In February 2011, SimGoodie was Norway's largest Sims fan site, and its small community of dedicated readers became some of the first people online to confirm that EA's next expansion pack would be called The Sims 3 Generations. A Wayback Machine capture of the site's February 2011 archive preserves three posts that document the week the news broke.
Source code sleuthing on February 24
The biggest find came on February 24, when SimGoodie reported that fans had gone digging through the HTML source code on the official The Sims 3 Generations system requirements page. Buried in that code, they found a placeholder string meant for a future promotional download:
Last ned "Set Name" helt GRATIS* nå!
("Download 'Set Name' completely FREE* now!")
The placeholder confirmed that EA was preparing a Norwegian-language product page for the expansion, complete with a free content tie-in, before any official announcement had gone out. SimGoodie's post noted that Sims of all ages would be able to try new activities in Generations, pulling from the same source code snippet. The post collected tags like "aktiviteter," "generasjoner," and "den norske," and drew at least one comment from readers.
Rumors on February 22
Two days earlier, SimGoodie had posted a shorter alert: "Ryktene brenner rundt om den neste utvidelsespakken!" (The rumors are burning about the next expansion pack!) A separate site had published the English title, The Sims 3 Generations, and SimGoodie promised updates as fast as possible. That post attracted five comments, a high number for the small community.
A snapshot of the Norwegian Sims scene
The February 2011 archive captures more than news. Its sidebar reveals a site with 96 registered members, a poll asking readers whether they liked "Sims Journal," a forum, a chat room, user profiles, and pages covering everything from The Sims 2 Bon Voyage to The Sims Medieval. Categories were listed in Norwegian, from "Drømmejobben" (Ambitions) to "Full fart" (Fast Lane Stuff) to "Helaften" (Late Night). SimGoodie also maintained a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account (@supersims3).
The site billed itself as "Norge største Sims fanside" and ran on WordPress with the eDegree theme. Its archive dropdown shows activity stretching back to October 2009, with a peak of 57 posts in September 2010 and 46 in October 2010. By February 2011, post volume had slowed to three entries for the month, but the Generations leak revived excitement.
What came next
The Sims 3 Generations launched on June 2, 2011 in Europe, as noted in SimGoodie's own sidebar ("Generasjoner PC/Mac 2/06.11"). The expansion introduced life-stage events from childhood pranks to midlife crises. The same release window brought patch 1.22, which added lifespan sliders and shared memories to the base game.
SimGoodie's February 2011 page is a small time capsule of what it felt like to follow Sims news in a language other than English, on a community-run site, before social media centralized fandom. The original posts were written in Norwegian by fans, for fans, and the excitement of pulling hidden strings out of EA's source code reads the same in any language.
Source: SimGoodie legacy archive (simgoodie.com)