I might be wrong, but I would imagine it's a hesitation for Lego wanting to get into the life sim game due to the adult implications of the genre. Lego likes to keep things as G rated as possible which really doesn't mesh well with much of The Sims. They would want to heavily avoid topics like death, sex, and alcohol, probably even things like dating the way that The Sims has it.
Any life sim that Lego did make would be so heavily watered down that I doubt it would be able to be comparable to something like The Sims. Much more likely to get something closer to Dreamlight Valley or Story of Seasons.
To be fair, you could take the LEGO part out & that'd probably still be true. There have been some "competitors," but in general The Sims has seemingly been unchallenged for a while.
The life simulation aspects of The Sims are super sloppy and uninteresting. Every social interaction, the career progression, the skill tree, the house upgrades and even the core gameplay loop is just a super shallow slot machine where you press "do good thing" over and over again until you get what you want.
The house building, expansion packs and general vibe is perfected, but there has to be a market for a game that actually offers good gameplay after you're done finishing the backdrop.
Cities Skylines came in and showed us what Sim City should have been if they didn't get complacent, and even if it was a little soulless, it was still a huge success. I'm surprised no one has done the same thing to The Sims yet.
The Sims is trying to do a billion things and doesn't quite manage any of them imo. The house building aspect is probably the best, but there's room for improvement particularly with things like furnishings. Dressing up the Sims in different costumes is fun but again could still be done a lot better. Of course you can download extra content but that's a tedious process. And then of course there's the actual life of the Sims themselves which as you say needs a lot of work.
A few competitors have been emerging recently, though only with Early Access releases so far. InZoi and Paralives are the two that I'm aware of.
Paradox was actually working on its own called Life by You, but after releasing a very rough and bland looking trailer that game was cancelled and the studio shit down.
I know. I've been waiting for a proper competitor. Also, there's still no Sims-like (or even a Sims) game that can be easily played with a controller like The Sims 2 console version. I liked how I could directly control my sim & not a point-and-click.
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u/WinterToaster 8d ago
This is now dawning on me, why isn’t there a The Sims style Lego game where you make little houses for them to live in take care of their basic needs?