During today’s Sims Summit EA showed a glimpse of an upcoming update that seems to give infants far more autonomy. During the event’s “one more thing” moment, a few brief seconds were dedicated to showing off a crawling infant who’s quickly picked up by their mother. Family life just got a little more hectic.
While toddlers, fully mobile, joined the game in 2017, babies have been glued to their bassinets, reduced to little more than an object in the game. This was a big change for the game as non-object-like babies and toddlers were in The Sims games for years before they inexplicably vanished upon The Sims 4’s launch. It took three years to get toddlers, but babies that act like babies will wait eight or nine years. The mini trailer only teased the update as coming in 2023, so still no babies just yet.
The process for having a baby has otherwise been rather dynamic. You bring together two sims, do some woohoo, walk your sim through taking pregnancy tests and a variety of other tasks until, well, it’s time. The Get to Work Expansion Pack even allowed Simmers to join their expecting parents at the hospital. But after that, babies just sort of do much of nothing. Players have been milking bassinet interactions as much as possible, if not aging up their babies immediately upon returning from the hospital.
That’s not all that’s on the horizon for Sims 4. Two new expansions are expected in the next year, and official mod support is coming via a new program open to select modders. As of today, the game has also moved to a free-to-play model, downloadable on Steam or, if you prefer, Origin (I know, there are dozens of you). And for those looking forward to the next generation of Sims life, Maxis also showed off a super-early look at the currently-unnamed follow up.