Project Rene, the next installment in The Sims franchise, didn't start out as a Roblox competitor. But according to internal design documents now publicly visible through a former Maxis researcher's portfolio, that is exactly what it became by 2023.
Senior User Researcher Nate Bonham, who worked on Project Rene from October 2023 to June 2025, published a detailed case study on his personal site outlining how the game's direction shifted from a PC-first, single-player successor to The Sims 4 into a mobile-first, multiplayer platform designed to attract the Roblox generation. The portfolio was spotted by a user on the ATRL forums and reported by Sims Community.
A game that started as a next-gen Sims title
Development on Project Rene began in 2018 with the goal of building a next-generation Sims game. Early content and gameplay experiences reflected the studio's strengths: single-player design for longtime PC simmers, building on a formula that had worked since The Sims 4 launched in 2014.
But by 2023, the brief had changed. The new mandate was to target a younger, mobile-first audience that had grown up playing Roblox. Bonham's case study describes it plainly: "That player base was aging out of the franchise, and the studio needed a new audience to build for, but it didn't know much about mobile-first, multiplayer players."
The disconnect between who the team was building for and what that audience actually wanted showed up in small but telling ways. One example from the documents: teams were still designing skinny jeans as in-game cosmetics while the target audience had already started calling those "mom jeans" and moved on to baggy fits.
Developers played Roblox together, and many asked "why?"
Bonham's role was to close the knowledge gap. He shifted the research approach away from testing existing ideas and toward foundational work: focus groups, fashion studies, and generative workshops meant to give the studio a grounded understanding of its new target players.
A key moment in the process was an onsite workshop where Maxis developers sat down and played Roblox together, logging their reactions in real time. The result, visible in presentation slides from the case study, was widespread confusion. Many developers felt they were being asked to lower their craft standards, and the dominant reaction captured on sticky notes was simply: "WHY?!"
To address that tension, Bonham pioneered what he calls "ride-along interviews," a form of competitive analysis where Roblox players shared their screens and narrated their own play while he asked questions live. The goal was to help the studio understand the motivations and mental models behind Roblox's appeal, rather than just benchmarking its features.
Three pods, three Roblox genres
Studio leadership eventually adopted this method as a model for the broader team. Three pods were formed, each made up of a PM, a designer, developers, and a researcher, and each assigned a different Roblox genre with potential for multiplayer and simulation in Project Rene.
One framing from the documents stands out: "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 signs of this pivot have been visible for a while. A November 2025 playtest drew immediate comparisons to Roblox's Dress to Impress, and the design documents help explain why that resemblance wasn't coincidental.
What the pivot actually changed
According to Bonham's case study, the game manager overseeing Project Rene credited this body of research with shaping the game's multiplayer and social direction, prioritizing character-creation features, substantiating the switch to direct controls, and settling the final art and UI style.
By the end of the process, the case study says, "Developers who once dismissed Roblox started inviting me into their standups to explore it together, and somewhere along the way, the team made sure the in-game jeans were baggy, too."
Where Project Rene stands now
Despite all of this work, Project Rene's future remains uncertain. According to a Sims insider reported by Sims Community, the game is reportedly finished but has been placed on hold. EA is said to be unsure whether the game fits closely enough with The Sims 4's brand identity to justify releasing it. The last known working title is "The Sims Together," or some variation of that name.
The full picture that emerges from these documents is of a studio that spent years retooling its approach to game design, only for the result to land in corporate limbo. Whether "The Sims Together" ever sees the light of day may depend less on the game itself and more on whether EA believes there is room for it alongside The Sims 4.