The Sims 5 might feature some Animal Crossing inspired multiplayer

The Sims 5 will be the first title with multiplayer, and the devs working on it have been looking to titles like Animal Crossing for inspiration.

Around a year ago, EA gave us all our first look at the next Sims game, Project Rene, with arguably the biggest change for it being the fact that it will have multiplayer. We still haven't seen all that much of the game, and it's certainly still a while away before it releases. But Sims VP of franchise Lyndsay Pearson recently made an appearance on the One More Life podcast, detailing some of the ways the team is thinking about how they might approach The Sims' take on multiplayer (thanks, GameSpot).

"We definitely want to introduce multiplayer. Not multiplayer in the big, scary 'jump into a world full of strangers' kind of way, but literally how do you and your friends want to play together?" said Pearson. "There's a lot of different flavors that could take, so we're exploring a lot of different spaces there, because playing together can look like so many different things." The Sims obviously has quite a particular style which is part of what makes the game so appealing to its community, with Pearson explaining that the team wants to make sure even the multiplayer feels appropriately "Simsy."

"How do we figure out how to make a little bit of that chaos, a little bit of that fun, and a little bit of that positivity come together in a way that feels 'Simsy?'" Of course, the multiplayer landscape has changed a lot over the years, with some games offering a lot more of a casual experience; Animal Crossing in particular is an example that comes up for the team behind Project Rene. "We talk about Animal Crossing all the time, because it is such a good example of my little space, my little island--but I can invite you over.

"We've seen throughout the last few years of Animal Crossing, people inventing ways to play together that the game doesn't specifically support, but they've made up scavenger hunts, or... people who hosted talk shows in Animal Crossing, I think is incredible."

There's no word on when we can expect The Sims 5 to release, or even what platforms it might release on, but there's a chance it will be free-to-play and feature user generated content.