#-and will continue to through replaying and fan content and fan games but i dont see myself throwing down more money for the games anymore

[scootarooni]

Imma be real yall

I'm so burned out from pkmn

[cowplant-pizza]

Strangerville Review

first of all, thank you to ea for giving me early access to this game pack through the game changer program. all of these screenshots have been presented to you by the ea game changers.

Ratings:

CAS 9/10

Build/Buy 8/10

World 9/10

Gameplay 7/10

Story 6/10

Overall 7/10

So I really want to be as honest as I possibly can with you guys. Game changers get a lot of stick for licking EA’s asses but I don’t see the point in lying to you all and singing praises that I don’t agree with so just know that this review is my own words and honest thoughts. Lets begin

You can see both cas and build/buy items here. Credit to @wildlyminiaturesandwich for this!

CAS

I loved the CAS stuff, well, most of it. Everyone was so crazy about those dreads but I just wasn’t feeling them! I love dreads and basically always have my sims of colour donning them, but I felt like these just looked a bit weird? They fell awkwardly around the face and it looked like someone had used some hairspray to give it volume but really failed?? Idk, thats my opinion. I know a lot of people really love them so Im not gonna shit on that but I just felt they could’ve been made to look a bit more natural and a lot less stiff. Apart from that though, and the awful swatches on the cowboy boots and the low rise jeans, I seriously adored the aesthetic of the cas stuff. I loved all of the female stuff and the male tops were to die for. It’s a shame males got less stuff again, some more army inspired clothes or even tattoos could’ve been cool here but we need to remember that this is a game pack and not an expansion. For a game pack, we got quite a lot of stuff in cas. It’s definitely a western style with a cowboy theme, so if you’re not a fan of that, you wont like the cas stuff.

Build/Buy

I’m not a huge builder, but when I do build, I love vintage stuff and clutter! This pack definitely gave us both of these things. The debug menu is chock full of clutter that will be used in loads of different places. The only complaint I have is a) the style is very scify and probably wont be used in a home b) certain items in the debug menu that are to do with the story (ie. a hazmat suit) is just a parcel in build/buy mode. I get why that is but… it would’ve been cool to have the actual suit to place instead of a tiny parcel that the suit would never realistically fit in lmao

World

The world is beautiful. It gives me huge ts3 vibes. It looks like Willow Creek and Oasis Springs had a baby. My only complaints for the world is that you will get infected/possessed sims walking around and ruining the realism for you and also that most of my favorite parts of the world (downtown) are just deco.

Gameplay

The new gameplay is directly linked to the story but I decided to do them as two separate things because I enjoyed the gameplay actions more than the story itself. The new interactions were super cute but very limited and very repetitive. After you’ve done it once and had a giggle over it, it will probably get tiring to do it again… and again, which is what the story expects you to do. 

Story

To begin with, I was having a lot of fun with the story, until I hit a bug for whatever reason and I couldn’t obtain an item I needed to continue. A lovely game changer helped me and told me I could purchase the item from the debug list buuuuut that doesn’t really fix the issue in the first place does it. The fact that I had to cheat to carry on really just ruined it for me tbh. The start of the story was new and quirky and it felt super fresh. It didn’t feel like I was playing the sims, but a side game of the sims. However as I progressed, I was constantly reminded that I was playing the sims, as Johnny needed to eat and sleep and poop ect. So I ended up cheating there too and turning off his needs cause I just couldn’t manage both at once. Maybe that’s because I was rushing to finish the story for you guys, but it did definitely feel like you had to choose one or the other. I also decided to quit his job right at the beginning because already his days were so busy I had no clue how on earth I would finish in time if he had to go to work to. So after the bug, you had to start doing stuff and requesting items from people. And heres the catch: you had to be good friends with them. This was taking honestly forever so I had to cheat in order to get their friendship levels up. I don’t want to spoil anything sooo SPOILER ALERT DONT READ THIS IN THE BRACKETS [when you vaccinated a possessed sim and asked them to come and fight mother with you, you had to be good friends with them so they accepted. this was SUCH a drag because you needed 15 spores and 1 fruit to make a vaccine so if they said lol thanks 4 curing me but nah i aint gonna help you just wasted an entire vaccine. so i ended up just using mccc to cheat their friendships up to max so they couldn’t say no]. I know even now that I will not be replaying the story unless I have to to get rid of the possessed sims in the world. I LOVE the world and I really do hope there’s a way (or a future mod) to turn them off because they are really distracting from every day sim life. 

Overall

If you wanna buy this pack for the aesthetics and items I would highly encourage it. I personally think the items alone give us enough content to make it worth while. However, as I have said, I do slightly feel like the storyline is forced upon you where as I think it should be totally optional. Not all of us like stories whereas some people love them and I think whoever we are we should be able to opt in or out of a piece of gameplay that we purchase. If you wanna buy it for the story only, I would… eh… I dunno what I’d do. I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. It wasn’t shocking or creepy as advertised. But it certainly was a fun new type of gameplay that I am excited to see them use in the future maybe with some other ideas!

