Draft:The Sims: Hot Date

The Sims: Hot Date is a 2001 expansion pack for The Sims developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The expansion adds a new community area to the game, Downtown, and provides players with more opportunities for their Sims to interact and romance one another. Upon release, Hot Date received generally favorable reviews, with praise directed to the game's expansion of game mechanics and locations in contrast to earlier expansions, although with some criticism of the limited options for customisation and the level of challenge with relationship management. Following release, Hot Date was a commercial success, becoming one of the top ten highest-selling computer games of 2001 and 2002 in the United States.

Gameplay
In addition to many new items for households, the new downtown area is Hot Date's most significant new addition to The Sims. Sims can now use their telephones to call a taxi that takes them to downtown SimCity, which is composed of lots such as shopping centers, recreation areas, restaurants, or nightclubs. While a Sim is on a date, the Sim can be controlled, but not actually give orders to their date. Downtown features many brand-new, downtown-only items, like food vendors, clothing stores, picnic areas, and duck ponds that Sim couples can use to keep themselves busy, and a few new items, like the restaurant booth seat, that will let them get to know each other better. All the time spent in Downtown takes place independent of time at home; in other words, Sims will get hungry, tired, and bored as usual during the time they spend downtown, but once they get home, the clock will actually reset to the time when they left. This makes having both a relationship and a job (which still typically takes about six hours out of a Sim's day) not only possible, but a lot easier than before. The relationship bar with acquaintances the Sims know, now includes a daily bar at the top showing short-term trends with decay quickly and a long term bar showing long-term trends.

Development and release
The developer's core objective of Hot Date was to "get Sims out of the house", and "creating more interesting places for your Sims to go and giving them a much greater range of interactions". In order to facilitate the overhaul of the interaction system, the developers added a daily and lifetime relationship rating due to it being perceived as "too easy to get high relationships" in the original game. Because of the expanded scope of the project, Maxis expanded an additional team of 12-14 staff to develop the expansion, including contracting studio New Pencil, who created most of the sprite assets for the game. Development of Hot Date was completed on 3 November 2001 and shipped on 14 November.

Sales
Hot Date was a commercial success and one of the highest-selling computer games of 2001 and 2002. According to NPD annual sales charts for computer games, Hot Date ranked as the seventh highest selling game in 2001 and fifth highest in 2002, with the Entertainment Software Association similarly ranking the game sixth in 2002. The game topped monthly ChartTrack and Virgin Megastores sales charts for computer games in January 2002 in the United Kingdom.

Reviews
According to review aggregator Metacritic, Hot Date received "generally favorable" reviews from critics. Several critics considered the expansion to be more substantial in content than its prececessors, Livin' Large and House Party, with Mark Hill of PC Zone describing the game as a "significant addition", and Cam Shea of Hyper finding the game to be a "breakthrough" that "truly [offers] something more than just extra frills and gimmicks". Elizabeth McAdams wrote that "there's enough going on to actually make it feel like a new Sims game", stating "this is the add-on Maxis should have released long ago". Vincent Lopez of IGN stated the expansion was not a "full-fledged leap", but was "certainly the largest step the game has taken".

The additions to romance and social interaction were generally praised. Describing the new mechanics as making "interaction between your characters a huge game in itself", Vince Lopez found the features to facilitate "more elaborate and fulfilling interaction". Cam Shea commended the new interactions for "significantly broadening the way sims interact". Elizabeth McAdams of Computer Gaming World highlighted the greater variation of sim interactions and interests, but found dating to be addictive but too challenging. Similarly, Carla Harker of GameSpy considered long-term relationships to be time-consuming and difficult to maintain, noting that whilst it added realism to the game, it in turn increased the difficulty of career requirements. Nebojsa Radakovic of Game Revolution stated that "addition of expanded conversation options, physical interactions and interests makes it much harder for your Sim to win friends, but it is a much more rewarding experience", considering it to add "depth" and "drama" to the game.

The Downtown neighborhood was also generally praised, but was noted to be limited in its design options. Describing it as the "most significant addition that's ever been made to the game", Andrew Park of GameSpot found it necessary to manage work and relationships, lamenting the existence of a single area compared to neighborhoods but noting the lots were large enough to "provide enough areas to build and customize". However, Nebojsa Radakovic of Game Revolution critiqued the area, stating "the default lots are generally to sparse and the fun too far and few between", also writing that creating custom lots lacked the potential for "unique establishments" due to the "limited selection of start up items". This concern was shared by Andrew Park of GameSpot, who enjoyed the ease of building new community lots in the Downtown area, but found the available objects "limiting", suggesting the game "[expects] the fan community to come up with the variety".

Accolades
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Hot Date for its 2001 "Innovation in Computer Gaming" award, which ultimately went to Black & White.

Legacy
Producer Tim LeTorneau retrospectively remarked that Hot Date was a "big transition for the franchise" in "[breaking] the barrier of the house". LeTorneau expressed that the expansion was the starting point for the development of future innovations to the scope of the series, drawing comparisons with the setting of the neighborhood in The Sims 2 and the open-world design of The Sims 3. Hot Date also received retrospective praise, with TheGamer noting the expansion provided players with the "highly underrated" aspects of complex relationships and interests "really gave personality to your Sims". The inclusion of downtown areas was later implemented in The Sims 2: Nightlife.