''The Sims Spark'd'' is a

reality competition Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...

television series that premiered on the TBS network on July 17, 2020. The first season of the series, filmed from December 9 to 14, 2019, features 12 contestants, selected from those known to feature ''

The Sims ''The Sims'' is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and Video game publisher, published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the List of best-selling video game fran ...

'' in their online gaming channels, tasked with challenges within ''

The Sims 4 ''The Sims 4'' is a social simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on September 2, 2014 for Windows, and is the fourth main installment in ''The Sims'' series, following ''The Sims 3'' (2009 ...

'' to create characters and stories following the challenge's themes and limitations. Each competitor's creation is judged by a panel consisting of EA

Maxis Maxis is an American video game developer and a Division (business), division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1997. Maxis is ...

developer and ''The Sims 4'' producer Dave Miotke ( "SimGuruNinja" within the ''

Sims Sims, sims or SIMS may refer to: Games * ''The Sims'', a life simulation video game series ** ''The Sims'' (video game), the first installment, released in 2000 ** ''The Sims 2'', the second installment, released in 2004 ** ''The Sims 3'', the ...

Community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

personality Kelsey Impicciche (known for her "100 Baby Challenge"), and singer-songwriter

Tayla Parx Taylor Monét Parks, known as Tayla Parx, is an American singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and actress. A two-time Grammy nominee in the Album of the Year category, songs she has written and co-written have exceeded 16 billion streams on Spotify ...

, who is also a voice actress in ''The Sims 4''. The series is hosted by ''

American Idol ''American Idol'' is an American Music competition, singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle (company), Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It a ...

'' season 14 finalist

Rayvon Owen Rayvon Owen (born June 27, 1991) is an American singer and musician. He is notable for appearing on the fourteenth season of ''American Idol'', where he finished in fourth place. Owen served as the host for the reality competition series '' The ...

. Each episode of the first season premiered on TBS on Friday nights at 11pm ET/PT in the United States, and was later uploaded on

channel

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet mass media, media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John Seward Johnson III, John S. Johnson III to ...

Multiplayer the following Monday for international audiences at 8am Eastern. Challenges were posted to ''The Sims 4'' website following the series premiere to seek potential contestants for a second season.

Format

At the beginning of the competition, all 12 contestants were assigned to teams via random draw. Each team is composed of a Stylist (handling the designs), Builder (in charge of buildings), and the Storyteller (invents the stories related to Sims). For every episode, they have to fulfill specific challenges as a team based around several scenarios.

Cast

Notes

Challenge Results

Episodes

Each episode premiered on TBS on Friday nights at 11pm ET/PT and on

channel

Multiplayer the following Monday at 8am Eastern.

Development

As a project in planning, ''Spark'd'' had a long lead time as

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

wanted to combine the players' personal stories with a TV reality format filled with challenges. The company decided to make the show in-house instead of outsourcing it to anyone else. EA was worried about the specifics of translating a video game into another medium, and thus tried not to diverge from the main aspects of ''The Sims'' while putting an effort to represent diversity. The initial idea was to develop ''Spark'd'' as a short-length show for the millennials. However, after the initial filming in December 2019, the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

prompted EA to retool their marketing plans from scratch. ''The Sims Spark'd'' was found to be a fit for a TBS's ''

ELeague ''ELeague'', shortened as ''EL'', and stylized as ''Ξ''LEAGUE, is an esports league and American television program that airs on TBS. It was announced in September 2015 as a partnership between Turner Broadcasting and talent agency WME/IMG ...

'' Friday programming block change to include shows that are not just aimed at dedicated gamers. During and following the broadcast of the first season, EA posted ''Spark'd'' challenges on ''The Sims 4'' website for players to complete in-game and upload to the website for the opportunity to be selected for a potential second season of ''The Sims Spark'd''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sims Spark'd, The Reality competition television series Television shows about video games 2020 American television series debuts TBS (American TV channel) original programming The Sims