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When we last spoke to The Sims' studio head, Rod Humble, he was applauding the franchise's retail success. Now the exec has another, albeit more personal reason to celebrate, having climbed up another rung on the corporate ladder, laying claim to the role of The Sims' brand's executive VP. The move follows the recent hiring of Jeff Green, who left the world of game journalism last month to throw his body on the gears of EA's expansion factory as well.

Humble replaces former lead, Nancy Smith, who EA notes will handle "special" The Sims-related projects before eventually moving into a new as-yet-undefined role in the months ahead. We offer congratulations, and suggest he celebrate his new position by locking co-workers in the bathroom or pushing them in the corporate pool before deftly removing any means of escape.

While we'll admit that The Sims was never more than a stone's throw away from being an all-out casual series anyway, EA will continue to dress the franchise in casual attire in MySims Kingdom, the sequel to last year's 3 million unit selling MySims. Shipping this fall worldwide for the Wii and DS, the game was first announced earlier this year as one of a handful of new dumbed down casual-themed takes on The Sims. However, EA today released the first details about the game, calling MySims Kingdom "a story of adventure, discovery and exploration to help King Roland and his subjects revitalize the Kingdom."

The gameplay, which once again sounds more than a little like Animal Crossing, will center on exploring and developing a kingdom through The Sims-style customization, with the DS version adding emphasis on mini-games as players try to turn aside a rival evil king. Adds The Sims studio head Rod Humble, MySims Kingdom will include "rewarding quests, building houses, bridges or even making contraptions powered by electricity or water." The game eschews much of the larger franchise's sandbox appeal for backstory, leaving us waiting for until next year's The Sims 3 before we can know the joy of deleting the ladder from the neighborhood pool.

We always found The Sims to be sort of depressing. While creating a virtual replica of your life may seem like an amusing activity at first, you -- like us -- may find the distant view through an LCD window to be both startling and uncomfortable. Yes, we can see our house from here. And we can see that it's an empty, meaningless shell bereft of human interaction outside of the occasional pizza delivery boy teleporting into the driveway. Having said that, we're definitely keen to try The Sims 3, as it'll enable us to virtually do something we've never done before. Venture "outside."

You could visit different areas in earlier games, but according to 1UP, The Sims 3 will feature a large and seamless neighborhood where a step out of the door is a step into a "much bigger sandbox." The myriad of meters indicating your Sim's moods and motives will also see an overhaul, with players encouraged to be less anal about living and more focused on living it up. You can expect more information to be tucked within the April/May issue of the official Games for Windows Magazine. Don't forget to check back with on March 19th when the official Sims site stops teasing us.

[Thanks, TechNick]

If there was any doubt that EA would continue to milk the lucrative cash cow that is Will Wright's Sims franchise, that doubt can now be officially expelled. EA has created an official page for the next title in the series -- titled, appropriately enough, The Sims 3.

The site features little else besides the above image, which teases more details coming on March 19. Our Holmesian deductive reasoning lets us assume that this title will be a return to form for the Sims series, as opposed to another entry in the adorable but divergent MySims line. With work on Spore wrapping up after eight years, it's also possible that Mr. Wright himself may take an active role in the game's development. Guess we'll all have more information come March 19 (finally, something to anxiously look forward to besides Brawl).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Electronic Arts has put a new casual – well more casual – spin on its popular The Sims franchise by announcing a new collection of downloadable Sims titles over EA's casual games service, Pogo.com. The line, titled The Sims Carnival, currently includes two different titles, neither of which come across as particularly compelling nor innovative, a line of thinking with which we think EA should be intimately familiar.

The first of these new titles, The Sims Carnival Bumper Blast, asks players to shoot at Sims-styled bumpers before their ammo supply runs dry, while the other, a rather tepid-sounding Tetris clone called The Sims Carnival SnapCity, has players construct a city out of falling blocks. Both games are bundled together for download for $19.99. The announcement is the latest in EA's not so secretive move to establish a significant foothold in the casual games space, and while we appreciate the effort, it will be interesting to see if The Sims branding alone is enough to convince gamers to hop on board ... or simply break Will Wright's heart in twain.

If there's one thing we don't like about The Sims 2: Castaway, it's the game's lack of modern convenience. Yes, we get that they're castaways, but we can't tell you how many times we've become frustrated with our little Sim, only to take our aggression out by trapping them in a structure lacking doors and having them keep using the toaster oven until a fire broke out. Hey, don't look at us like we're monsters?

Anywho, check out these new screens with us and be sure to take part in our random, yet completely appropriate, screaming of "Wiiiiiiilson!"

As if there wasn't enough worthless gibberish on the internet already, EA has seen fit to stick the gobbledygook speaking Sims down one of the internet's most popular tubes, YouTube. The Sims On Stage is essentially a Sims-branded (you might say Sim-ian) YouTube, with the added dangers of karaoke, video poetry and of course, The Sims content. You can thank / blame EA's acquisition of SingShot Media back in February if you want.

Of the many make-your-own-video features the beta site offers, encouraging users to squeal their way through "thousands" of available karaoke songs and upload the recorded results is by far the most terrifying. EA's press release assures us that it's all for the sake of expressing "creativity," a term we feel may have been confused with one meaning "penchant for torturing complete strangers." It's a penchant we share, since we've embedded one of the first obnoxiously loud creations to be spawned by the site after the break.

"Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm modeling a car for Need For Speed: Pro Street, what does it look like?"
"I just stepped out for lunch... I was using this workstation for the The Sims team."
"The the sims? You got a stuttering problem there? You nervous about something?"
"No, I was referring to the team working on The Sims. This is our computer."
"Really? I don't see your name on it."

