"Originally Posted by Original_Sim

That explains a lot. It sounds like the gaming equivalent of the Prohibition Era. I'm hoping the Sims 4 brings back suggestive themes, adult humor and all that jazz. Jack Thompson can kiss my ass"

I was actually celebrating when he got disbarred and even though I wasn't old enough to drink alcohol, I did shots of soy sauce (the brewed versions of soy sauce contain some alcohol) and ate milk and cookies until I fell asleep.

Then again, I really wish they didn't scale back on the suggestive and chemical references just to appease parents who won't raise their own kids. They'd rather dump their children on their nannies, who obviously at times take better care of other kids instead of their own.

To the irresponsible parents: RAISE YOUR OWN DAMN KIDS! I'm not raising them for you.

(I don't have a license to be a nanny, and in fact, I was fired from my Goodwill internship for yelling at irresponsible parents who let their kids play on the exercise equipment, which they could have kill themselves without trying.)

This thread's been silent for months, but I only read it now, so...
I agree. The progressively infantilization of the sims, is one of the main things that made me give up the Sims 3.
I would certainly buy an adult expansion, where, as said before there'd be no need of the kamasutra positions, but certainly there would be no hearts and harp sounds during woohoo. Wouldn't mind seeing that cover with the characters silhouette, à la "8th deadly sim" from the time of the original sims. (Yes that was a mod).
At a time where the sims where so basic, there seemed to be room for more story.
I don't care to have my sims going from party to party, driving for hours on end between locations, just to dance here and there, and have nothing happen. Even those "scary" vampires that didn't hurt a fly where a total disappointment.
I don't mean real life drama and gore, but some more real and drama, is need for me.

I say include Adult Shops and Strip Clubs in TS4

^This!!

I don't think the issue is content, the issue is lack of consequences. You just have stuff happen with nothing to connect them to actual storytelling. In a way the call to more mature themes is imo mainly a call to that. Negative stuff should happen if you behave irresponsible, if you try to be a master thief you should be likely to be arrested, if you are a single mother partying out all the time things should get rough at home. If your teenage daughter is dating some idiot asshole because he has tattoos, there should be conflict in the family,

Currently it seems there is plenty of stuff happening but tons of it detracts from the story by being out of place, silly or of no consequence. Aka stuff is happening but no stories are happening.

well... nothing has consequences in sims 3, any consequences can easily be reversed through potions, life time rewards and such.. neither are hard to get.

I'm fine with being able to revive sims, but it should have a price. It shouldnt be like: "Oh jimmy got electrocuted by the tv again, lets just rub the magic lamp to wish him back in time for lunch."
I mean.. there could be a chance the sim comes back as a zombie, the one asking them back could be taken in their place, moods could get drained, other more dangerous undead could be revived along with them, etc.

Remember way back in the day, when it was just the base game and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, when the only way to revive someone was to make Ambrosia, which involved mastering a few skills and tracking down the recipe? You had to work for it. If you had a sim that had managed to do it, you could proudly pat yourself on the back for putting in the effort. Not anymore.

Rated M at least. Personally I think it should redifine the phrase "Over The Top" like the final unreleased beta of TS1 did in the first place. Today The Sims is like harry potter in a sense - kids grew up with it, mine did, and the game should grow up too. From TS1 where ya needed a special woohoo bed to do woohoo to TS3 where there are much racier themes going on it is time to finally make The Sims a real game - out of the box. EA has the audience already. One can understand why the company wouldn't - same reason all the would-be good movies suck cuz they're rated PG-13, cuz adults don't go to movies, they rent them... so there's less money in a rated R movie for the companies (cuz the adults will get the directors cut anyway when it comes out on DVD). This is not a problem for a software developer though. There could simply be a setting much like a parental control on a cable-box or an internet connection built into the game, eg: censor blur or not, bloody grafx on vampires or not, etc...

Of course EA would never do that. They make so much money already that there's no point in not being lazy. I mean we are all gunna buy the game anyway no matter how broken it comes out of the box in the first place, get frustrated over it and then finally be relieved when the patch finally comes out (months late) only to be be let down when the next EP we spend $40 on breaks the game even more than the patch fixed it... And then we spend our valuable time trawling the web to see if MATY, NRAAS, or MTS2 has anything that makes the game playable again when we would rather be playing the game in the first place. I swear, I've spent more time fixing TS2 and TS3 than I have playing it. TS1 didn't need fixing though - That's cuz EA wasn't involved yet.

Well, that being said... Again: As adult as possible is my answer.

I would like for the series to remain T rated, I don't want things like STD's, murder, graphic sex or porn in my game. Not because I have a moral problem with those topics but I rather keep The Sims and those elements separate. I enjoy games like that but rather keep the two separate. I don't play The Sims series game to beat up hookers, murder and get herpes. If I wanted to do that, I would play GTA or something like that. Keep that for mods.
If I wanted to murder a Sim, I would use a mod for that or just use fire. I don't want the series to a clone of real-life, myself. It's a game, it's all about the gameplay! I don't think the game being a life simulator is an excuse to just add anything that exists. I don't think "it will be more realistic that way" is a good excuse to add something. The Sims's aim isn't to be a ultra-realistic game. When something is added, it should be because it's fun and adds more depth to the game, not just because it's more realistic.
The Sims's great success is due to it's quirky humor, crazy characters and it's additive nature. Not because it's the most realistic life-sim on the market. Add all those other elements; would it really feel like a Sim's game anymore?
I definitely agree TS3 needs to grow up, TS3 acts like a wannabe-E-rated game. Are you a T rated game or not? Grow up, stop trying to appeal to a demographic that isn't even supposed to be playing the game! The Sims need some more spark, more romantic actions, more chemistry between romance and a less up-tight cheating system would excite more than just one age group. We don't need graphic sex and crime to get older players interested. After trying to appeal to a young demographic, what would it tell parents after putting out an A-rated expansion?
That's opinion on this, feel free to agree or disagree with it.

