This press release was sent by EA Nederland a few day’s ago and we translated it for our international The Sims community friends.
It is about the ‘secret’ Custom Content project of EA Nederland which was worked on by four Dutch Custom Content makers for months.
Three Custom Content makers are from The Sims Resource (Angela, Anja and Gea) and the fourth one is our own teammember Kyta.
We hope we can provide more information soon.
Dear fansite,
Today it is finally happening: EA reveals the project where they have been working on these last couple of months with the most creative builders of the community. I would like to specially thank Angela, Anja, Kyta and Gea.Anita – Community Manager EA Benelux
THE SIMS™ 3 AS TEACHING MATERIALS FOR EDUCATION
Pilot NME of The Sims™3 starts
Electronic Arts Nederland and Codename Future start on the 21th of October with a pilot of ‘The Sims™3 in class’, a national program of Nature and Environmental Education (NME in Dutch), at five Dutch secondary schools. It is the first time in Holland that a well-known videogame, which is not develop as education material, will be used in education.
Within the learning setting of Codename Future there has been built a lesson series on sustainability based on The Sims™3. Youth in the second and third grade of VMBO/HAVO/VWO, age between 13 and 16, will get to know more about the nature and environmental theme’s as in water, energy, green, garbage, CO2 and their mutual links. With the purchase of sustainable items in The Sims™3 world, the pupils will need to find a balance between energy, green and garbage.
With the project ‘The Sims™3 in class’ Codename Future gives you a creative, innovative and fun way to offer NME. Playing videogames is a very important factor in life of 13 to 16 aged children; The Sims™3 has a lot of great opportunities to use in education. The Sims™3 is a popular videogame in which gamers need to create a environment and get to control life within it.
“The extreme realistic game, combined with a challenging online lesson series, is a good platform to improve the responsibility of pupils towards human and society and that is why it is perfect for NME education, which has the same goals. This project is an unique opportunity to try to create a bridge between school and spare time” according to Geeske Steeneken, director of Codename Future.
“With this project we want to try to give The Sims™3 and playing videogames more ways of using it. Pupils and teacher can become more environmentally conscious in an informative and playful manner, together with The Sims.” Pien Ooms senior product manager Electronic Arts Nederland.
In December of 2010 the pilot of NME with The Sims™3 will be finished and then the obtained results will become public. From that moment on school in Holland can work with the school materials. To get more information on the national NME program, visit NME.NL.
Go to The Sims 3 NL for more information on The Sims™3. For more information on Codename Future go to Code Name Future.
About The Sims
In February of this year The Sims celebrated their 10th birthday, this game is all about simulating life on the computer. Ever since its launch in February 2000, the game has been sold more than 125 million copies. The Sims is translated in 22 languages and is available in 60 different countries. In a very short time the series became really popular over the whole world and even became a cultural phenomenal. Since the launch in June 2009, The Sims 3 has been sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. With this results The Sims 3 became the best sold PC-game in North-America and Europe. That this game has a lot of fans, can be concluded by the 150 millions of downloadable material which players created, like Sims, houses, stories and lots more.The community website of The Sims 3, http://www.desims3.nl and .be, has 6 million unique visitors every month. Every minute there are 300 materials downloaded and up until now there has been 2.5 million uploads, in which 15 films every hour. The YoutTube-channel of The Sims 3 is in the top 10 of most seen sponsored channels of all time. The clips have been watched more than 32 million times. Visit our official website to see what the gamers have created, go to http://www.desims3.nl of .be or take a look at our official YouTube-channel of The Sims on https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSims.
The Sims 3 is available on PC, Mac, iPhone®, iPod touch® and on mobile phones. The game shall be available on Nintendo DS™, Playstation 3™, Xbox 360™ and Wii™ from fall 2010 and in 2011 in Nintendo 3DS.
About Codename Future
Codename Future develops inspirational and interactive digital materials. The new, challenging and result oriented education tries to make the youth more social conscious and teaches them the skills they need to have to function well in our society. To accomplish this our ideas are based on youth. They are the experts on their generation. Within our materials the learning process is paramount.Our lesson materials are full with context and are practice aimed to give good opportunities to work with your pupils on civic education, media knowledge, sustainability and social internship. To achieve optimal outcomes, we try to have an effective usage of new media. Using the computer isn’t a goal, it is logic and easy to use but it’s not necessary. Our digital materials is all about activating assignments which a pupil can also do without a computer.
About national program NME
The nation NME program is an initiative of ministries LNV, VROM and OCW and is directed by a direction group with members of the government, provinces, water protection and communities. The NME program works together with the national NME organizations to improve knowledge, quality, and professionality of NME.The program NME will strengthen the function of the Nature and environmentally education the next couple of years. NME works as a demand driven, modern and above all as a effective policy. We invite local parties to execute a NME-initiative together which matches policy and/or education goals. We stimulate, finance, and support promising initiatives within the theme’s green, energy or water.