Open For Business Previews

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The Sims 2: Open for Business Impressions - Running a Store, Managing the Wage Slaves

By Andrew Park

The next Sims game will let you be the boss of your own business. We take a look.

There's something about controlling your own family of little computer people as they live, love, and take bathroom breaks--something that has kept the Sims series consistently popular for more than six years. The 2004 sequel, The Sims 2, is still going strong, and it's about to be joined by a third expansion pack, Open for Business. In previous games, your "sims" characters would simply disappear for several in-game hours as they went off to work. The new game will finally let you follow your sims as they head out to their own businesses, which you can build out of their homes or downtown in a swanky new shopping area.

As we saw, the new expansion will offer sims the chance to start one of three different types of business: product retail (for which you produce individual goods and sell them, such as a bakery), pay-per-use (for which you offer services that other sims pay to use each time, like a beauty salon), and perhaps the most open-ended business type of all, pay-per-time (for which you open a business with ongoing services and charge other sims by the hour for the right to hang around and use the place). Pay-per-time means that you can build out your own lot full of fun stuff and charge people for the privilege of enjoying themselves.

If you have previous expansion packs, such as Nightlife, you'll be able to open your own bowling alley and charge for lane play by the hour or even use Nightlife's cars to build your own car dealership. As it turns out, once you establish your sim as a captain of industry, you can chase after an even bigger pot of gold: real estate. You'll be able to speculate by purchasing barren, fixer-upper lots, adding some furnishings, and selling at a higher price, though the development team at Maxis is taking several steps to prevent horrible abuse of the sales system.

Whether you wheel and deal in acreage or apple pies will depend on your talent for salesmanship. The game will also add an entirely new skill system known as the "talent" system. Through practice, your sims can improve in seven different talents, which include the ability to pitch sales to customers, to work a cash register, and to craft products like toys, robots, and floral arrangements. Your crafting ability will range from a "bronze" to a "gold" level, and that will affect the quality and quantity of the items that you can craft and sell. Fortunately, your sims' existing skills can also be used to help you with your talents; a better cook will be a better baker, for instance.

Business begins the moment you open your shop, which functions as an outside lot so that your at-home time basically pauses while you're at work. Your business can include service fixtures like hair salon chairs or retail furnishings like stock shelves, on which you can place finished goods for sale (you can actually use the cash register to automatically restock anything you're out of). All you need to do is place your item, set your price, and set it for sale, then have yourself, or one of your employees, attempt to push your wares onto unsuspecting customers.

If you're a skillful manager, you'll be able to use a motivational speech to temporarily increase your employees' entire skill set. Of course, if you have troublesome employees who aren't good at their jobs, you may end up having to let them go, which will hurt them emotionally. In your ongoing search to create the biggest and best business, you'll be able to recruit your friends, neighbors, and even random customers; some sims may have existing skills that will make them more attractive to hire, but they'll also demand a higher paycheck. Fortunately, if you've built out an entire family of sims, everyone in your household will officially be an employee and will be able to service your customers.

Customers will have an all-new relationship system called customer loyalty, which will be affected by their experience in your shops. If you provide them with attentive customer service by promptly ordering employees to wait on a new customer, and you provide them with good merchandise at a reasonable price, their loyalty will increase. If you let shoppers wander aimlessly without bothering to help them, or if you let them be solicited by unskilled salespeople, or if you take salespeople of any skill level and attempt to use the new "hard sell" ability, you may decrease their customer loyalty, making them less likely to return. (And as it turns out, your sims' personal relationships with customers may also affect their loyalty.) However, if you can build up a successful business full of loyal customers, your business will increase in rank up to five different levels. With these increases in rank, your sims will also gain powerful new perks, such as a social networking ability that will instantly put your character in touch with another sim's entire group of friends. Then again, one of the major costs of business is spending time away from your family, so you can opt to try to work from home. However, if you have a low-ranking business, your sim will need to spend hours of game time on the phone, talking the low-level manager through the day's business--top-flight operations with great managers will require only a little time each day to make sure everything's running smoothly and to make sure the cash keeps coming in.

In addition to these new selling features, the new expansion pack will add a whopping 125 different fixtures, including more toys for child sims to play with (a highly requested feature from fans) and craftable robots. Robots can be bought and sold and will perform day-to-day chores, like watering the lawn, though the most sophisticated and expensive robot, Servo, will instead fully mimic the personality of the sim that activated him--and Servo can be put to work on a variety of tasks, and he won't get hungry or need to use the restroom. Open for Business will have a lot to offer both new fans and existing fans of The Sims 2. The expansion is scheduled for release on March 2.

Hands-On with Sims 2: Open for Business

by Dan Adams

A little more management for the business minded simmers out there.

There are likely to be several thousand more expansions for The Sims 2 to come out before The Sims 3 even comes close to release. Half the fun seems to be the guessing game fans play about what the next expansion pack will be before it's announced in the previous expansion's retail box. Sure, there are a lot of neat items and ideas out there, but how many can Maxis develop into an interesting premise for a Sims game? A lot apparently. Their latest is another interesting experiment in more pro-active gaming for The Sims franchise. The Sims 2: Open for Business will let sims run their own businesses with employees and everything. EA came buy yesterday to show the game off a bit but we had to sink into a bit before feeding our readers impressions.

