The Sims 4 For Rent Expansion’s Rental Gameplay and Cultural Respect

Key Highlights

• New For Rent expansion for The Sims 4 introduces ability to build multi-unit rental properties
• Southeast Asian-inspired world of Tomarang added, though smaller than previous worlds
• Development team focused on new rental gameplay rather than large world
• Consulted Southeast Asian activists and own cultural backgrounds to portray region respectfully
• Four bug fixes released addressing issues like excessive showering and pricing errors

The Sims 4 For Rent Expansion Enables Rental Properties, With Some Launch Issues

Released last week, The Sims 4’s new For Rent game expansion introduces the ability for players’ Sims to become landlords and develop multi-unit rental properties in the game.

This is facilitated by a new Residential Rental lot type, allowing households to construct buildings divided into separate rental units that can house multiple different families simultaneously. Players can set rental rates, vet potential tenants, collect payments and more.

Smaller Southeast Asian-Inspired World Focuses Efforts on New Rentals Gameplay

The expansion also adds Tomarang, a new residential world inspired by Southeast Asian architecture and culture. However, some fans have noted that Tomarang features just two neighbourhoods and nine total lots, making it more compact than previous worlds.

According to Rebecca Doyle, For Rent’s Producer at developer Maxis, this was an intentional choice driven by the team’s focus on enabling the new rental property gameplay features across all worlds, rather than creating an exceptionally large new area.

“It was very important that [Residential Rentals] was available not just in this world but also in all worlds,” Doyle explained.

While geographically small, Tomarang incorporates the culture of multiple Southeast Asian countries into a dense, vibrant setting. Players can direct their Sims to locations like a tiger sanctuary, night market, national park and more.

Authentic Portrayal of Southeast Asian Culture and Experiences

According to Digital Spy, the development team, which included several Southeast Asian staff members like Designer Jessica Croft, conducted extensive research to portray the region respectfully.

They worked with internal diversity experts and external cultural consultants like activist Jason Chu to ensure accuracy. Croft, who is Vietnamese, relished the chance to incorporate small details from her own upbringing.

“Being able to draw from our own lived experiences and things that we experienced in childhood and in life was a really elevating experience,” she remarked.

Post-Launch Fixes Address Early Expansion Issues

Following For Rent’s launch on December 6th, players reported several notable bugs affecting the expansion’s content. On December 14th, Maxis released a hotfix patch to remedy some of the highest-priority problems.

This update fixed technical issues that were slowing down the game’s Build Mode when players edited Residential Rental properties. It also resolved bugs causing autonomous Sims to excessively shower even when already clean, and errors with rental pricing data at one of the new Tomarang lots.

Additionally, the patch enabled the “FreeRealEstate” cheat code again after it had erroneously stopped functioning. This cheat allows players to obtain residential buildings for free instead of paying in-game currency. You can visit the official EA website for yourself, but the update was minor, and we’ve already covered the information here.

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While still experiencing some lingering launch issues, For Rent also provides the long-awaited ability for Sims fans to become virtual landlords. With its compact Southeast Asian world and focus on new rental gameplay features, the expansion aims less to broadly expand The Sims 4 in scope and more to enable this specific highly-requested property ownership fantasy.