EA has announced a new reality competition television show called The SIMS Spark’d and that it has partnered with Turner Sports to televise the 4-episode series starting Friday, July 17th. The show will be broadcast on TBS beginning at 8:00 pm Pacific / 11:00 pm Eastern. Subsequent episodes will be aired on July 24, July 31, and August 7th. Rebroadcasts will also be shown on Saturdays at 5:00 am Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. For those who can’t make those broadcast times, worry not. BuzzFeed Multiplayer will rebroadcast each episode on the following Mondays.
The show is considered a “first-of-its-kind” reality show based on the SIMS video game franchise. It seeks to redefine “reality competition by bringing creativity, storytelling, and the community together in an entertaining new way”. Players will be challenged to create and build the most unique characters, worlds, and stories using The SIMS 4 as its base. Contestants will compete in a race against time and face elimination challenges from celebrity judges in an effort to take home $100,000.
The twelve contestants have already been chosen and feature “familiar online personalities who each specialize in their own element of The Sims gameplay”. Current players will have to wait for the show’s debut to learn their identities.
The show features an amazing cast, with former American Idol finalist, Rayvon Owen, as the host, who has been playing the game since middle school. Joining Rayvon are three judges that each brings their own critical Sims voice to the competition. The first is BuzzFeed Multiplayer YouTube personality, Kelsey Impicciche, famous for her own #100babychallenge series she created with The Sims. Next up is a singer-songwriter, Tayla Parx, who has done voice acting work for the game and sang her song, “Me vs. Us” in Simlish (in-game language) for The Sims 4 Get Famous expansion pack. Rounding out the judges’ panel is Maxis™ game developer, Dave Miotke. Maxis is the development studio behind the franchise where Miotke – better known in the community as SimGuruNinja – has worked for 15 years.
Check out The SIMS Spark’d official site to learn more and then set a calendar reminder to tune into the first show next week!