Open for Business is interesting. At this point I've managed to open a couple of businesses both of which are starting to actually turn an operating profit (though they haven't broken through cost yet). Both are retail and selling a mish-mosh of items. What I'm really interested in going forward is purchasing and running alternative businesses, which I'll have to come back and write some more about at a later date. Basically, if you're the creative sort, you'll be able to create any type of business that you can think of.

Dazzle your mark with a nifty sales pitch.

The first order of business is actually setting up a business. This is a pretty easy process for the most part. Any lot can actually be turned into a business, including a home. Should players choose to mark their home as a business, customers will come over and spend money without your sims having to leave. The rub is of course that you have to dedicate a certain part of your residence as a business area. The more traditional business set up allows players to purchase community lots and fix them up into sim businesses.

While Open for Business opens up the idea of "shopping districts" like those "downtown" and "university" areas from the previous expansions, new businesses can easily be opened in your own hometown. Simply plop down a new community site, build it up to look like a proper business, stock it with goods, and then have your purchasing sim get on the phone and dial in the purchase. A list of available community lots will pop up for players to grab and buy. Then you can either try and run the business all on your lonesome or hire other AI controlled sims as employees. They'll charge a wage but can be put to any number of tasks. They're also conveniently marked by a sphere over their heads to differentiate them from your customers and show their mood.

What tasks you give them will largely depend on their talents. Talents are a new gameplay idea introduced in Open for Business that increase the idea of work skills. When talents increase, they're rewarded with new badges showing their expertise. New sims will begin with no badge and work their way up through bronze, silver, and gold. The higher they get, the more skilled they become and in some cases this will open up new behaviors. Those with no sales badge for instance will only be able to give a basic sales pitch to a customer while those with a gold sale talent badge will be able to use the "dazzle" ability to wow them with savvy sales and put customers into such a buying frenzy that they'll absolutely have to buy whatever they're looking at. There's a slew of talents to earn like toy making, robot making, and cosmetology, only some of which will apply to whatever business you happen to be running.

But talents aren't the only consideration. Upon hiring a talented salesman I quickly found out that he preferred to badger customers with hard sells and dazzles which turned many of them off, dropping the store's reputation level lower. My robot maker also managed to create some malfunctioning robots (which can be sold regardless) even though he had the skill to create them. Some skills are necessary as well. For instance, charisma will help out a salesman, not only in helping people like him or her better, but also in increasing the sales talent level faster just as the mechanical skill will help a sim increase in the robot making skill quicker.

Employee information can be found in the new business tracker pop up that sits in the top right corner of the screen. Info about their wage (how fair it is) and their current assignment is shown. The business tracker is also important for other information. Customer loyalty is tracked here and can have a huge impact on your business. The more customers have a good experience at your business, no matter what it is, the higher their loyalty will grow. They'll help grow the company's reputation and more customers will stop by to give the store a shot. The cash flow history will show how profitable the company is while the business information panel will give information on business rank, value, and customer loyalty. Business build tools will allow you to set store prices (explained more fully below).

New shelving helps organize your merchandise.

Finally, business perks can be accessed as well. Perks are rewards for growing a successful business. The more customer loyalty you accrue, the higher your business rank will climb. Every level of business rank will let players choose a new perk. There are 25 total with 5 perks in each category. Perks include bonuses to your cash, lower wholesale price of goods, the ability to motivate your employees to do better (as well as gain more influence for fulfilling wants), increased effectiveness of sales interactions, and the ability to not only get a bonus when starting new relationships, but also to access other sim friends networks along with a powerful starting bonus for relationships with all of those people.

Starting a business also means you'll need to decide what exactly to sell. There are three ways a business can be run. Pay for item, pay for use, and pay for time.

Pay for item is basically retail. This means players can set up a store to sell items in the catalog of goods that can be placed in their house or set up a factory of sorts to sell items made on one of the three workbenches or from the oven. These particular items have to be made in order for an employee to be able to restock them. They include a few different toys (anything from a pet brick to a water octopus), a few different robots (anything from toy robots to service robots that serve and protect), flower arrangements, and any number of foods. They cost money to create, but can be sold back for a pretty good profit as only those with the right talents can create them.

New items have been included for retail ease like shelving to any types of goods and refrigerated glass cases to hold some of the more delicate food items. It's easy to set a room up with enough retail space to accommodate a large number of items and quickly looks like a store. Some items won't fit on store shelves, but they can easily be placed on a small retail pedestal or on the floor.

Any number of items can be in a store but the only ones that will be for sale are those that players mark for sale using the new business tracker tool. Items can be individually priced along a pricing scale (from Ridiculously Cheap at 40% under the wholesale cost to Ridiculously Expensive at 110% over the wholesale cost) or every object in the store can be given a price in one foul swoop via the cash register. This keeps customers from coming in and purchasing your shelves, work benches, decorations, or shelving units by accident, because they'll buy just about anything that you suggest to them depending on their personalities.

