The Sims 2: Business

The third addition adds a new way to earn money by organizing your own business, as well as a number of new ways to produce goods; You can create robots on special machines, make bouquets, assemble toys on a workbench, and also make money on services as a stylist that allows you to change the appearance of your client. As an aid to business, children can use a counter for selling lemonade .

Businesses in the game are divided into two categories: home based business and community site management. After the business is open, a business panel appears in the upper right corner of the screen, displaying information about the company, its status, customer loyalty, accounting , information about the company, and data on employees. For business, you can hire employees for several positions: cleaner, cashier, seller, purchasing manager. If there are machines for the production of robots, bouquets of flowers or toys, the owner can entrust the worker with the production of these goods. Long work on each of these specialties accumulates experience, marked by honorary badges: bronze , silver , gold . Receiving each of the badges opens up new opportunities for the holder of the experience. For example, an experienced seller can more quickly convince a customer to buy a product, an experienced cashier can quickly punch buyers ’checks, and an experienced storekeeper replenishes stocks faster. Also, gaining experience affects the minimum wage of an employee.

Before buying a product, the client should be interested in it, and the price of the product affects its decision: the cheaper it is, the faster the customer makes a decision. Shelves with goods must be periodically replenished for this, you can appoint a purchasing manager , or you can replenish stocks yourself. This can be a product purchased in a purchase mode or an item actually produced on machine tools. If the character owns a public site, then he can appoint a manager and no longer appear on the site, but conduct business by phone. If customers are well served, then their loyalty to the player’s enterprise increases. The more customer loyalty, the higher the level of the company, and its increase enables the owner to both gain new business skills and increase prices for goods and services. Special rewards are given for the constantly maintained high level of the store.

The addition within the tradition adds a new “creature” - the Servo robot - which can be assembled on the machine for the construction of robots in the presence of the Golden Robotics badge. Servo appears with a complete set of skills in cooking, equipment and cleaning. The robot can be given a name, female or male gender , after which she or he becomes a full member of the family and behaves like a full-fledged sim, except for the constant desire to do routine homework. As the needs of the robot are available "leisure", "comfort", "communication" and "energy" ^{[comm. 1]} . Servo contact with water is undesirable.

According to the developers, “Business” is “the latest and most innovative extension to The Sims franchise.” It was created taking into account the wishes of some players since The Sims , who wanted to observe the process of their Sims ^[3] . Creating a business system, the developers sought to make it as open as possible so that the player was not forced to follow the strict attributed rules, but could give freedom to his work; for example, to approach the matter with full responsibility and create the perfect store, just fooling around, experiencing the extremes of their abilities ^[4] , or creating a store according to your taste and desire; for example, “from a fashion boutique of clothes near a beauty salon, to a chain of stores selling fresh bouquets of flowers” ^[4] . Although, as developers later admitted, if for example the additions “ Seasons ” and “ Pets ” required a lot of work on animation and design, when creating a “business”, the main difficulty was creating the business system itself ^[5] . Rod Humble noted that through doing business in the game, he managed to learn the full depth of The Sims 2 simulator ^[6] .

When testing the simulation, the team was generally satisfied with the results and even noticed that the business mechanism simulates many of the difficulties that entrepreneurs face in real life ^[7] . When creating thematic objects and clothing to complement, the developers studied a lot of photos on the Internet in special magazines ^[7] .

For the first time, the development of this add-on became known in September 2005, then Gamespot assumed that the extension would be released in May 2006 ^[8] , its official announcement of the add-on took place on December 8, 2005 ^[9] . February 28, 2006 "The Sims 2: Business" officially released in the United States , March 3 in Europe , March 16 in Japan ^[1] and May 26 in Russia ^[1] . According to ChartSport as of March 2006, The Sims 2: Business expansion topped the list of best-selling games in the United States, with its 230,000 copies sold ^[10] , by the end of March it had gone down to third place ^[11] , 4th place at the end of May ^[12] and fell to 5th place by mid-August ^[13] . The addition managed to stay on the bestseller list until the end of September (8th place) ^[14] . In general, as of 2006, the addition of "Business" took third place in the list of best-selling games in the United States. It is noteworthy that The Sims 2 extensions took only 5 positions in this list, that is, half of it ^[15] .

