Spore Is EA's New Ace 406
BusinessWeek reports on EA's Next Big Thing. From the article: "EA is stumbling, and a big part of its time-tested strategy is about to change. The company hopes that its next mega-franchise will revolve not around a football star, a boy wizard, or a dashing British spy, but...a microbe. The game is called Spore. Developed by Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, it lets players design an invertebrate in its primordial stages and then guide its evolution until the creature's offspring develop into a thriving civilization with cities, religion, and spaceships. EA's ambitious goal is to create more such innovative, internally developed games while lessening the company's dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises."
Spore video (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Spore video (Score:5, Informative)
--Ryvar
Re:Spore video - logins to pqhp (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=www.pqhp.com [bugmenot.com]
have fun...
Full video also on Google Video (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Spore video (Score:2)
"I just hope it doesn't turn out to be a let down like black and white did."
you = heretic
Re:Spore video (Score:2, Informative)
You realize that it came out months ago, right? And that it crashes on startup on about 1 in 5 machines, has no multiplayer, doesn't let the creature learn from your actions, doesn't let you skip the tutorial (until the most recent patch 1.2), has bugs that cause the game to stop progressing to the next world, lets armies run right through your city walls, and absolutely *crawls* on nVidia GeForce 6800 cards?
Just checking.
Re:Spore video (Score:2)
And even though building an army is somewhat evil, using it to attack is much worse. If you just build an army of archers to put up your city walls and defend, the little bit of evil you got from having an army
Re:Spore video (Score:5, Funny)
I'll give her this, when I told her it would cost us somewhere in the region of $2000 she actually had to consider it for a full second and a half before she said ok.
So, I'll get a new computer, but I won't be able to use it for six months, and I won't actually see my wife for that time either... Thanks Will Wright.
Re:Spore video (Score:2)
Re:Spore video (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spore video (Score:3, Funny)
Um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um..
Spore looks to be GREAT (Score:2)
Re:Spore looks to be GREAT (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Spore looks to be GREAT (Score:5, Interesting)
It sorta reminds me of that "Sim-Sim" game found inside the old Space Quest series. Anyone remeber that? Those Sierra games were really fun.
Anyway, Spore does look really cool.
-matthew
Old links (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Old links (Score:2)
GTA model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GTA model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GTA model (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is it Intelligent Design? I can't really tell.
-matthew
Re:GTA model (Score:5, Funny)
I guess it depends on who is playing it.
Christian Backlash? I think not. (Score:2, Insightful)
While I'm sure there will be some idiots out there who will not take a moment to review the game, and condemn it outright, I see no reason for this game to be "bad" or "threatening"
Re:Christian Backlash? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would that be "something else?" As you said this is just a game. Whether or not you agree with what it claims is no reason to ban it. The Bible Game claims that the biblical representation of Genesis is 100% truth and you don't see atheists storming the streets in protest. It's EA's right to make a game that claims whatever they wish, as long as that claim isn't outright slanderous.
Re:GTA model (Score:2)
Re:GTA model (Score:5, Funny)
--Pat "mod +1 Evolutionary Biology / GTA tie-in"
I'll start being interested when it comes out. (Score:2)
Sim Earth / Sim Life sequel? (Score:4, Interesting)
That would be something new for EA.
Re:Sim Earth / Sim Life sequel? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sim Earth / Sim Life sequel? (Score:2)
obl. gary larson (Score:5, Funny)
"Bert the adventurous amoebe"
"Andy the sandworm"
etc
Re:obl. gary larson (Score:5, Funny)
Spore's orginal name was: (Score:5, Funny)
They had to tone it down a little.
Now YOU can be the FSM (Score:2)
Game sponsored by the Intelligent Design Network.
Good idea, misguided goal (Score:5, Insightful)
On whether the game will be succesful; it's essentially a new gametype (or mix thereof) by an industry vet, it's being hyped to hell and back, and it's got the backing of EA. I hear echoes of Black and White, and the echoes do not sound good.
Re:Good idea, misguided goal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good idea, misguided goal (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. See Super Mario Brothers.
Re:Good idea, misguided goal (Score:5, Interesting)
Mind you, I think it *appears* great, and the video demo was fun (had me in stitches a few times; that diplomatic 'first contact' bit was great, as were the creature designs), but there has to be gameplay. We didn't see a whole lot of the gameplay mechanics in the video, probably because they weren't done yet. Talk of 'procedurally generated' and 'emergent behaviour' is all nice, but such claims were made earlier.
I am also worried about the lack of (talk about) synchronous multiplayer. At some point I'd want to pop my civilization online, have colonial wars and biological exchanges with critters actually being watched by another player. Hell, leave the world available online for others, so that when I get back there might be a whole range of critters on my world I wasn't aware of. Just disable the planet-pounders.
