The Sims 4 producer explains making infants life stage free
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The Sims 4 players, rejoice. The babies are being freed.
For so long, babies in the game were little more than glorified objects, but that all changes on March 14, with a major base game update bringing the introduction of the infants life stage.
Sitting between baby and toddler, infants come with a host of new interactions and quirks that make the Sim feel like a member of the household. They have unique traits that determine their behaviour as well as baby food preferences.
They can be carried around and are also fully customisable, so you can choose what clothes and accessories they wear for whatever occasion.
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The new life stage significantly fleshes out the early years of a Sim's life, and even better is the fact that it will be made available to all players for free.
When asked about the decision to roll out infants as a free update rather than as paid content, lead producer Graham Nardone told Digital Spy that the team felt strongly that infants should be part of the game's core experience, noting the community's passion for babies content.
"I think we've landed on the situation that's the best of both worlds for our players," he said.
"You can look back to 2017's release of toddlers and they were added to the base game for all players. Obviously players loved that addition, and in the years since then, there's been increasing chatting from their end on wanting us to 'free the babies', and that kind of became their rallying cry.
"So when we look at what our community is talking about, there's certain things that we want to bring to that that are expectations for base game experiences, and we felt like infants was one of those things where at its core, this should be something that's available to all of our players.
"And then with each of our packs, we go deeper into the experience and that's exactly what you're going to see with Growing Together."
Growing Together, the game's newest expansion, launches two days later on March 16, and when considering the themes and content, it makes sense that the pack's release would coincide with the infants life stage being implemented.
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The expansion is focused on providing deeper and more nuanced family gameplay across all life stages.
It's about enriching a Sim's lifetime through systems that include family dynamic and social compatibility, and the team has worked on ensuring all life stages including infants benefit from the features that the pack has to offer.
"You get infant in base game, and you're going to get all of the mainstays that you would expect in terms of having an infant in your game, being able to customise them, add them to your family, take basic care of them," Nardone said.
"But then Growing Together layers on a lot of additional options in the way that you care for them, or the depths of their personalities, or the way that an infant grows – from when they first age up to becoming an infant all the way to ageing up to a toddler.
"There's all these micro-details along the way that evolve their personality and their behaviour and their abilities in really enriching ways.
"So I think players who want to kind of plug further into that gameplay experience, they're going to love what Growing Together has to offer."
On top of infants being added, March 14's base game update also features the addition of birthmarks, stretch marks, and caesarean scars in Create-a-Sim (CAS) mode.
The Sims 4 Growing Together is released on March 16 on PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
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