On July 16, 2014, the add-on was released as part of The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection and was temporarily and free to download for Origin ^[16] , and on August 7 of the same year as part of The Sims 2 Super Collection for Mac OS X ^{[ 17]} .

Along with the addition, The Sims 2 added a number of new soundtracks by composer Mark Mathersbo for the construction mode and character creation. In addition, a channel with music in the New Wave genre was added to the game with the performance of famous musicians from the 80s, namely Depeche Mode ^[18] , Kajagoogoo , Howard Jones ^[19] and The Epoxies who specifically rewrote their singles in Simlish ^[20] . In addition, developers with the participation of Depeche Mode released machinima ^[21] .

Supplement "The Sims 2: Business" received mostly positive reviews - 78% and 79% according to GameRankings and Metacritic aggregator sites , respectively ^{[23] [24]} . Eurogamer website rated 7 out of 10 and noted that the complexity of the add- ^{on is} immediately evident ^[27] . "Business" was awarded a gold award from the organization ELSPA ^[32] .

Tsukitaka Mahamari noticed the difference between the supplement and the two previous ones, primarily with a large bias towards strategy and called it a game in the game. Mahamari noted that the addition, although it does not lower its quality bar, does not actually add new social interactions to the basic gameplay, and its specific theme is not suitable for every player of The Sims 2 . Therefore, the journalist advised buying only to those who really want to try to start their own business inside the game ^[31] .

GameSpy Dave Kosak called the business management system fascinating and carefully thought out, which gives a great freedom to the player’s fantasies. According to the critic, the availability of other add-ons The Sims 2 will give even more business opportunities. It was reported that the business system takes into account a lot of seemingly insignificant small details, but they betray such great realism ^[25] . However, in Kosak’s opinion, this was also a drawback: due to the abundance of small details that need to be taken into account and to keep an eye on them, the business management menu looks complicated and confusing, so you can often forget how to call employees to the site again, or how to purchase goods ^[25] . Also, questions were raised by a system of talents, each of which is assigned to certain skills, and which ones are not very clear. In general, the author of the review called the conduct of the case rather complicated, but also rewarding the player with a lot of money if he approaches the game responsibly and accurately. The journalist himself advises newcomers to accumulate solid capital in order to minimize risks ^[25] . In general, the critic calls the supplement fascinating, but not necessary for installation, as it touches on a too narrow topic ^[25] .

IGN commentator Dan Adams noted that he tested the add-on “Business” and got the impression that he was working, but noted that when a player just opens his store and starts doing business, he mistakenly thinks that it’s easy. However, according to the critic, the larger the store becomes, the better the player realizes that he is not controlled by many things, a separate example is the employees, where it is not clear whether they will bring any benefit to the store or if their work will be too counterproductive. On the other hand, the complexity of the game does not make it boring and will even make it possible for a player to understand the basis of entrepreneurship and how the business world works ^[26] . In general, the critic called the addition not bad, but at the same time the most “unloved” and recommended the addition only to those who have a talent for understanding micromanagement ^[26] .

The Cheatcc site reviewer, like most critics, acknowledged the complexity of the gameplay and noted that even if you are extremely careful in business, things and problems that are not controlled by the player will always be expected on the way. In addition, it was reported that at the same time this supplement allows you to choose many ways and options for doing business, and to try all of them you can safely spend time until the release of the next addition ^[29] .

Comments

Sources

• The official website of the game (English) . Electronic Arts . - The official website of the game. Archived February 21, 2012.
• The official Russian-language website of the game (Russian) . Electronic Arts . - The official Russian-language portal of the game. Archived February 21, 2012.
• The Sims 2 Business (Russian) . Soft Club . - The official game page on the localizer site. Date of treatment September 30, 2017. Archived September 30, 2017.