Might be doable if the "strip clubs" were just people hired to dance in their swimsuits while people threw money at them. And the "adult shops" sold books and presents represented by safe icons and named creatively. Reason is because it seems that more players prefer the safe-ification of these things and enjoy the humor, rather than The Sims to be more explicit. This is a game that gave us the bubble blowing hookah. It's there and we know what it is, and they don't have to say it.

Each generation of the sims has it's own spin off. 1 i guess would be the sims online, 2 would be the stories series, and 3 would be medieval. What if for 4, it was like the urbz 2, where the game is rated m and it's a more city, violence, gang, kind of thing. I think that'd be interesting. XD
Although thinking about it, that would just be saints row

Mods will have to do I mean the slightly porno music and frankly awkward woohoo scene from sims 2 was a bit ewww for me so I dont think they would go anyworse than a cheeky bum grab and some bed movement

*in the sims 4

Brothels? Strip clubs? C sections? AA meetings?

You guys are discussing the wrong game - go play GTA or something. I don't want to have to deal with rehab sims - how boring! Watching C section videos and pixel prossies is just... creepy. What you guys want is "One Born Every Minute", or porn. Or those anime things with octopus tentacles, I dunno. And that's fine, but for me the Sims isn't something I want to get off to (neither are octopus tentacles).

The sims is a life simulation game. Not an "act out all of your sick fantasies" game.

I'd like to see more "adult content" than was in TS3 - it felt like a little kids game. But I like the way that TS1 and TS2 handled things. Mature content was implied, alluded to and was done with humour. That's fitting with the game, and I actually enjoyed the little tongue-in-cheek things scattered in gameplay more than I'd have liked in-your-face sex, violence or whatever. More mature audiences understood it, got a giggle from it, and it was over kids' heads.

I'll admit though, that I'd like to see some actual "threatening" supernaturals should they be added to the game - death by laughing exists, I think a true to style death should be rare but possible. Like in TS(2 or 1?) when sims could be frightened to death by ghosts. Maybe stick with "frightened to death" if they're worried about being too scary for a wide audience, but apply it to other SNs as well. We have emotions now - fear should be one of them.

If you do want more mature content in your game, modders will always be amazing in what they provide. When I did make a zombie apocalypse town in TS2, there were plenty of mods to make my zombies go berserk and kill half the town, there were guns to shoot them with, there was CC to make things appropriately gross. And I can't play without ACR. Of course, if you want to get off to the sims, there are CC skins and objects and accessories and all sorts of crazy stuff out there for you to add to your game at will.

I'm an adult. I'm not a prude at all. I don't mind violent fiction - I watch crime shows, TWD and GOT. I drink and party and sometimes overdo it. That's life. The sims isn't. I don't want all of that responsibility and overly serious themes to wade through in a game that has always been light, funny, quirky and playful.

Interesting point, Moonfox,

I agree, Sims was always a bit tongue-in-cheek and that is simply the style Maxis imbued their games with, part of their charm and part of their credo not to be like all the other games with shooting and violent monsters.

However I also agree that the supernaturals should be more frightening and perhaps with the new Emotion system they will, perhaps the very presence of Ghosts, Werewolves and Vampires will put the Sim in a frightened mood and if they get scared by the supernaturals repeatedly in a short amount of time they might even die from fright that would be AWESOME! It would give the Supernaturals more significance and make them more realistic (most people would be sacred stiff if their friend suddenly turns into a snarling werewolf without warning!)

As to the other "adult" stuff....I wouldn't exactly mind an Adult themed game-play pack that includes a few of the darker aspects of life, but I doubt EA or Maxis would ever release something like that. Imagine the negative press they'd receive!

I do not enjoy games like GTA but every now and then I'd like to perhaps just have my Sims be drunk or play a family that has to struggle with a violent alcoholic for a father or an emotionally abusive mother or a drug addicted teenage son. Stuff like that, which happens in real life and which I sometimes would like to play out in the Sims. I myself grew up with a violent alcoholic father and so have a soft spot for tales of families and children who survived such horror and later became successful in life, despite the odds. It would be very uplifting.

It'd be nice if the game could be at least 12+ and not whatever it currently is. :p

Going Martell?

I just think that they should make it accessible for modders so that people can choose how adult they want their games, but that might just be me since I don't need pron in my game.

I would like to see a more realistic approach to alcohol. Instead of the lame nectar. Including the downsides (and im not just talking about hangovers). Like when a Sim really becomes too drunk, some of their traits can become exaggerated. Sims with a mean trait would become more easily agressive, or sims with more positive traits would become obnoxiously cheerful And the drunk sims could become sick in a similar way as eating bad food. This could be funny, and still showing that too much booze is just bad for you, so that EA is not promoting alcohol consumption. Anyway, done right, this could be presented in a similar over the top way as the rest of the game.

Actually, where I live, it is 12+

I would love seeing it 15+ or 18+ so we get the more dramatic simulation

I was joking. The game just doesn't look like it was designed for people 12+ IMO.

Whoops

I believe that the proper "spirit" of The Sims, not to sound overly pretentious there, was a cheeky over-the-top rendition of real life. More tongue-in-cheek rather than kiddy or silly. I think this was best felt in the first Sims, where it still had this mature edge to it like it was an adult game that could be enjoyed by all ages. Gradually though it does seem as though they're stripping it of this edge and leaving it pretty bland and juvenile.