SPORE

What makes these games good is making them /yours./

still, you do get the vibe from the presentation and the overall design of the game that will wright feels this is the culmination of his life's work(taking sim-bits and expanding it out to the parsec level). I always interested to see what sci fi authors have to say about these kinda games.

my reticence is if/how they're going to add narrative to the game. there are plenty of folks who like the Elite/Frontier-type open-ended galactic spaceplay, but I don't. I likes me stories, i does.

yeah, but this is just the address at the big gamedev conference, which has a slightly different audience than, say, CES.

simearth was great tho!

i noticed that, but i'm willing to bet money on it not actually having any relevance to what Will wanted to do. Still, it'll be fun to await the game winning the prestigious Discover Institute Award for Gaming...

I assume you meant ID people could use it to their advantage, I *hope*. Surely no one is suggesting it was Will himself's aim!?

You're thinking of creationism, Sterling. Intelligent Design just means that design is so complicated there must have been an intelligence, someone who says "and now, we're in a new age, we'll need to drop flippers and grow hands".

coz really, what's the point of reintroducing god if they can't make it jibe with the bible?

(Serious about the gender politics, though.)

at E3 this year, Will Wright grabbed somebody out of the audience to try the creature editor...

...and it's Robin Williams.

better-quality vid & interview here

Also, mr. williams is relatively low key here.

Brian Eno will be providing the game's soundtrack.

there is no, NO way this is gunna play on my system.

So OTM it makes my heart cry!

7 Sept 2008.

Lay your money on the table if you think they're actually going to ship by then.

Any takers?

Anybody?

Didn't think so.

Anyhoo, here's an interview with Wright: http://pc.ign.com/articles/852/852081p1.html

I kept hearing that they were delaying it because it wasn't any fun, and based on what I've seen in the last few days, it doesn't seem to me like the game changed in any fundamental way since then. The graphics have improved and there are further avenues for customization, but what will the game offer to a casual games fan? It seems like a game that could have a response more like "Black and White" had.

It seems like a cool "art" game, but avatar-tweaking, no matter how sophisticated it is, doesn't seem like enough of a game to me, and that seems like a lot of what Spore is. I realize it's only one element of the five massively-hyped stages of evolution or whatever, but it's the one with the most emphasis on it. Don't get me wrong, I love customization in games, and the fact that the way you design your creature will organically affect the way the whole game happens is cool, but it just doesn't seem like ENOUGH. Like my girlfriend said when I was trying to get her to design her character in Rock Band, "I haven't played dolls since I was eight."

I'm kind of worried about it too, because I couldn't get into The Sims at all. With the emphasis on the creature creation it does seem like that's the plan, once again. I can understand how that kind of game can be fun, but I don't totally understand how it became such an enormous, endless, mainstream franchise (unlike game series with solid fundamentals, like say, SimCity or Civilization).

Then again, maybe this will be some kind of weird combination of something like the massive mainstream popularity of The Sims crossed with incredibly internet-hyped online MMO "game", like Second Life. I was a lot more jazzed about this game a year ago, but the worry has been increasing that there won't be any clothes...

Not to be teh sexists, but wasn't The Sims almost exclusively popular with women? It seems like Spore is at least trying to cast its net a little wider, i.e. to encompass science nerds and people who don't like video games also.

And it's not MMO. It's "massively single-player," as Will Wright keeps saying. You can get your universe populated by other peoples' planets, but you're never playing with somebody else on the other side.

lol antexit's gf with the zing!

The key difference here is that our tweaks and customizations have in-game effects, unlike in the Sims where buying a new pair of pants just makes your legs look different, you're actually making decisions to evolve to the world around you. Will Wright was saying there are, in fact, ways you can lose this game, by making poor evolutionary decisions and such. Just knowing that is enough to convince me that this game is not to quickly be dismissed.

Yeah - I'm not sure (yet) if it's the kind of thing I want to put some time into - though on this weeks gfw podcast (which I'm in the middle of listening to) they do say that you can eventually win the game and that there is some kind of "boss battle" or something along those lines

Playing with dolls in "Rock Band" is a lot of fun, but would be more fun if you didn't have to navigate around with your instrument.

You said it.

that's what she said.

it.

system requirements are out. whoop.

what do we think the chances of this actually being fun are?

so not gonna happen

FACT: At least three people said that about:
the Sims;
The Sims 2;
Sim City;
Sim City 2000;
Sim Farm;
Sim Ant;
Sim Tower;
Sim Zoo;
Sim Sandwich;
Sim Sim;
and Sim Antler.

