The evolution sim that was never meant to be.
Original Source:
Spore: An oral history by Jay Castello / Designroom (free registration required)
The game still was somewhat of a technical marvel, especially for its time. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the creature editor where it would allow you to create fairly arbitrary creatures, try to automatically detect what was the head, torso, legs; and try to animate them all correctly. Then, entire creature definitions were encoded into small PNG files using stenography, which could be shared with minimal data usage.
Bullshit.
EA did what they’ve been doing for 30 years: buy a competing game studio, release a few token cash grab titles under their beloved name, then shut down the studio and lay off all the developers. EA mediocritized Will Wright’s original vision for Spore, and trashed the last SimCity game with their always-online, closed architecture and slapdash support.
The really insidious part is that EA does make fun games, but they have remade the industry in their image: closed source, online only, DRM-infested, yearly release, day-one “expansion”, cash grab software that inspires none of the community and creativity that used to foster legendary franchises. And, they’ve killed countless game studios to create a quasi-monopoly to do it with.
I am still bitter over what they did to Maxis. I will never buy another EA game for as long as I live.
“Closed source” is reaching. As much as I think Doom shows why it should be desirable, let alone not taboo, it’s always been the industry standard and applies to 99.99% of games.
Certainly. I probably should have said “extensible” or “mod-able”.
The mediocrity as I understand was from the rift that developed in the team about the vision of the game being a sandbox vs a campaign.
However, I witnessed a new divide among the team which was less well-known; as more core game developers (such as myself) were recruited to help finish the game, a cultural gap emerged between the newer ‘gameplay’ team and the older ‘Sim’ team. The former group (which went on to spearhead Darkspore) was primarily concerned with how Spore played as a game. Were the mechanics engaging? Did the player’s choices matter? Was the game replayable? In contrast, the ‘Sim’ team carried the traditional Maxis DNA and was more comfortable with Spore as a toy box. Could the players express themselves? Was sharing one’s creations with other players meaningful? Did the game spark the imagination?
These cultural divides ruined Spore’s chances to be a focused, cohesive experience.
SimCity is the last time I was excited for a modern remake of a game, and likely the last. It was such an incredible letdown, you couldn’t even open the game at launch because of the always online stuff. Most every remake of a classic has been terrible ever since, I’m happy to be proven wrong though.
that was the fate of cnc, they released the cnc4 for a cashgrab then pratically ruined the franchise(online version of the "spinoffs’ dont count)
We know this.
We’ve known this for decades.
Why is this now news?
Slow news day?
It’s just a summary of a recent interview, relax.
If there’s any way to make things worse, it’s telling people to “relax” or “calm down”.
I was relaxed, now I’m just annoyed at a random internet stranger telling me to “relax”.
You relax. Next time, don’t comment.
Buddy, take a breath.
Friend, chill out.
You’d think someone whose username complains about reddit would exhibit less reddit-like behaviour
Chill out, you’re not on reddit anymore
Your original comment was pointless. Don’t expect praise and flowers for it.
Strait of Hormuz is open
Not yet.
I think there is a much higher probability of oil prices being manipulated in the short-term.
Yes, but:
RIP VG Cats!
The thing that really bugged me about Spore was how lame the “evolution” was.
If early developments in your creatures set certain things in motion that then played out differently that would be great and add replay value.
But nothing was meaningful at all, you could completely change stuff back and forth. Very little in your evolutionary history actually mattered, at all.
That’s because
childrenadults would get stuck on a path that was untenable, and management didn’t like that idea. It would lead to a bad experience and a negative review.There were a couple details that mattered.
Whether you were aggressive vs friendly vs neutral at each stage had some consequences for all later stages. Creatures you befriend in the Creature stage could become pets in the Tribal stage, which could include the powerful lone wolf ones.
Yeah we were there when it happened
I got the collector edition. Never again.
I bought my first ever PC that was built for and came with spore.
I was happy with the computer, the game was… less than what I thought it was going to be.
But spore was awesome though
I think some of the love for Spore is rose-tinted glasses. It’s ultimately kind of a shallow game. The sim aspects are not very well fleshed out, and 90% of the content of the game is really in the space age.
There was a space age? I remember playing to a certain point, getting bored, and just restarting it over and over.
Modern age was the weakest. Beyond that you got to space which could’ve been fun if you managed to get that far.
So long as you turned on Stellaris when you got to the space stage
It had the depth of a cup of spilt coffee, once you’ve played through it once there’s no additional content to experience.
We remember it as awesome, because we played it when we were very young. The Creature Stage still almost is, but the rest of the game is not.
it depends on what you want out of it
I’m 33, I played it when it came out and I played it again last year.
The game is still pretty fun if you like designing dumb alien animals with its weird mechanics for the creature stage, making a weird little tribe/society, and get to the space stage and want to terraform little planets and then go find earth, and the center of the Milky Way.
I wasn’t even particularly young when I played it the first time, I was a post Halo 3 16 year old lol.
Those of us not in the industry refer to that as “lying.”
Every creature on the box art is impossible in-game one way or another.
I played the simple shape demo of the creature world.
It was vastly superior to the crap they launched. It had an actual ecosystem, but admittedly led to you dying a lot at low tiers because you were the equivalent of a meal worm.
the simple shape demo of the creature world
What game is that? Searching any of those terms give me nothing
I think they are referring to one of the showcased demos of Spore, of which the most prominent is the 2005 GDC one.
https://spore.fandom.com/wiki/Removed_features#Creature_Stage
Behavior of creatures
The behavior of the creatures also had more depth than the final game. In today’s Spore creatures rarely leave the perimeter of their nest, and possibly has a simpler ecosystem (until Space Stage). This feature was prominent in earlier versions, as in the footage of the 2005 version, small creatures hopped around, grazed, or simply wandered off with no nests for them.
I love Spore, but replaying it today I see how much is missing from making each stage really fleshed-out. Being honest, the Creature Stage is clearly what received the most attention, while subsequent Stages are not as fun.
A lot of it is to be attributed to Maxis and Will Wright: apparently much of what was shown in 2005 and 2006 was never really playable.
But things like this suggest a heavy involvement of the publisher as well:During the SXSW 2007 demo, Will Wright said that the Aquatic Stage was on the verge of being cut. He also said that, if cut, the Aquatic Stage would be one of the first things to add via an expansion pack, though ultimately no such expansion was released.
There was a plan to add the Aquatic Stage into the full game via an expansion pack titled “The Depths”, although it was never publicly announced. except for one advertisement.
It was a downloadable demo, yeah. Just had various polygonal shapes on a black background, top down and could move with WASD and could interact with plant sprites and creature sprites. Very simple graphics, but had different level creatures wandering around, so it was hard to stay alive when you had level 5 creatures hunting near the starting beach.
It might be one of these
I mean, they did have some interesting ideas early on that I was surprised didn’t make the cut. https://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes
Oh I remember this game. I’m still irritated at the fraudulent claims. The game was not at all what I expected. Marketing can eat me for this one.
It might be worth to link to the original source: https://www.designroom.site/spore-an-oral-history/
Design Room is a new online magazine authored by one of the writers laid-off by Vox Media when it acquired Polygon.
You can read the Oral Histories after a free subscription.I loved Spore, but I’m easily pleased with video game. I liked creature stage the most, but also liked space and puttering around!
I even really liked the cell stage because the gameplay loop was fun and simple, plus you got to eat the bastards who were eating you before you got bigger.
As a kid my first experience of it was a friend playing it so I got that feeling of wonder from that instead of trailers and the like, and because of that i was very satisfied with the game
