A former EA researcher's public portfolio has surfaced design documents showing how Project Rene, the next game from Maxis, pivoted from a traditional single-player Sims sequel into a mobile-first multiplayer game built to compete directly with Roblox.
The portfolio belongs to Nate Bonham, a senior user researcher who worked on Project Rene from October 2023 to June 2025. His published case study describes in detail how he helped reorient an entire studio away from what it knew best.
From next-gen Sims to "beat Roblox"
Project Rene began development in 2018 as a next-generation Sims title. According to Bonham's documents, the early work "reflected a PC-first, single-player mindset," consistent with a studio whose last major release, The Sims 4, shipped in 2014.
By 2023, that vision had changed. The project's stated goal became attracting a younger, mobile-first, multiplayer audience, one that had grown up on Roblox rather than The Sims. Bonham wrote that the existing player base "was aging out of the franchise, and the studio needed a new audience to build for."
The disconnect between the team and its new target players showed up in surprisingly concrete ways. Developers were still designing skinny jeans as in-game cosmetics while the audience they wanted to reach "had started calling those same jeans 'mom jeans' and moved on to baggy."
Maxis developers sat down and played Roblox
Bonham organized an onsite workshop where Maxis developers played Roblox together, recording their questions and reactions in real time. What came out of it, according to his case study, was a telling gap: "the team felt they were being asked to lower their craft to match Roblox, and couldn't make sense of why our audience found it fun."
One slide in the presentation captured developers' reaction to Roblox as the project's main inspiration with a single word: "WHY?!"
To bridge that gap, Bonham developed what he calls ride-along interviews, a competitive analysis method where Roblox players shared their screens and narrated their own gameplay live. This replaced traditional benchmarking and gave the studio a direct window into how a Roblox-native audience actually plays.
Three pods, three Roblox genres
Studio leadership took the approach further. They formed three cross-functional pods, each staffed with a product manager, designer, developers, and researcher, and assigned each pod a specific Roblox genre that had potential for multiplayer simulation in Project Rene.
Bonham was clear about the intent: "It isn't about making a higher fidelity version of Roblox. In fact their players don't really care about that much. It's about understanding the motivations, mental models, and behaviors of an audience that grew up playing Roblox so that we can build an exemplary experience that delights and retains that audience."
The 2025 Project Rene playtest, which bore a visible resemblance to Roblox's Dress to Impress, now makes more sense in light of these documents.
What this reshaped in the actual game
According to Bonham's portfolio, the game manager overseeing Project Rene credited this research with shaping several core elements: the multiplayer and social direction, the priority given to character creation, the switch from classic point-and-click to direct controls, and the final art and UI style.
Before this work, Bonham wrote, "product decisions were largely informed by assumptions carried forward from previous Sims titles." Afterward, teams shared a common understanding of their target audience and used it to guide decisions across multiplayer, controls, progression, cosmetics, art direction, and social play.
By the end, developers who had dismissed Roblox outright were inviting Bonham into their standups to explore the platform together. And somewhere along the way, he noted, "the team made sure the in-game jeans were baggy, too."
Where Project Rene stands now
Separately from the portfolio revelations, a Sims insider previously indicated that Project Rene is reportedly finished but sitting on hold. EA is said to be uncertain whether the game fits closely enough alongside The Sims 4's brand to justify a release. The reported working title is "The Sims Together" or a variation of it, though none of this has been confirmed by EA.
That uncertainty may be telling. A game designed from the ground up to chase the Roblox audience may not sit comfortably next to a franchise built on the creative, single-player sandbox that existing Sims players expect. The life-sim space has only gotten more competitive since 2018, with Paralives now in early access and InZOI expanding to consoles.
Whether "The Sims Together" ever sees the light of day, these documents paint a clear picture of a studio that was asked to become something very different from what built its reputation.