Sims to Get IKEA Expanstion Pack: Virtual Assembly Required?

Electronic Arts has announced a new expansion pack for its wildly popular Sims franchise called The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff.

The premise? You pay EA $20 to be able to furnish your Sim's home with furniture from IKEA. Call me crazy, but that seems like something that should be a free download. This franchise is bigger than you and me combined and these expansion packs (IKEA included) just seem to a way for EA basically to print money. Okay, since I'm not going to win on the cost issue, I have some ideas for the expansion pack itself, which ships at the end of June.

First off, you know what they should do to make this expansion pack really, truly realistic? Each piece of furniture should take at least six hours for your Sim to assemble and then your Sim-wife should get upset with you for sliding a gigantic 100-pound bookshelf across your entire top-floor apartment at 11:30 at night.

That's exactly what happened to me on Tuesday when I brought home IKEA's excellent (but way harder to assemble than I thought) 6' by 6' Expedit bookcase. I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to move it myself. I didn't, however, foresee having to shimmy half of it into our bathroom just to fit it around a corner.

That's the second thing. Instead of being able to just drop your new piece of furniture anywhere in your Sim's house, your Sim should assemble everything in the kitchen and then halfway through the process think "Whuh oh. I might not be able to get this thing out of here. Maybe we'll just have a bookshelf in the kitchen forever." You should then have to slide, tumble, and cram your furniture down narrow hallways, scuffing every wall along the way.

Finally, EA should really spend a lot of time on the process of getting things from the IKEA store to your home. Your Sim should drive a Volkswagen Jetta and should have to fold all the seats down and slide the passenger seat all the way forward just to be able to fit medium-sized furniture items in the car. There should also be a twine-tying mini game, wherein you need to secure a mattress to the roof and drive home really slowly with your arm and your passenger's arm hanging out of each window holding onto it, as if you'd be able to prevent it from sliding down over the windshield in the case of a sudden stop.

Now THAT would be realistic.

Now for something that turns this entire concept of IKEA and Sims on its head check out this video.