Spore

[shvarz]

Hi all!  How is everyone doing?

I just wanted to give a link to this hour-long lecture about a cool new sim game that's in plans for next year.  It simulates the whole development of life starting from single-cell organisms and ending in interstellar travel. It is going to be pretty much a huge sandbox, where thousands of people would be able to play simultaneously. Right now the "evolution" part is pretty much limited to the intelligent design of creatures by players, but all the tools are there to turn it into a real evolutionary sim.  

Anyway, check it out when you have time: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...184348066&hl=en

[strangers]

Just a small correction, people don't simultaneously, each person has a universe, then things like vehicles, species, and planets are uploaded to a server and can be downloaded by other players to populate their universe, but their is no direct contact between players. I've been following this game for a while, you know they cut out underwater civilizations?

[Numsgil]

I've been eagerly awaiting Spore since December 2005.  Just watching the lectures Wright delivers gives me all sorts of ideas about human interactivity and Darwinbots.

[shvarz]

people don't simultaneously, each person has a universe

What I meant was that the game will have all the components necessary to set up a system where multiple people would be able to run the same sim or essentially the same sim - set up identical planets and automatic upload/download of all available creatures from server and you are there.

I am excited, but I am cautious - I've been burned with Black and White, which also generated a lot of great buzz, but fizzled out because of poor gameplay and because many of the promised features did not make it to the final version.

[Numsgil]

Will Wright has a better track record in that regard than Peter Molesomething.  I was disappointed by Black and White also, and Fable wasn't much better.  Whereas the SimCity series is enjoyable, and I really enjoyed the Sims when it first came out.  About the only game Wright ever made that I wasn't a fan of was SimLife interestingly enough.  I still draw inspiration from SimEarth.

So I'm pretty confidant that Spore will be pretty much exactly what it seems to be.  My main concern is that the changes to creatures/buildings etc. will end up being strictly cosmetic and not really effect gameplay at all.  I'm hoping there's a depth of interaction that mirrors the depth in customization.

[shvarz]

So, a year later and "Spore" is out! What do you think?  Total F-up is what I think. There is nothing about evolution there, just the same creationist-type stereotypes about evolution. New features appear appear out of nowhere, evolution is directed toward intelligence, simplistic "survival of the strongest", no historical influence. At any point you can take your creature, disassemble it completely and create a completely different one.

Oh, and the actual gameplay is fun, but ultimately non-novel and with no depth to it. It's like a Mr. Potato Head crossed with PacMan. Waste of money I say, get it through torrent just to take a look and delete it the next day!

[Numsgil]

Heh, I agree that it's not an "evolutionary" game.  It's about as creationist as you can get (which is ironic because that's not the way it's marketed).  But if you were paying attention you should have realized that a while ago.  Actual alife games, or games like it (eg: SimEarth, or the terrible SimLife) don't tend to do well financially.  This is definitely a game that needs to do well financially.  They have to sell like 8 million copies to break even with production costs.  So I don't fault them that way.  

It would be totally bad ass if it were more of a sandbox game, where you design your critter and let it loose on the world to fight against other critters in something more like SimEarth.  Build an ecosystem up, designing critters and plants, and let it run and watch.  Of course, that would appeal to probably everyone on this forum plus a few people who like building creatures for the hell of it, and that'd be it.  They'd sell maybe a hundred thousand copies and EA would go bankrupt

On the actual game itself, I give it a 9/10.  There's a lot of interesting material in it, and it's fun to play for many hours.  Which is more than I can say for most games.  And it's really, really, different from anything else around right now.  It represents a huge risk on EA's part, and since EA is usually peddling another Madden 0X game or sims expansion, it's nice to get something out of left field.  But in the end it feels sort of hollow since that depth just isn't there.  I really just want to design creatures, put them on a planet, play with raising and lowering terrain, and maybe play with weather effects.  Just like SimEarth, but newer   The space stage kind of approaches that but the depth just isn't there.  Plus my ancient PC chokes on the space stage (loading planets takes like 20 seconds).

It feels like they built all the editors and were like "crap, we can't sell just this, there needs to be a game too".  "The Movies" game from Lionhead had this problem too.  I think it's a mistake.  Build and market content creation games as toys instead of games, and I think the user base is there.  Playing with the creature creator is a lot of fun.  Building editors too (not so much the vehicle editors, IMO).  Things like Spore work as a toy more than they do as a game, but no one wants to try making an electronic toy.  So you get 5 games that are reasonably fun to play but lacking depth, and a creature creator that is really, really cool.  

Now if they made something like the Sims, but using spore creatures, they'd probably suffocate on all the money they'd make

[Peter]

The game is overall fine, just fine. Not good, not bad.

I am really disappointed at the outcome of spore, I expected far far better. All I see are five rather simple games. Where the space-game is pretty big, but lacks just as the others complete depth.
I was just awaiting spore for quite some time, then they postpone it, then postpone it another time. And if I see the result, I hoped they would have just postponed it another time.  

It is ironicly the opposite of the marketing.
Makes me think of the site Anti-spore . A (joke)site against spore. Well, the  funny thing there are the ones who shout at the creator of the site, without even knowing it is a joke. And that it is a joke was pretty clear if you read the complete last message.

I would give it a 7/10. The game itself is reasenable, it just lacks that much depth.

And why
Why can't I decide myself whenever to grow bigger?
Why do I need extra brains, they just costs extra energy?
Why is a complete specie extinct if I kil three?
Where did that tribal-camp came from?
Why are phase 3 and 4 that much the same?
Why can't I have a powerful space-army to wipe out the opponent, instead of a lonely spaceship with some weak allies?