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Spore, that name always brings me great joy. Even though I've been waiting for it ever since I first saw it on that GDC 2005 video back when I was in 10th grade and have been waiting patiently for it to come on store shelves since that day.

However with all of these delays I'm starting to wonder if Will Wright as biten more off than he can chew with Spore. I mean when you think about the scale and the new technologies that have to be made in order for this game to be possible there is a possibility that it just might be too overwhelming.

Do any of you agree with my opinion?

WesFox13 wrote:Spore, that name always brings me great joy. Even though I've been waiting for it ever since I first saw it on that GDC 2005 video back when I was in 10th grade and have been waiting patiently for it to come on store shelves since that day.

However with all of these delays I'm starting to wonder if Will Wright as biten more off than he can chew with Spore. I mean when you think about the scale and the new technologies that have to be made in order for this game to be possible there is a possibility that it just might be too overwhelming.

Do any of you agree with my opinion?

I think there are multiple things at play. First, Will has an opportunity to do something really amazing with this, but he's Will Wright, and he's a man of several competing urges. In some part I'm sure it was just too much, but I think Will himself isn't sure exactly what he wants--either a realistic biology and chemistry game talking about the whole evolution of life from the first chemical chains (originally there was a tetris-minigame where you built ammino acids) to the endgame with a realistic space system (still in the game) or a more The SIMSy sort of lobotimized version of his actual dream for games. I think that the lobotimized version sells better since people get what they want, but part of him is still trying to keep a toe in the vision. I dunno. But look at the changes so far.

If you look at the original game, it was a long and slow evolution of forms until you began inching your way through a tribal system and evolving brains over a long timeframe, etc.

Now, it's really cut down. As a guy from Kotaku saw, you could get to the endgame phase in a matter of hours if you just kept dashing right along. Obviously your critter is going to be different if you do that rather than spend eons in the critter phase, breeding and so on, but I'm really not sure how important your creature's third asshole is going to be once you've got battletanks and planet-crushing spaceships. These are not necessarily useful endgame tweaks.

For another example, look at the Tidal Phase. This is how it used to look back when the game was still relatively in it's infancy. Playable in a limited sense of what we saw, but very young in actual development. It's a somewhat realistic look at a microbial tidepool, full of lots of little bits of crud to eat, and things to avoid, and they all look--basically--like microbes.



And now here's the new tide phase. Bright, ridiculous colors, giant googly eyeballs and utterly nonsensical animal shaps are normally fine, but it totally removed the sense of tinkery realism of the first stage. It's also far less cluttered and just jam-packed with other little googly-eyed little things. He wanted to change it to this to make the game cuter, but I think it lost a lot of it's appeal in the shift. I want to make all sorts of wierd critters, but I liked the sense, at the microbe phase, that it was still a little life simulator. The biggest change though is, of course, cuteness.



Now we go from there. Remember this? Yeah, this seems to be gone. GONE. No more fish phase. I'm kinda disappointed about that, as it removes the possibility for underwater civilizations--at least for now. There were some indications maybe possibly as an expansion, maybe. I have only found tiny bits of info--nobody's gotten a playable spore game that shows EVERYTHING yet.



Also gone is the city phase, which I suppose isn't a huge loss. Once you go from your tribal phase, you go right to civilization mode, and then to space, and then that's basically it. I mean, there's a lot of stuff to do at the space phase, but it's not like you're suddenly playing supreme commander. It's just your lone spaceship from what we can tell, going around zapping things. A fun little diversion but I think it's a distraction from the fun of the evolutionary game. The space game has a lot of interesting things, like nebulae and black holes and all these other dynamic thingies, but I have absolutely no idea what the point of that is. Being able to terraform a planet is cool, but I'd honestly have preferred that to be the pre-game stuff, where you need to create a planet suitable for your form of life. Maybe a little IDy sure, but once you've already gotten to the space portion, why bother? Theoretically to spread your species, but still. Not so sure why.

If, for example, you're allowed to start a NEW civilization in the same universe, then I kinda see why. You'd want to terraform a new planet into an ideal location for life, and then take control of that life. But if that's not possible then it's really just a toy-phase, where you tinker with atmospheric chemistry and watch worlds get cold, hot, wet, or whatever. Cool stuff but I'd rather than a more extensive focus on my creature, and not my spaceship.