They were all wrong with the exception of Sim Tower. Spore looks like it'll be kinda lame but it'll end up being awesome.

Speaking of spore and awesome: Sporepedia will be documenting all of the invented creatures.

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=all

Right now it's just staff-mde ones obv., but CHECK IT OUT YO.

I didn't think any of those were fun except for Sims 1 (for one weekend) and Sim City.

B-b-but Sim Tower was my favourite! I always thought Sim Life looked really good, but I didn't give that one enough time even to understand it.

Sim Ant was fun but too small/limited.

I'm waiting for EA to take out that ridiculous DRM system. Yeah, I know, I know... I just don't want to give in to it.

http://antispore.com/

start at the bottom, then go up. be sure to read _all_ of the final post, too.

i predict a great ilx future for that "bouncing penis creature" youtube embed.

I could give a rats about the DRM, I'm not likely to need to install the game on a second pc/change my HDD/have cracked the game/etc. If I run into issues, I may change my tune, and I do think its dumb (esp as on top of the DRM you still need the DVD in the drive - COME ONNN). But eh.

It's more the idea that you're paying $50 essentially to rent a game on their stupid terms. Also I'm not convinced that this isn't just a convenient excuse for them to try to kill the used market, because it's obvious that this doesn't deter anyone who is going to pirate it (it was torrented the day of release). Also, I'm the kind of guy who does occasionally play his old computer games many years later.

If Microsoft and Yahoo BOTH screwed their music store customers this year by killing the DRM servers, I'm really not super faithful about EA's likelihood to keep up their authentication servers years from now. But I shouldn't have to rely on that crap for a game I purchased anyway. (Hell, even Steam, which I've found to be pretty good so far, just turned a mere five years old.)

Sure, I could buy it, then download a hacked version, but c'mon, that's idiotic, and sends the wrong message. I guess I can live without this particular game for a while - I know, it ain't really a big deal compared to other things.

Man, is that antispore.com for real?

No.

Again, read _all_ of the very last post of antispore

If you want to add me to your Spore buddies, i am "gregkitten".

http://theinternetisterrible.com/wp-content/things/eric_xbox360_spore.jpg

I got this and played it for the first time yesterday. I played it for a looooooong time, long enough to get the "you played nonstop all the way from the cell stage to space age, you big fucking loser!" message.

Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you all referred to me as Captain of the Solar System in this thread, please.

Hm this is weird. I cant register my game for online play - this is because I realised I was stupid and let EB games sell me a "return" not even twigging it was opened, and therefore the keys already been used (wtf were they trying to pull?).

Anyway this is the wierd bit: I was able to install and play the game fine, I just cant go online and swap dudes. No biggie.

But then this morning I went to grab the DVD so I can take it back to EBs and attempt to get an unopened working copy.. and realised Ivebeen playing it all weekend without the DVD in my computer. I thought it would refuse to run without the disc in, wtf?

Weird. Yeah, I thought it required the DVD too.

I've been in the space age for a long time now. Is anyone else experiencing a LOT of invasions from an aggressive rival empire? It's getting really annoying and starting to ruin the game for me. I know it's not supposed to be easy to take over the universe, but I haven't yet been able to establish a stable colony, because of all of the constant attacks. Maybe it was because I played through the rest of the game in a really violent way, so the game thinks I WANT to fight all of the time? I don't - it was just the fastest way to get through the earlier stages.

so is all the evolution hoo-ha basically a red herring and this is just a galactic civilizations type game with a couple of mini-games tacked to the beginning?

At this point, yeah, that's what it feels like. The only reason to play through it is to get specific bonuses based on the way you play, violent, peaceful, economic, etc. Those bonuses can then be used in space stage. But yeah, it's really not that fun, in my experience, to play the earlier stages in a peaceful way. It's a lot slower, and in a few of the stages, especially tribal and civilization, you're just kind of itching to get to space stage and leave the tedium behind, so of course the option of quickly killing everyone else off is enticing.

do teh limbs and gizmos you add to your species have ANY effect on the space level? which is like most of the playtime, right?

it would be cool if that affected the type of spaceships you built, the buildings in your cities etc... but i get the sense that no?

is this game really kind of a crock of shit?

lol ppl have been bombing amazon with 1-star ratings for this game

http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Mac/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1221303876&sr=8-1

story here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html

are ppl just mad about the drm?

