The Sims franchise is moving beyond linear, sequential video game releases, according to franchise vice president and general manager Kate Gorman Revelli. Instead of moving on to The Sims 5, replacing The Sims 4, Electronic Arts and developer Maxis will continue to support The Sims 4, adding onto the franchise by developing next to it, not replacing it.

“So much of the way people play The Sims is about expressing themselves and their creativity and finding their own set of goals to pursue within the game, but what brings them back is their attachment to those little people that they’ve built,” Gorman Revelli told Polygon. “We also know that we’re not going to go to a linear model, because we have so much with The Sims 4. What we’re really looking at is, how do we continue to work with our community, work with our players, and not have you have this moment in time where you’re going to reset all your progress and lose those amazing memories, characters, and things that you’ve built within those 10 years of your gameplay, potentially?”

Confused? Up until now, most people considered Project Rene as The Sims 5. But that’s not entirely right. Project Rene will exist alongside The Sims 4 and other games as a multiplayer component. “We want to continue to extend, so if you want to play that kind of multiplayer experience, that’ll be what you look for in the things we’ve talked about about Project Rene,” she said. The first real look at what to expect there is scheduled for later this year, according to Gorman Revelli, as part of its new experimental testing grounds, The Sims Labs.

“Again, it’s a complementary experience to all the things — it’s not a linear experience,” she said. “There’s a lot we’ll be seeing in the playtest, but the core piece to know what Rene is we’re really looking at a way to make The Sims playable together. That’s what we’ll be continuing to iterate on and learn with the community.”

Gorman Revelli was clear that The Sims will continue to evolve and upgrade. In a post on The Sims’ blog, The Sims 4 was described as “a foundational Sims experience” that’ll continue to be modernized. So will there ever be a game called The Sims 5? The answer sounds like no. But that doesn’t mean the Sims experience isn’t going to change or evolve; whatever would fall, perhaps, fifth in line as a mainline Sims game (Rene or not!) is not a replacement for The Sims 4 — it’s a continuation of it.