I hope this made sense, I just sort of word vomited all of this down! Hopefully some one will find this review helpful lol

[viralhottopics]

Adobe Summit 2017: Bad habits in marketing that need to end immediately

Image: JULIA ROBINSON/MASHABLE

Its day two of the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas and it’s time to reflect upon everything weve learned in the past 24 hours. The opening song used to introduce John Mellor, Vice President of Strategy, Alliances & Marketing at Adobe, had some very fitting lyrics that fit the subject matter at hand: “the world won’t change if you stay the same.”

The theme of this session was less about product this time, less about tech and more focused on inspiration and reinvention. Mellor proved to have a few more tricks up his sleeve.

Image: julia robinson/mashable

“I have spent the last two months mastering magic, began Mellor. I’m about to blow your minds and pull a rabbit out of my hat.”

In true Vegas fashion, Mellor decided to channel the magician inside of him with an admittedly silly trick pulling a fake rabbit out of a hat. However, it wasnt until Penn & Teller took the stage and proved to us how magic is actually done that the message came through: Give the audience what they want and never stop dazzling them.

Image: Julia robinson/mashable

The Adobe Summit is particularly interesting with the way they teach lessons through highly specific market research, breathtaking visuals and celebrity speakers. Heres what we learned about tech and marketing trends at day two of the summit.

Stop ignoring the little guys

The days first speaker was Pam El, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at the National Basketball Association. El took the stage and immediately made her love for the NBA clear by praising teams around the country and speaking about basketball superstars Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.

“These guys are popular, started El. Their kids are popular, their friends are popular and their friends’ kids are popular.”

Not only does El love the people she works with, but also those who live and die by the NBA. One billion people tuned in last year to watch our games thats one out of every seventh person on earth.

She went on the say that the NBA is the number one most followed league on social media, with 3.9 billion YouTube views and 32 million Facebook fans. Why? Because they love, love, love their fans and they constantly make sure the fans know it.

Image: julia robinson/mashable

While some brands out there are too wrapped up in their own affairs to pay attention to the people who love them the most, the NBA never forgets who got them where they are.

“It’s through technology that we interact with our friends on a global level, said El, who spoke of the numerous advertisements and TV spots NBA Replay Center, NBA InPlay and NBA League Pass are for people who want to watch basketball anytime and from anywhere.

That sentiment was shared during a breakout session with Bertrand de Coatpont, an author for Adobes Digital Marketing Blog, who spoke about three important points to always keep in mind when a niche audience is involved.

Image: julia robinson/mashable

Optimize for regions, niches and device segments, combine automatic and manual content curation techniques, and build learning into the fabric of the community, he said.

He also stressed the importance of choosing the dedicated audience over a more vague crowd and how its better to have a few, niche communities dedicated to certain topics. Far too many brands are forgetting about even alienating their core fan base, in favor of trying to reach a broader market. Its a trend we need to see go away in 2017.

Dont ignore the numbers

Data played a huge part in some of the sessions during day two and the same sentiment was brought up again and again: Youd be crazy to ignore data in marketing. We spoke with Nitzan Tamari, VP Marketing and Strategy for SimilarWeb, a company thats built on data.

If youre looking at your data and youre not looking at it in context, it isnt really helping. Tamari continued by speaking of the pitfalls of siloed data which is when one department isolates vital pieces of data from the rest of an organization, hindering the use of said data to those who need it the most.

Stop making content that isnt quality

Back on stage we met David Fischer, VP of Business and Marketing Partnerships at Facebook. Fischer brought up, perhaps, one of the most important points in the Adobe summit: make relevant content that speaks to the consumer.

He spoke about three specific companies that are absolutely killing it in the content world: Airbnb, Royal Caribbean and Inspiralizer.

Fischer explained that some of the best commercials this year have been the ones that speak to the current political environment like Airbnbs “We Accept” commercial, where a parade of multinational, multicultural faces graced the screen alongside inspiring words of acceptance and tolerance.

Not only did Airbnbs spot respond to the air of intolerance sweeping the nation, but the way it was built and cut responded to the way people took ads in. It was edited for mobile and featured a barrage of quick cuts perfect for the fast-paced mobile environment.

Royal Caribbean used Facebook Canvas to create an immersive experience packed with stats about their cruises an initiative that inspired people to spend an average of 70 seconds on Royal Caribbeans page. Thats a long time in the digital space.

“You’ve got to adapt to the times we’re living in. If you build great content, you can pull people in, said Fischer. One of the most inspirational stories was Inspiralizer a three-person company that created quality content on a micro scale.

Image: julia robinson/mashable

Using a simple (and cheap) foam board with some marble paper, they created a backdrop for their product that made it look like it was in a super fancy kitchen. They gave their audience what they wanted: a great product that looked good, too.

That little DIY shoot tripled their click through rate, proving Penn & Tellers point from earlier: Its all about the illusion.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2nskSDn

from Adobe Summit 2017: Bad habits in marketing that need to end immediately