World Design in the Sims 3

I periodically play The Sims 3. I’ve been playing since the very first game in the series, probably due to the fact that I have some underlying god complex. With the fact that I specialize in world development, in my creative endeavors, I’ve always wanted to create worlds for The Sims 3. In truth, for awhile I wanted to work at Maxis on The Sims games for a very long time. But I figured my worlds would be too far out there. Then recently, EA came out with Lunar Lakes, a brand new world in the Sims 3 where things are very, very different. Player characters find themselves in a world on a different planet where crystals power everything. It gives me hope that I can create some worlds like that for the game, too. Now that I’ve got my new laptop, I should be able to make new worlds more easily.

The worlds that I’d like to start making are based off of the fantasy worlds in my novel series that I’ve been piecing together for years. I figure that I can tie them all together. Hell, who knows, maybe I can work with EA and maybe license out the worlds to them for different expansion packs or stuff packs or something? That would be amazing. They have been doing things like Barnacle Bay, Sims Medieval, etc. lately, so I might stand a good chance of getting content to them.

I’ve got to figure out how to divide my time so that I can accomplish these two things. I’ve been using a blog to chronicle my journey into leaving w2 jobs working for other people, and so that’s helped me to be able to put focus on other things. Can custom content and custom worlds for The Sims 3 be monetized?

What sorts of things would you develop using other game’s engines? Have you ever used the world creator?