for another round of buying DLC and patching. Playing sims3 without having to do that for the last 9 years has spoiled me. But if it plays in interesting and new ways, I'll probably try it.

TBH it looks a little rough from the teaser they showed, but I'll be paying attention to the full reveal on the 20th with interest.

Competition is good. Even if these new challenger games don't turn out to be all that great, it'll light a fire under EA's ass. It's win-win for us players.

I wonder what the characters will be called. Assuming the game will have a special name for the characters that is.
In Sims they're Sims. In Paralives they're Parafolk/Paras.
What will they be here? "Livers"?

I am happy to see more Sims competitors. Who knows, maybe it forces EA to deliver quality this time.

And I get a sims 3 vibe from it as well, which is my favourite within the sims franchise. This artstyle is probably chosen on purpose. They must know about all the Sims 2 and 3 players who were disappointed with Sims 4 (including its art style). I also expect it will have mod support. Most games published by Paradox Interactive do. But it will also be a DLC cash cow, because most Paradox Interactive titles are. But let's wait and see what the base game actually offers.

I have a thing for indie developers though. (with the exception of the ones that just recycle Unity assets) And Paralives also seems to be innovative in certain areas. So even if just their building lives up to their promises, I might just buy it to support them. I want both to succeed. So that maybe they have to compete on quality and features, instead of just relying on franchise and hype.

They're called Cims in the Cities Skylines fandom, and that may stick for this game, as well.

They would only have to look in their own forum posts at Paradox to realize how a lot of veteran Sims 2 and 3 players feel about the Sims 4, as we started a thread there on how much we wanted a Paradox life sim back in 2015, and we were pretty specific about what we liked/did not like in the direction of the Sims games. (And they're finally trying to shift the damn fridge!)

Hope you don't mind me sharing the abonimation edit of what I estimate it looking like:
https://imgur.com/Y8DRtJf