Black and White was a great toy, but not a particularly good game. I wonder if Spore will do better. This mindless optimism, however, is never a good idea for any game, by any developer.
Cheat codes? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh?
What planet do you live on?
Have you seen what current homosapiens are doing?
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:2)
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:4, Funny)
They survived billions of years without us, yet we wouldn't last a minute without them. All macroscopic life is an evolutionary abberation.
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get right down to it, "evolutionary abberation" is either an oxymoron, or redundant, depending on your definition of abberation, but at no point is that a useful statement.
It's important to realize that humans aren't the absolute unparalled masters of the living world in every conceivable manner. It's equally important not to make the opposite error. Macroscopic life is Mother Earth's only significant hope of actually getting off the planet on a big scale, for instance, and "macroscopic life" is only a hair's breadth on the cosmic scale from effectively enslaving microscopic life. (Even if we humans muck it up, I'd bet somebody or something cracks the problem before the sun wipes life from the planet.)
Macroscopic life exists because it works.
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:2)
I think you want a God-mode where you simply go from dirt => to sentient species.
Probably...
Re:Cheat codes? (Score:2, Funny)
To hell with Spore... (Score:2, Funny)
Article title pisses me off (Score:3, Insightful)
Will Wright is the mastermind of this one. Its Will Wright's next smash hit.
Screw EA, if they had their way, we'd all be buying 6 sports games a year, every year, and thats it.
EA is doing its part to provide slashdot with the weekly 'video games in a slump?' stories.
Will Wright is like a recently eaten explorer trapped inside a monsters body.
for those that don't have flash: screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thesporezone.co.uk/screens/index.php?ID =1 [thesporezone.co.uk]
http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php [spore.com]
Re:for those that don't have flash: screenshots (Score:2)
Sim Earth meets Civ (Score:2)
Outragous! I must protest! (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, that would be a clever little joke on the creator's part. Perhaps include a "-dogma" commandline switch that does just that. If they really wanted to get some reactionary types mad, they could even include various modes for all of the crazy creation myths from various world religions.
Re:Outragous! I must protest! (Score:2)
Re:Outragous! I must protest! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Outragous! I must protest with fish sauce (Score:3, Funny)
I for one am looking forward to the -noodly version, where Pirate Fish roam the seas, preventing Global Warming, as our Great Noodly One, the Flying Spaghetti Monster [flyingspag...onster.org] invisibly floats overhead.
My catma ate your dogma.
Riiiight. (Score:2)
But when questioned about the recent exclusivity rights to NFL teams and the James Bond franchise, the PR rep paused briefly before screaming "Look, behind you!" and bolting out the door.
Article is marketing spin (Score:2, Insightful)
If you look at the other new game they mention, it's yet another Medal of Honor game. Wow, a company like EA is really innovating by changing the way its employees work to churn out the fiftieth iteration of a proven franchise! How wonderfu
Videos are old (Score:5, Informative)
Spore-like flash game (Flow) (Score:2)
http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/ [usc.edu]
Enjoy
Re:Spore-like flash game (Flow) (Score:2)
FUN TIME (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FUN TIME (Score:2)
The sandbox mode at the end - with the UFO and all that - seems to be designed to let you replay the parts you enjoyed the most... also great, don't need to start a new game to play around in the single-cell mode, for example.
The only part I'm not very sure of is the "RTS" mode, and th
Thank the friggin' Lord (or maybe FSM) (Score:3, Funny)
Sim Earth ? (Score:2)
Re:Sim Earth ? (Score:2)
On another note, the real innovative part of this game (which is clear if you want the video), is that the components of each environment, biome, society, civilization, and planet are all procedurally gene
Re:Sim Earth ? (Score:2)
My thought exactly. And it's about time -- Sim Earth was long one of my favorite games. I still have it somewhere -- what I lack is a system capable of playing it (as it was a DOS VCPI game, and I run all Mac and Linux now).
One comment however -- in Sim earth you could start off without even a spore. You would have to bombard the planet with comets in the hope of eventually evolving a primitive bacteria, and then work your way up from there.
Sim Earth had some rather fun elements to it that went beyond
Can't wait for the expansion packs (Score:3, Funny)
Spore: Bustin' Out
Spore: Nightlife
Re:Can't wait for the expansion packs (Score:2)
The shortest game in history, lasting only until somebody turns the autoclave on.
revive Sim Mars (Score:2)
it's about damn time (Score:5, Insightful)
so here is my idea for EA. I think they should change madden releases to bi-yearly, with a $5 or so roster update/patch in the off-years. The huge pool of resources poured into madden every year could be directed into these smaller home-grown projects.
Will they lose money? I dunno. They'll make money on their roster update, that's for sure. And if they create a few gems with those reallocated resources, they're opening up loads of future franchise possibilities.
so the choices are to continue to cash-in now, or to plant these seeds for the future.