What I hope is that you can evolve creatures on a wild variety of worlds, so that my creatures from a hellish sulfer-world can run into critters from a barren ice-rock. Might make things more interesting, and it would also make the 'terraforming' thing a lot more purposeful.

Man I hadn't heard about the changes to the original game. Jesus what a pile of shit. I can't believe how shitty gamers and the average tool is that they neutered this into another forgetful McGame.

I knew the hype could never last.

well, chalk up another "I'm not buying this game now"

When was the last Will Wright game anyways?

I never had much interest in Spore at all. Like Black & White, The Sims, and other games, it gives me the distinct impression of being a toy, rather than a game.

Will Wright! Please pee on us!

Hawkwings wrote:well, chalk up another "I'm not buying this game now"

When was the last Will Wright game anyways?

As in a real game? Probably SimCity 3000. I wouldn't consider 'The SIMS' a real game, despite the fact it's made one ba-fucking-zillion dollars and is played by just as many people. It's more like Dogz or a neopet or tomagachi or something, and he had very little to do with Sims 2.

That was back in 2000, so he's been working hardcore on Spore for a long time.

I didn't want to be the bringer of bad buzzkill news, but yeah, I'm feeling a lot of the air seep out of my balloon too. The original concept was amazing, but I'm extremely hesitant about what we see at the moment. It could be fine and fun, but the space game is just so incredibly irrelevent to the rest of the game that I don't know why it exists as such. At that point instead of sheparding and cajoling your tailor-made creature into actions, you basically prove that any of their traits were totally irrelevent, take off in a spaceship, and do as you please. It's basically like he made SimEvolution and SimSpace and decided to have them surgically grafted together.

I'm not interested in a realistic approach to evolution as much as I am in designing my creature, the buildings/ vehicles, and exploring space. So cutting down on the earlier mini-games makes sense to me, as I don't really want to have to replay being a microbe for hours at a time. That said, they have repeatedly stated that this is a game for all gamers. You can be as hardcore or casual as you want to be.

As for the delays, I'm not convinced that there are more delays at this point. So far we've heard from an analyst who might as well have been talking out of his ass for all I know, and the statement from EA that the game would be out "before the holidays". I wasn't expecting it any time before May or June.

And while I want the game a fucking year ago, I can live with waiting a few more months. We know there's a game there, and maybe things needed to be altered as the development went on. That's to be expected with something as ambitious as this. So I'm still waiting with high hopes.

But I'll be the first motherfucker to say "it blows" if it blows. I did it with 'Black and White', and I did it with 'The Sims'. My opinion on 'Spore' has always been that even if just half the shit they showed in the initial presentation is in the final game and works as shown, then it would kick ass. From all appearances, almost everything shown then is still in the game.

I'm basically the reverse. The creature-desiging element I really love of course, but once you hit the Tribal phase it seems to stop giving you evolutionary options, and the evolution aspect seems to make no difference. It's possible that a smarter creature figures things out faster, but it was always described more as a 'brain meter' that you eventually filled and went to the next stages. It's like spending all day designing my ace pilot hero, and then getting to see nothing but the ass-end of a jet all day, like everyone else's.

Designing buildings is fun, but I would have liked more emphasis on the evolution and character parts. Particularly if how you designed your creature went on to affect your culture and civilization from then onwards.

Covenant wrote:I'm basically the reverse. The creature-desiging element I really love of course, but once you hit the Tribal phase it seems to stop giving you evolutionary options, and the evolution aspect seems to make no difference. It's possible that a smarter creature figures things out faster, but it was always described more as a 'brain meter' that you eventually filled and went to the next stages. It's like spending all day designing my ace pilot hero, and then getting to see nothing but the ass-end of a jet all day, like everyone else's.

Designing buildings is fun, but I would have liked more emphasis on the evolution and character parts. Particularly if how you designed your creature went on to affect your culture and civilization from then onwards.

Yeah, that would be a great feature, too. But I think it's like moving a mountain just getting the fundamental bits of the game done. I mean I don't think anything like this has ever really been done before. I'd love it if you designed a creature with gnarly sharp teeth and claws that was more pre-disposed to violence than some cuter, cuddly species, though.

It's probably waaaay too far off from where we are. Ideally, my game would just be a totally nonrelated game. More like MoO with an evolution backstory. I thought maybe moving the evolution aspect from individual creatures to more of a 'meme' theory sort of evolution of ideas and things, trying to 'teach' your critters by emphasizing certain traits in their thought over others, creating warrior cultures that as a byproduct like to go screaming into battle with swords, for example. And requiring a lot of trial and error to get the right mix of competitiveness and cooperation.