Higher sales talent badges certainly help build this kind of business though they aren't necessary to start out. Even early sales techniques can help push a prospective customer over the edge. All customers looking to buy items will have a buy cone over their head. Once it fills to the top, they'll decide to purchase whatever item they're interested in.

Step into my makeover chair of pain.

Pay for use businesses are more along the lines of a sytlist. Some items, such as the makeover station, allow for a set price per use. In the case of the makeover station (which looks suspiciously like a barber's chair) an employee must be there to give the treatment to customers. Considering the average price that can be set for a makeover is $58, a full business with a few chairs could potentially make a good sum of money. It seems that sims are happy with pretty much any new look so I'm not sure there's a downside at this point, especially if you have a salesman convincing customers that they want a new look so they process goes even faster.

Pay for time is the last way of charging sims for use of your lot. Any lot can include a pay station, which charges for, well, pretty much anything. Sims will come into a lot, decide if they want to stay, and begin paying a rate to hang out in your business lot. Should the sim like what they find inside, they'll hang out for even longer, giving you more money the longer they stay. This has the potential for the most creative use of a space. Anything you can think of that sims might find interesting can be put into practice. Nightclubs, spas, art galleries, and so on. As long as it's interesting, the sims will stay and pay. The only limit for these types of businesses is creativity.

Along with all of the new gameplay features, players can expect around 120-125 new items, which is the usual number included with an expansion. A lot of those have to do with businesses, but there are some new items which will intice players along on their own. Firstly, elevators have been added so that lazy ass sims don't have to walk up and down stairs anymore. Secondly, awnings have also been added so you can create quick coverings for decks, outside parties, or whatever it is you wish. The last big item is probably the Servo Robot. This crazy creation will adopt the personality of the sim that activates it. It'll need to have fun, be social, and eventually recharge on its stand, but other than that, it'll behave exactly like a normal sim. Yes, Servo can participate in a little woohoo action, fall in love, and get married. It may be a bit unnatural, but if there wasn't something weird and quirky in this expansion pack, we'd be worried.

Now that we have a playable copy of Open for Business in the office, we'll be sure to give you some more updates and features in the coming weeks before release.

The Sims 2 - Open for Business

By Richard Li

Put those idle Sims to work this winter.

The Sims franchise has grown quite well. Having well over five iterations, spanning every conceivable current gaming system (including even your own tiny cellular phone ) the Sims has nailed almost every aspect of life. Sure, it captures life's most mundane moments (*ahem* plunking a stinker into a royal porcelain toilet), but it also expounds on life's most exhilarating experiences. Sims 2 University allowed budding scholars to earn their PhD; The Sims House Party let you recreate all your favorite Kid-N-Play moments; The Sims 2 Night Life even gave Sex and the City a run for its money in terms of making whoo-hoo. And since we're on the topic of salacious fun, there have been reports of Sims taking up the world's oldest profession on The Sims Online.

Yet with all these expansions packs there are still a few things that The Sims hasn't been able to capture. A frequently asked question was, "what do Sims do when they're at work?" So, to please the fans, EA went back to the drawing board and came up with The Sims 2 Open for Business, a PC expansion pack that captures the joys of entrepreneurship.

Opening your own business sounds fun, right? With a little hard work and the right combination of luck and resilience, your Sim can create just about any business: a toy store, a swanky night club, a trendy boutique, a fancy Zagat-rated restaurant, a mom-n-pop flower store, a hipster salon, or even a bustling electronics store. The possibilities are endless, but the real fun comes from managing your own business.

Taking on the role as an owner of a business can be either fun or stressful. Like most managers, you'll need to hire a competent staff, train them to work efficiently and, as the business grows, assign leadership positions so that you can kick back, relax and manage the store from the comforts of your own home. If things go awry, however, you'll need to spot those slacking employees, give them a good stern lecture and hope that your intervention will motivate them to do a better job. If those slackers refuse to change, you'll be faced with the decision to fire a member of your staff, and repeat the arduous process of hiring new employees.

Once you achieve a roster of capable men and women, you'll need to micromanage them within your store. New to The Sims series is sales skill, an individual attribute that indicates sales experience and effectiveness when dealing with customers. If the sales skill bar is high, of course, that Sim is more likely to sell more than the average no-skill employee. But there will be days when your employees have an off-day, selling next-to-nothing. To boost their spirits, you can perform a motivational speech that will temporarily boost their talent, thus increasing the chance of having a successful sale.

Having pushy sales people isn't always a great idea, as their aggressiveness will turn off many of your customers, causing them to leave your store and vowing never to buy anything from you again. It's a good thing that it's easy to figure out a customer's mood, as indicated by the new addition of a Buy Bar at the top of a customer's head. It will display the willingness of a customer's mood to buy something -- if the bar is low, the customer is just window shopping, but if the bar is high, they're more than willing to spend a hefty sum on a pricey item. The Buy Bar is also affected by the prices in your store, so if the quality of your products don't justify the price tag, most of your Sims customers will be shocked, appalled, and take their business elsewhere.

The Sims 2 Open for Business should be out this winter. If you can't wait to manage your own sim-army of employees, play a game or two of SimAnt, or head over to the Media page to check out the latest screens.