The Sims 5 devs “definitely” want to have multiplayer, are looking at Animal Crossing for inspiration

rockpapershotgun.com:

The next Sims game - currently codenamed Project Rene, even though we all know it’ll almost definitely be called The Sims 5 - will “definitely” have a multiplayer element of some kind, according to its devs. As guidance on what that could be, its team are unsurprisingly looking at the success of fellow cozy life-sim game Animal Crossing, as well as a perhaps less obvious inspiration in murder-mystery argument-starter Among Us.

This all comes from Sims franchise creative VP Lyndsay Pearson, who told the Radio Times’ One More Life podcast that the game’s devs “definitely want to introduce multiplayer”.

That multiplayer won’t be a sprawling MMO-style world full of randomers, Pearson clarified, but a way to join up with a smaller group of friends and co-exist in your virtual worlds while doing a variety of different activities.

“Not multiplayer in the big, scary 'jump in a world full of strangers' kind of way,” Pearson said of the multiplayer mode. “[But] literally: how do you and your friends want to do some play together? And there's a lot of different flavours that could take, so we're exploring a lot of different spaces there. Because playing together can look like so many different things."

While those different flavours are unlikely to suddenly see The Sims 5 become a battle royale or shooter, Pearson indicated that the team were looking at some more out-there ideas that they could then make “Sims-y”. Among the ideas suggested were trivia games, fighting games, racing games and even an Among Us-like mystery mode that players would need to work together and talk as a group to solve.

“We’re having a lot of fun exploring all those different opportunities, particularly within the context of The Sims, because it