But Spore was definately cool enough. I always figured the space-game aspect to be a rather small part of the overall emphasis on the social and physical challenges of getting your critters into space, but it seems like you almost lose touch with your species at that point. However, this could be mostly salvaged if unit 'stats' are based directly on your critters. I think that'd be genius, really. Tanks would be like larger versions of a pack of swordsmen, so if your species is big and slow and strong, so are your tanks. And then, from there, so are your spaceships. You may have your command saucer with the gizmos, but also rely on hordes of little spaceships.... argh. I can hope. Intersteller war seems like a real natural step to take from aircraft to rockets and spaceships. I hope they do it! It'd add so much to the space game, and make it so much less about you just bitchslapping any world you don't like.

I´m quite interested in this game. It could be the most boring game ever or it could be the best game ever.
However i´d rather see them spend more years in developing time and releasing a good game than rushing a release without it being really finished.

salm wrote:I´m quite interested in this game. It could be the most boring game ever or it could be the best game ever.
However i´d rather see them spend more years in developing time and releasing a good game than rushing a release without it being really finished.

If it's years, then I'd rather they junked it. I can't take many more delays.

salm wrote:I´m quite interested in this game. It could be the most boring game ever or it could be the best game ever.
However i´d rather see them spend more years in developing time and releasing a good game than rushing a release without it being really finished.

Because we need another game competing with Duke Nukem Forever for vaporware of the year award *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

you mean "Vaporware of the decade"

Actually, Duke Nuken Forever's vapourware status spanned two decades.

The only game in development longer is Too Human, but that gets a bit of a pass since its developer went and made other games in the meantime, then picked up the old project some years later.

Didn't he have anything to do with SimCity 4?

General Zod wrote:

salm wrote:I´m quite interested in this game. It could be the most boring game ever or it could be the best game ever.
However i´d rather see them spend more years in developing time and releasing a good game than rushing a release without it being really finished.

Because we need another game competing with Duke Nukem Forever for vaporware of the year award *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

When we can actually see gameplay, it's not vaporware. It's just a game in development.

I have a bad feeling Spore is going to be Sims 2 but with aliens instead of people !

Sims 2 could have been a fascinating people simulator, an early attempt to try something like the Matrix. Instead they dumbed it down into a doll's house. Spore I fear will be 5 medicore games rolled into one package. The tribal phase will be a bad RTS, the space part won't even be half as good as MoO2. The earlier phases of cellular life would likely be some silly arcade game like the ones you get free with your PC. 5 bad games combined into one game still is a bad game.

Sarevok wrote:Sims 2 could have been a fascinating people simulator, an early attempt to try something like the Matrix. Instead they dumbed it down into a doll's house.

Funny, I assumed the whole purpose of the Sims series was that it basically is a doll house game, and Sims 2 was just a continuation and expansion of that concept.

I don't really know how you jump from "electronic doll house" to The Matrix!

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Sarevok wrote:Sims 2 could have been a fascinating people simulator, an early attempt to try something like the Matrix. Instead they dumbed it down into a doll's house.

Funny, I assumed the whole purpose of the Sims series was that it basically is a doll house game, and Sims 2 was just a continuation and expansion of that concept.

I don't really know how you jump from "electronic doll house" to The Matrix!

Same here. It was always meant as a small scale god game, not some intricate world simulation.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Sarevok wrote:Sims 2 could have been a fascinating people simulator, an early attempt to try something like the Matrix. Instead they dumbed it down into a doll's house.

Funny, I assumed the whole purpose of the Sims series was that it basically is a doll house game, and Sims 2 was just a continuation and expansion of that concept.

I don't really know how you jump from "electronic doll house" to The Matrix!

And what's wrong with wishing for a more serious game like Sim Earth or Sim Life ?

There's nothing wrong about it (I for one would love something evocative of Sim Earth again), but you're looking for something like that in the wrong place. The Sims has always been a relatively simple, recreational game where the core gameplay is focused around monitoring and guiding the lives of little people. It's just kind of ridiculous to expect such an impossible, total paradigm shift to occur in a game series where it's completely unlikely.

Add kung-fu and some existentialist crap. Voila. The Sims: Matrix Edition.