Flunking Spore

[GoodGame]

I think this is a new Spore <> Science article, but looks entertaining. These are the same peoples who use WoW for scientific conventions.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/322/5901/531b

 

[History_Buff]

It's a pretty fair summary of exactly how I feel about the game. Quite frankly, aside from the first and last stages of the game, it's dreadfully dull, not to mention all the antiscience that happens along the way. I haven't even bothered to get to the space stage, but I'll take them at their word when they say it's the best one.

 

[peter grimes]

It's really disappointing - I was very excited about the game until I came to understand how practically linear it is.

It would be much more interesting if there were real natural selection going on that determines how successful each organism to be.

 

[Ballazic]

ya same sentiments here, its funny cause all the hype about it being a revolutionary game and yet its really linear. Oh well I guess the second or third attempts can be the real successes. Hopefully some one some day will work on this new idea for a god game.

 

[History_Buff]

Well, a lot of the hype was for the admittedly genius procedural generation techniques being used to generate the creatures, and it then got blown into general game hype. Thinking about it now, it fell into the classic EA pitfalls:

1) Graphics pushed to the max
2) Gameplay sacrificed in the name of 1
3) Copy protected to the max, ensuring people will refuse to pay for it.

 

[Mise]

It's a shame because Will Wright is such a talented programmer of simulations, with a real grasp of how to make simulations to be at the same time realistic, playable and humorous. But Spore isn't a simulation, in any sense of the word.

 

[North King]

Will Wright had the right ideas. EA just thought that realism would be too dry for the average gamer (lolwut?), and that they couldn't connect with nonhuman creatures (yeah, I never connect with anything I spend hours evolving), and that they needed something cute to draw people in (urgh).

 

[GoodGame]

Pretty much EA did a bait and switch at the last minute to make the game appeal to the elementary school set, figuring their parents would be a bottomless source of funding for low content, high cuteness add-ons.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Pretty much EA did a bait and switch at the last minute to make the game appeal to the elementary school set, figuring their parents would be a bottomless source of funding for low content, high cuteness add-ons.

That is it exactly.
What Spore was designed to be was a wonderful sandbox creator that would provide hundreds of hours of play and revolutionize the game industry.
What Spore actually is, is fluffy crap with no gameplay value at all. EA's motto is "Challenge Everything", so why can't they actually challenge the game industry by making something good instead of buying our all the good games so they look good in comparison.
EDIT: Major grammar edit: Posted this half asleep.

 

[qwertz]

Once released, games often improve over several generations through downloaded software patches...

lol, since when does EA patch their games?

 

[queendumb]

That is it exactly.
What Spore was designed to be was a wonderful sandbox creator that would provide hundreds of hours of play and revolutionize the game industry.
What Spore actually is, is fluffy crap with no gameplay value at all. EA's motto is "Challenge Everything", so why can't they actually challenge the game industry by making something good instead of buying our all the good games so they look good in comparison.
EDIT: Major grammar edit: Posted this half asleep.

Because now the game industry , mostly big companies like EA, only care about making a lot of money instead of creating good quality games with actually game play.

 

[History_Buff]

I think it's actually mostly an EA thing. A lot of the main developers are smallish companies (owned by larger giants) who do spend a good deal of time developing gameplay. Otherwise people just won't pay for them, just like people didn't pay for Spore.