Well, obstinate fictional employee, there soon will be! EA is planning to reorganize its business in the coming months into four primary and distinctly labeled groups, each equipped with dedicated studio and publishing teams. The labels are as follows:

• EA Games: Home to the likes of Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, Spore, Command & Conquer and the EA Partners publishing business.
• The Sims: If a game features a nonsense dialect, emotion gauges and a mechanical imitation of your own life, it'll come from this team.
• EA Casual Entertainment: A group dedicated to easily accessible titles for the non-gaming folk. Franchises like Harry Potter and Boogie fall under this label, as does EA's online casual game service, Pogo.com.
• EA Sports: What could this section be working on? Answers on a postcard.

EA notes that all four labels will be supported by two new groups, namely Central Development Services, a technology group overseeing operations and EA's online platform, and Global Publishing, the marketing muscle and distribution, uh... diaphragm.

Movie studio execs, we need to have a talk. We just don't understand the video game properties you're turning into movies now. First, there was The Sims, which still has us throwing up in our mouths a bit. Now, Transformers producer Tom DeSanto has picked up the rights to the City of Heroes MMORPG. There are apparently plans to turn it in to a big budget film and then into a TV series. Honestly, what are you guys doing?

Now, don't get us wrong, we'd love to see the first good superheroes vs. aliens flick since Independence Day (you didn't know Bill Pullman was a superhero?). And we can certainly understand the financial motivation. But what are you really buying with City of Heroes? Is it the name recognition? That won't help you with the mainstream moviegoers. Is the characters? Are you really dropping coin for The Statesman? We just don't get it, why call it City of Heroes? You know, you make a movie called Flying Town or Metropolis of Super-hard Punching, and you don't have to pay a dime. It can be the exact same thing, just with a different title. This, of course, comes as bad news for producers of Sims movie, as there's already a film about people speaking gibberish for 90 minutes and then dying in a room filled with their own fecal matter. It's called White Chicks.

[Via Sci Fi Wire, Thanks, Ryan Gioia]

The Sims 2: Castaway Stories, the new tropical island-themed entry in the series, may be heading to DS. Gamefly, the online rental service, has the game listed on its site. According to the listing, it's due for an October 11th release.

It's a shame this is coming out in October, as this would make a great summer title. Who wouldn't want to sit on the beach, stylus in one hand, cocktail in the other, designing the perfect holiday island paradise?

The stylus should suit the series perfectly; getting that beach furniture in just the right spot should be a cinch. As well as the usual Sims fare, there will also be a story mode wherein you'll be able to guide your character through life's various challenges; don't be surprised if there's a whole heap of romance in there, too.

[Via Siliconera]

A new wave of e-currency is almost upon us with the announcement from Blizzard that they are offering World of Warcraft themed Visa cards that turn real world spending into fake world game time. The card will take 1% of what you charge and turn it into minutes that you can use to visit Azeroth. So, if you want to rack up a lot of time, hand this to a big spender.

This comes on the heels of The Sims credit card, which will likely be something similar. MAKE magazine said we'd be seeing something like this a year ago, and it looks like they were right. Here's hoping they take our real world purchases and turn them into in game money, because they don't take credit cards in Ironforge, and some of the stuff we want is pretty darned expensive.

[Via WoW Insider]

Gamefly has added Wii and DS listings for The Sims 2: Castaway Stories to its website. There's no official confirmation of the title yet from EA, who have only announced it for PC so far. As the title suggests, the game will offer a story mode featuring 'romance and dramatic twists.'

These games could work really well on DS and Wii, particularly if the online/wi-fi aspect is exploited - imagine being able to create and share your avatars - or replays of your characters' most entertaining moments.

Castaway Stories hits the PC in Winter, with DS and Wii versions hopefully arriving shortly after.

[Via Siliconera]

At GDC, Maxis Game Designer Robin Hunicke spoke about her process of transferring The Sims to the Wii. Her team was excited to be working on a Wii title because of its new controller and Nintendo's history, but Hunicke's most important lesson was to stay true to the defining elements of a franchise instead of starting over for a new console.

Hunicke said, "The Wii is so cool ... oh my gosh. ... Almost everyone on my team is a Nintendo fan. Almost all game developers are Nintendo fans. ... We were really excited to build a [Wii] game." But since the team began work well before the console's launch, they only had tradeshow experiences and Nintendo ads to approach the MySims design.

Hunicke noticed the clean lines, family oriented approach, and tactile aesthetics of the early Wii marketing material. She followed those elements instead of trying to build the game around flailing controller movements. Hunicke said, "We wanted to bring The Sims to the Wii in a way that we could say we were at home on the Wii."

"OMG! The Wii is so cool," an enthusiastic female developer screams during a GDC session. That developer is Robin Hunicke, designer of the upcoming Wii-exclusive MySims. Designing the title began long before the team had a chance to get their hands on the system, so they had to rely on the "aesthetic" of Nintendo's advertising. "We wanted to bring The Sims to the Wii in a way that we could say we were at home on the Wii," she said, trying to find a unique look, style and feel for the Wii version.

Converting a game for play on Wii doesn't necessarily mean changing everything. What the team focused on was how it feels to touch the characters on screen with the Wiimote: wild, flailing actions probably wouldn't be appropriate for a title such as this. One of the biggest changes that needed to be made was how the game was managed: there was a great deal of opposition to focusing on a single character (rather than a large family), and there was an even greater uproar against the loss of urination, and other micromanagement features.

Streamlining The Sims process was key to moving the franchise to the Wii, and that's where the character designs came from. Although they look strangely like Mii, the look wasn't based on Nintendo's character creation system. The lead character designer, when showing off her simplified look for Wii Sims, was told: "it's perfect."

See also:
Joystiq: Moving The Sims from PC to Wii
Gallery: MySims design process
Gallery: MySims