Re:it's about damn time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:it's about damn time (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the fuck do you buy a game series you're unhappy with? At what point in the sale do you think "This is identical to the game I already have 3 versions of. Why am I buying another version?"
It's like buying Tetris over and over because they change the name of the blocks and add more eye candy for each line being removed.
Flow (Score:2)
One of the things I am concerned about is that while it is absolutely fantastic how they plan on integrating the content of other players into your worlds....I want a method to limit the inclusion of that content to just my friends. Which sounds more fun to you....having a little "survival of the fittest"
Re:Flow (Score:2)
I showed the video of Spore from last year's GDC to my
Great news (Score:2)
This is great news. EA is massive and their focus affects the whole gaming industry. I always hated all those boring EA sports titles and dull titles that just cashed-in on having the same name as the latest movie.
Bullshit. (Score:2)
content does not make a game? (Score:2)
Spore is going to be a monster (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone else play SimLife, which was a kind of very primitive precursor to this? I bought it, along with all of the other Maxis sim-titles way back when, and spent a long while playing it, but found it frustrating in the end because the complexity was not well handled and every scenario seemed to decompose into a monoculture or a mass extinction. If Spore can nail all that, it will be a massive winner. It will also prove WW's point that procedural content is better than created content.
What I like about WW is that he seems to have thought more deeply about the concept of play than anyone else I can think of in the videogame realm. His are the games you don't feel bad giving to your kids (in fact I don't feel bad about giving most games to my kids).
Ok (Score:2)
The mind boggles.
Expect layoffs.
Reversed traditional use of sandbox (Score:2)
Been there, done that (Score:2)
Sounds a bit like Sim Earth... (Score:2)
Sure, this game is going to focus more on the life form than the planet, but it has a certain ring to it.
Sim Earth was fun, if tedious. The Maxis website has a tiny mention of it being released in 1990, but they don't list the game for sale today, even though it goes to the EAstore.com website.
Re:Sounds a bit like Sim Earth... (Score:2)
Start the Procedural Revolution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Raph Koster outlines in his presentation titled Moore's Wall [raphkoster.com] how, right now, the growing power of computers is making games prohibitively expensive to produce. As the power of the machine grows, there is pressure to utitlize the new power to improve on the presentation (mainly, the graphics) of the game, which makes the game a lot more costly produce without adding much in terms of gameplay, and usually resulting in a reduction in the amount of actual game content.
One way to break this trend is to utilize the increasing CPU power of PCs to procedurally generate content, or to assist the player in creating his their own content. Of course, our procedural algorithims and software have to improve a lot if it's going to be an important supplement (let alone replacement) to the traditional way of doing things, which is to have professional artists hand-craft everything.
In this regard, Spore looks to be a huge step in the right direction. We need more projects like Spore to mature the technology. The fact that EA seems to be recognizing Wil's genious and throwing their support behind his project is a good thing, if the suits at top see the promise of this kind of approach, it can only mean good things for the industry. EA was not exactly in love with the idea of The Sims before it was proven an unmitigated success, despite the fact that Will was already an acclaimed game designer well before that game's release. So, even if EA isn't entirely turning over a new leaf, at least they're trusting their golden boy enough to say that they're pinning their hopes on his newest experimental idea.
good concept != good game (Score:2)
So how about a Linux port? (Score:2)
Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:4, Funny)
Liberals hope that Spore will open the way to fully immersing our youth into bi-transsexual organisms with no morals or values.
Re:Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Damnit (Score:2)
Re:Damnit (Score:2)
That being said, their dependency on Madden 25 and Medal of Honor 15 will only hurt them in the end. If they see that before it's too late, more power to them.
Re:Queue Boycott In 5.. 4.. 3.. (Score:2)
Re:Queue Boycott In 5.. 4.. 3.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It teaches about how life, once it existed in its simplest form, got to be so complex. That's not the same thing. Not that Pat Robertson is capable of making such an important distinction, since the odds that he's even slightly acquainted with reality anymore are pretty much null, but I still felt the need to make that point.
I think that boycott comes on other terms (Score:2, Funny)
Unless of course there is some way to do god-like things like planting an Adam and an Eve somewhere... which, of course, would be kinda blasphemous...
Guess EA can't win that one 'gainst the religious right, huh?
Re:I think that boycott comes on other terms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Queue Boycott In 5.. 4.. 3.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Queue Boycott In 5.. 4.. 3.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The fringe I speak of is comprised of "a large cross-section of normal folks"? Who have a "certain set of faith beliefs [sic]"?
Congratulations, you just called the typical Christian church-goer a fringe lunatic because you were offended by my comment regarding an actual fringe of lunatics that,
Re:Deja vu for Black & White (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe Spore is just doomed to repeat the failures of SimCity and The Sims
Re:A creature evolves and then forms a relgion! (Score:2)
Re:A creature evolves and then forms a relgion! (Score:2)
Re:ID (Score:2)