Friday, February 3, 2012

Bands not Integrating with Singers in Showtime

There are a few simple facts nobody is taking into account re: bands not integrating with the showtime singers.

1. Bands were not built to have singers. It is not as simple as "just make them work together". The bands do not play the kind of music that typically has vocalists, and the music they do play is all short, repeating sections of music. There is no way to simply add singing to this. The music doesn't sound like it should be sung to, and if it was, it'd be the same short snippet of simlish over...and over...and over.
2. Singing was not built to go with the bands. Bands play eternally, forever, until you stop them. Singing does not work this way. The performance aspect of Showtime means that sets last a limited amount of time, and sims perform limited interactions- the songs they sing will not last forever until you make them stop. It is extremely unlikely they'll work that way- it is extremely likely that they'll be specail individual songs.
3. These singers are all built around the music playing itself- they're stage performers, like on American Idol. Or they're karaoke singers. Neither of those have a thing to do with a live band.
4. The bands themselves are very much like Garage bands. They start at home, they play crappy bars, they don't ever quite get to the point where they're on stage- never, ever, at any point in time have the bands been big show famous people bands. They're all local bands. This could be changed, yes, but I'm talking *right now*. That's what they *are*.

What this means is that to integrate singing and the bands,

the entire structure of bands would have to be redone.

The bands would need entirely new music. Do you know what that means? That means various songs for each skill level of each instrument. Assuming a bare minimum of, say, 4 songs, that's 4 songs x 4 instruments x 10 skill levels, or 160 individual songs. This isn't a matter of "laziness"- 160 individual songs, even if they're not even a minute long each, is a lot. That is a LOT of time, a lot of money, a lot of planning, a lot of work. The fact that bands exist at all is impressive from this standpoint, but redoing them completely to integrate with singers is silly.


They'd have to add new animations, too- singers work in such a way that you orchestrate their performance as it goes along. You choose when they do special animations and junk like that to make the show better, you pick the next song when it's time based on audience requests, stuff like that. the band would have to do this too. The drummer would need cool flourishes and the guitar guy would likely play in crazy ways, stuff like that. And these would be independent of the singer- because remember, you're looking at a complete overhaul of the bands so they can be Showtime-style performers- singer or no singer.

And perhaps the biggest reason- Since modifying the bands to work with the singers would be an absolute necessity, this means that in order to have the complete band experience, one would need two expansion packs. Lots of people beg for cross-expansion features, but absolutely nobody wants to have to buy two packs to get one full feature. Nobody.

This is mostly speculation- but there's nothing countering any of it. If people can speculate "All they'd have to do is just DO IT", which is obviously wrong and a gross oversimplification, surely I can speculate "In order to integrate the performance-style vocalists with bands, they'd have to integrate the simple and hometown bands with the vocalists", which is at least grounded in reason. ;)

Would love it if the people on MTS saw and commented on this.

11 comments:

  1. Music is one of the best hobbies for every person. Some of people have fond of music .

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  2. If you want to learn how to play the violin or just want to improve your violin skill level, I believe that you have seen a lot about online violin lessons so most people want that improve violin skill.

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  3. An eternally repeating simlish melody over top the current band songs would be fine by me. I don't expect them to rework the entire system. Just to... add a vocalist to what's there. I also don't expect them to make it so that the bands can put on these huge shows and are incorporated with the SHT singers. Just make singing *possible* in LN bands. When asked if bands were getting singers they never said, "No, we'd have to remake the whole band system and it just wouldn't work." They said, "Erm...well...no..." because they have no explanation or excuse.

    I do get what you're saying, to do it the way you described would be a lot of work. But they can satisfy many of us just by giving us something that looks and sounds like a full band. Doesn't need to be hand in hand with SHT aspects.

    Yeah, I just looked at this youtube vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBCOnvQlg7s and I sang some gibberish along with it. It works.

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  4. I so agree with you Shivar. It would cause way to many problems if EA had to rework every aspect of the band system. I personally think they were right in doing things like they did. I think of the band/instruments as hobbies for my sims and goodness they can use a few hobbies. Sookielee

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  5. This is a very interesting topic, if only because it helps in highlighting EA's laziness in TS3 relative to TS2. At the moment I have TS3 and WA, so I'm not exactly the best person to get an opinion from, but that's what it seems like to me. I'm not part of EA, so I can't say what they were thinking, nor can I just say EA needs to "just do it," I'd either guess that EA was going for maximum profits (ergo, a reduced amount of work) or EA was running behind or short on staff and adding singers to the bands would have wound up taking more of their resources than they could afford to spare on the EP. To be honest, it's possible that EA just didn't see a significant need to put singers into the bands and more essential elements of the EP were addressed instead. Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but that's most of what I have to say on this topic.

    As a side, Shivar, I was looking at the archives and one of the dl links I checked out was labled as broken or removed by mediafire, so I'd figure I'd let you know, but I couldn't find your email.

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  6. People who cry laziness on EAs part are, quite simply, stupid. I do not feel bad saying that.

    Making a game takes a lot of work. Making these expansions takes a lot of work. I'd think someone who only owns WA would know how much effort goes into making an expansion pack, considering just how much WA adds to the game. Not to mention I directly acknowledged the "laziness" argument in this post.

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  7. I think your completely right about this topic with the bands and singers, but if you add a singer you'd need five people in the band. Which I think they need to change as well because most bands have more than four members anyways. In my opinion up to six Sims should be able to join a band. On this subject I would also like to say I hate the bass that the Sims have to use because it look s like an orchestra instrument. I mean most bands I make are rock bands. How many do you see using cello-looking basses?!

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  8. It would take a lot of programming and voice talent, but it shore would be nice to have all new and the be quite honest descent band songs topped with vocals! i hope they do it in a update. it would make the sims even better! its not laziness its just the demand for perfection!

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  9. So, it would take alot of money? I think EA made enough money from people buying the sims base game alone. I don't care how hard it is, or how much it would cost, just do it. So what if the entire structure of bands would have to be redone. They've got my money! And yours! "but absolutely nobody wants to have to buy two packs to get one full feature". Speak for yourself. I would buy 2 of them. Dam, a band without a singer? Why in the hell did EA even add the dam singer then!?

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