[jazzy xylophone music]
[typing]
So if you were a fan of The Sims back in the day,
then you know it came with a bunch of expansion packs.
In fact, even if you weren't a fan of it,
you probably know that expansion packs were kind of its thing.
Uh, House Party, Hot Date, Livin' Large,
Vacation, Makin' Magic, Unleashed.
There were a ton of these things by Maxis.
But did you know that they were not the only company
in the expansion pack game for The Sims?
Yes, there was some competition out there.
At least they tried to be competition.
What am I talking about?
That's Life,
published by X Media Publishing in 2001 and developed by...
Well, that's the question of the day, depending on how you look at it.
That's Life bills itself as the ultimate tool for The Sims,
but it's not just a management tool and database,
as it would initially lead you to believe.
The contains an expansion pack or two worth of new content for use in the game,
but the thing is, all of it is lifted directly from fan sites
and other free online repositories of custom content.
They make a point to repeatedly say this is not an authorized program
and is not affiliated with Maxis or EA in any way.
But nowhere does it make mention that this stuff is taken from Simmers without their consent.
Inside the box of LIES,
you get the shady game on a dubious CD-ROM,
as well as a manual in broken, awkward English.
Start it up and... there you go. This is it.
It's a simple interface for looking at and installing custom content into The Sims.
Skins, furniture, roofing, walls,
flooring and pre-made homes are just a mouse click away,
without any need to go to any pesky fan sites or Sims forums.
Pick what you want to install, either from the hundreds of included items
or by downloading your own into the program directory,
and go into the game and enjoy.
It does make at least some effort to credit the original designers of each piece of content,
but I'm sure that was little consolation to those affected by this.
Although, this was not the first retail package to do something along these lines.
You had things like D!Zone for Doom,
MegaMetro for SimCity 2000,
and Total Destruction for Command & Conquer: Red Alert, for example.
These unauthorized tools and expansions
were pretty commonplace during the mid- to late-'90s for PC games,
and often contained stuff downloaded for free from the Internet.
But the difference between a lot of those and That's Life
is that things in The Sims were often completely custom.
They weren't just maps or cities or scenarios
made using some in-game editor.
These contained specially-made skins, artwork, objects and scripted items
that were completely original creations.
Now, sure, sometimes they were inspired by copyrighted works themselves,
or something from real life, like an iMac computer
or Cindy Crawford in Duke Nukem skins.
But these were still new pieces of content with real effort and skill put into them,
different from anything else in the game.
And now they were being sold off by some random company in Germany
that didn't even bother to ask.
Kind of a dick move?
Yeah, MAJOR dick move,
and the pack was shunned by the still fresh-out-of-the-oven Simming community of 2001.
All sorts of forum posts and reviews blasted it for having stolen their work,
and there was at least one petition that gained some ground
calling for its removal from store shelves.
Apparently, all of this never got anywhere,
but the community was pretty livid at the time
and bringing it up to the right people still brings about rage.
Talk about an appropriate name for this product, too.
You made some awesome stuff for your favorite game and released it for free,
only to have it snatched up and sold without your permission
by a shameless shovelware publisher?
Well...
But it seems that X Media didn't give a crap,
because not only did they release similar packs for other games
like Motocross Madness, Creatures and Jedi Knight,
but they went on to release That's Life 2 in 2002.
Ugh, yeah, these guys stooped to an impressive level of apathy.
I mean, hey, this stuff was on the Internet for free,
so it must be first-come, first-served to monetize it, right?
At least they went the extra, unscrupulous mile with this one
in not only providing the installation tool and extra content,
but including a 3D virtual store to explore.
Start up That's Life 2
and you're given an unskippable message from the depths of Hades.
[thunderous flashes]
[chorus]
Geez, could that get any more ominous?!
Imagine you're someone that already had their content taken by these guys.
Then you boot this up and you're given an introduction
that Lord Sauron himself would be content with.
Anyway, once it's installed, you can start up the same old That's Life program
to manage any existing content you have downloaded,
but if you want to use the stuff that came with THIS pack,
you have to use the virtual world interface.
From here, you can select a Sim from any neighborhoods you have in your game
and see the number of Simoleons they have,
referred to as credits, for some reason.
That number is important
because this is a first-person virtual shopping experience,
and if you're poor, you can just get out.
That's not how capitalism works.
Once you're inside the building, you can walk around
using the arrow keys or the mouse,
and swap between view mode and point-and-click mode.
At first, this is kind of cool
because you weren't able to do anything even remotely close to this
in the original Sims game.
You can go inside the elevator,
select the floor that has the type of content you want to install,
and walk around, browsing the items and buying the things.
Yeah, its all still stuff taken from people online,
but at least it's done in a way that's unique enough
to make you temporarily forget that the company behind this is scum.
You can even go to a casino and gamble away all your Simoleons,
or credits.
There's the choice to either play the world's worst slot machines
or play a shell game where you try to guess which cup is hiding the dice.
Though it seems that actually giving you any kind of fair chance
by properly animating this process was out of the question,
so is purely just a shot in the dark
and is really just a waste of time.
There are also floors with a clinic and administrative area,
but there's kind of a problem.
Yeah, they don't work.
In fact, getting this program to work
for very long at all is a real feat,
since more often than not it'll just crash and burn while you're simply turning around.
I've tried this on two different systems
that are more than capable of running it,
according to the system requirements,
but neither of them could run it with any kind of stability.
And when it IS running, it'll go from being smooth as silk
to choppier than a choppy ocean
full of chopsticks in no time at all.
Plain and simple,
That's Life 2 is a pile of crap.
An interesting pile of crap,
but a big, smelly pile nonetheless.
While it's a novel gimmick to buy things in a first-person store
and earn money by gambling,
it's not only more work to install this custom content,
but it would help if it were actually a competent program.
And there's that pesky fact about how it screwed over
a bunch of cool and talented fans of the game it was supposed to be enhancing,
and well, it's pretty much just junk.
Oh, well, at least it makes for an amusing oddity to look back on in video form.
And as a fan of both The Sims and strange stuff in general,
this is solid gold.
I am also happy to report somewhat of a happy ending,
as X Media appears to have gone out of business
sometime in the mid-2000s.
Now, normally this is the point where I would talk about how this game
has left some kind of legacy
or whether or not I think it's worth grabbing nowadays.
But truthfully, That's Life packs are completely forgettable
and not worth a second glance, unless you're the hardest of hardcore collectors.
Any content you can get on these discs you can likely still find online,
and the virtual store is only captivating for a moment,
and then it inevitably breaks anyway.
So, just stick to the official games and free custom content,
and let this weirdness rest in peace.
[jazz music]
And if you enjoyed this look back at gaming expansion strangeness,
then perhaps you'll find something else to enjoy on my channel,
because I do a lot of stuff like this.
Click some of these.
I approve of them.
I mean, I made them.
Not exactly the most impartial, but hey.
And you can also check me out on Twitter, Facebook and Patreon.
And as always, thank you for watching.