In the April update, The Sims 4 is adding a new career option: freelancing. There’s a lot of how’s and what’s being asked about this right now, but in case you haven’t seen it, here are devs Arnold Chow and Graham Nardone detailing the changes on the official Maxis Monthly developer livestream.
For the most part, careers in the Sims games always only involved choosing a career, clicking a button, and watching your responsible, hard-working Sim disappear into a taxi and head off into some off-the-map location where they will spend around four to eight hours making money. Whether you’re an office worker, a celebrity, an actor, a police officer, or what-have-you, that’s pretty much how employment in The Sims works. You disappear for a period of time, and reappear tired, frustrated, hungry, and in need of a shower - I guess just like in real life.
With the Freelancer update, Sims will now be able to work from home as freelancers. Of course, this entails not disappearing for hours at a time, and instead having your Sims do their work and make their money from the comfort of their own homes. According to Nardone and Chow, they were able to make this happen by using various mechanics that already existed in the game.
Freelancers work similar to the work-from-home careers introduced in City Living, except unlike those career options, freelancers won’t be required to go to a certain destination as it won’t be an ‘active’ career. Freelancing also implements certain elements of the Acting career introduced in Get Famous, specifically the significance of an agency that provides players with gigs or projects. Freelancers in the coming Sims 4 update can choose to work in three different fields: art, programming, and writing. The whole system seems very well thought-out, and much more involved than most other careers. Freelancers request work from the agency that represents them, then they select a project they like, and the Sim gets to work until the project is done. However, after the project is completed, it will be subjected to client review. If the client accepts the work, the Sims’ career progresses and they get paid, but if the client rejects it, the freelancer has to work on the project again before they can get paid.
In the livestream, Nardone and Chow also mention that some big changes are coming to The Sims 4 in the coming months, including a new game pack, a new stuff pack, and an upcoming expansion.
Being a freelance writer myself, it’s hard not to laugh at how accurate freelancers are going to be represented in the April update to The Sims 4. Apart from the pleasant comic relief and the chance to live my actual life more accurately in a video game that's all about simulating real life, the freelancer update just goes to show how the world is changing. Sometimes you don’t get to be an Actor or an Astronaut, and freelancing is how more and more people today take their first step towards being independent, tax-paying adults.
