As if in response to Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club announcement, EA has announced their own onlne gaming community, TheSimsCarnival.com.  The announcement was made at GDC by Sims Studio head, Rod Humble.  Much like Microsoft’s service, TheSimsCarnival will allow users to create, modify, play and rate casual games.  Unlike the Creators Club, however, TSC.com will let you do it all completely free of charge, an even embed your favorite games on your social networking sites.  

So it seems the powers that be think that community-based gaming is the future of the industry.  The success of games like Portal and Counter-Strike, which started out as mods for Half-Life 2, along with a growing community of casual game creators, has nudged the industry’s major players toward a more democratic approach to online gaming.  What this means for gamers is more choices in game types, more unique voices creating new titles, and inexpensive or free games.  For publishers, it means not having to pay professional developers as much or as often.  Whether this trend will hurt or help the gaming community is anyone’s guess, but I, for on, am excited at the prospect of making my own version of Space Invaders, where you play as Master Shake, blowing away Mooninites with your straw of death.

The service is currently accepting applications for beta testing, and is set to launch in Spring 2008.  Here’s the EA press release

REDWOOD CITY, CA. - February 21, 2007 - Today, Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced an invitation to participate in a special closed beta at The Sims Carnival™, a new online community and gaming experience from The Sims™ studio An innovative online destination, TheSimsCarnival.com empowers members to play, create and share casual games within an online community. This announcement comes out of today's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in a speech presented by the Head of The Sims Studio, Rod Humble.

With the launch of TheSimsCarnival.com, hundreds of games will be available to play and as members create and contribute games this number will grow. The online community is made to be collaborative, so that designing games becomes a fun and shared creative process. To design games, TheSimsCarnival.com provides game creation tools for a range of user skill sets so that millions of players can become game designers with no prior programming abilities necessary. TheSimsCarnival.com will be available to the public online in spring 2008.


"We're very excited to launch TheSimsCarnival.com, a new and accessible gaming experience that gives players all the tools they need to play, create and share games online with friends," said Rod Humble, Head of The Sims Studio.  "Whether you're a new player who wants to simply customize a game with a family photo, a gamer who always wanted to make the best platformer or a seasoned expert ready to create the next big game, TheSimsCarnival.com makes game creation and publication easier than ever before."

To potentially be selected for participation in a closed Beta for TheSimsCarnival.com, create a new account at TheSimsCarnival.com

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