He doesn't have a great rep for some reason. His biggest hits - The Sims, SimCity, and Spore are all quite hated, but those games have a large following of players and creators who don't do any other games.
So in a sense, there's someone out there who loves Spore but won't buy The Sims, because they don't need any other games.
Hated? Wow. Pretty bold thing to say. I have a feeling that every boy gamer had a sister who played Sims on their pc back in the day. Sure, if you're identity is "hc gamer" you wont play "casual games" like Sims but I really feel like what Candy Crush is today, Sims used to be. Of course, the whole market was smaller then
More in regards to the way The Sims handled expansions. With every sequel, all the expansions you bought were worthless. They're not cheap either; an expansion cost the price of an AAA game. With The Sims, EA popularized the model of selling incomplete games.
I think the casual players are the ones who hated it the most, while those who played the Sims hardcore got the most out of their money.
Maybe I'm biased having grown up with the first 3 games and countless console spinoffs, but this only really became an issue with Sims 3 and especially with Sims 4.
Sims 3 was ambitious in scope and kept adding more. It's unplayable if you actually own all the content. Maxis coded themselves into a performance hole and couldn't get out. It stuck to Sims 2's Expansion and Stuff packs formula, with lots of Store content that drove revenue.
Sims 4 is much prettier but also dialed back. This lends well to what EA did by going even _deeper_ into the "spray and pray small amounts of content with huge prices" approach. It's no longer Expansion and Stuff packs with decent amounts of content, it's now various types that all have small-mid amounts for high prices:
- Expansion Packs
- Game Packs (mini expansions around one core concept)
- Stuff Packs
- Kits (mini stuff packs around one set of objects)
Part of it was "developer betrayal" - if you were a fan of the SimCity games, you might "eh" the Sims, but Spore was just not at all related (and overhyped, to be fair).
Yeah, he went across different types (they’re all roughly “simulators” but most games are) so it doesn’t have the same “this developer makes the same game over and over”.
So in a sense, there's someone out there who loves Spore but won't buy The Sims, because they don't need any other games.