I think there's probably a good amount of negative reviews towards the gameplay sprinkled in there, but they're harder to find.

People are also mad (I guess this could be included in the DRM thing) about the one account per computer thing, which is also pretty inexcusable.

Z S - in my first game I had the same problem as you: constant alerts about planets beign attacked. Through playing subsequent games I learned that I made enemies too early in the game and allies far too late.

Try to give yourself a buffer of allies as far around you as possible, don't warp through the systems of races you haven't met yet without saying hi, as this angers them, and try to keep everyone sweet until you've unlocked the hardcore weapons.

Some of the warlike races will be itching to kick your ass, but it's worth buying them off as soon as you meet them to keep relations at least "yellow content face" until you're in a better position to deal with their ire.

As I say, my first game was virtually unplayable with all the attacks on my systems, but employing these tactics in new games really helped.

You'll still get pirate attacks now and then, but they're easy battles in comparison, and you just have to suck it up and deal with them (or buy lots of turrets).

Still need Spore buddies plz.

one account per computer

Seriously? So if I pick this up, it'll be impossible for both me and Claire to play it??

You can both play it, with separate saved games, you just can't have separate Sporepedias. All downloaded and created content will be shared.

what are spore buddies and what's the online play like?

why would anyone want to install it more than 3 times, i don't have any game that i've installed more than once. people are stupid.

ah, i guess it includes installs after removes too. i guess that would be a pain for some people.

you just can't have separate Sporepedias

Ah, I guess that's not the end of the world then.

I havent found playing the earlier stages in a more laid back way boring, but I'm not the bishybashy type with games anyway - I always end up being a mage and shit in Oblivion. So I havent minded plodding about getting my tribe to make pals with everyone around, having dances and whatnot, its kind of relaxing!

Got a new copy too, lucky EB werent assholes about it and swapped it for me. Now I can finally get my account online properly.

I'm still on tribal stage - I'm slow ;_;

I'm still on tribal stage - I'm slow ;_

I'm slower. I haven't yet got past the "create your online account" stage.

You can skip that if you like, it lets you play the game without registering yr key.

let's have some spore usernames in this bitch

+ i downloaded Trogdor for my game

username: quartzcity

I'm playing the Yithlike

So what's the onlike?

username: Baaderonixxxx

I meant: whats the online like?

forksclovetofu as noted above. Still only cracked the plastic on this though.

Username - Xocolata

user name Antexit. But I think I'm done with thia game.

I'm traycee on thar but I dont get the online thing, it grabs other peoples creations, thats it really.

Im up to Civ lecel and while Im still having fun I am quite disappointed.For all its complexity in idea, the execution seems to be skimming the surface - albeit in a clever and engaging way. But each level up you're just doing more of the same on a larger scale: make friends or conquer those around you. I had hoped for a bit more strategy a la simcity at the top end of the game. This is why I was so blown away by the concept, I guess I thought he really would attempt to cram all that in, but I suppose it would be too logisically difficult? Anyway its fun, but doesnt quite have the depth I'd been expecting.

I found Tribal and Civ stages to be the worst of the game. Persevere on to space stage and it's more fun. That said, while space stage is way more fun than the previous stages, the excitement wears off after a few hours. Afterward, your enjoyment of space stage is a function of how much of a completist you are. I can't stop going back, and it's mainly because I can't stand to quit until I get every badge and make it to the "end", whatever that is. Apparently there is an end.

wow, the tribal stage is BOring

I'm playing this now. Creating creatures in the game is a lot less fun than it was in the stand alone creature creator, cos then, I was just trying out things that looked cool and making cute little monsters. Now, I need to worry about having all the right parts so that I have the attributes I need, and so it feels less like I'm making a creature and more like I'm just bolting together a tool. Like, "Oh, I need to be able to use the 'pose' move if I want to make friends with that species next door, so I need to add one of these spindly things...where can I attach it without making my little beastie look rubbish? Ah, sod it, I'll just plonk it on his back".

Anyone still playing? I haven't touched it in a couple of months and I'm ready to delete my account and sell the disc on eBay.

i was going to revive this thread to ask the question right here ^^^ hahaha

did anyone play it for more than a couple weeks?

Never got past tribal.

So pissed about this game.

pretty terrible huh

also forks please change your name it is pretty bad

not a kanye fan?

lol