Why Spore Is Special 77
The New York Times is running a long piece by Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." In 'The Long Zoom', Johnson describes just what is so special about Will Wright's Spore . From the article: "Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."
I call bollocks (Score:4, Interesting)
The one great failure of spore (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about it, how many (geeks) people talk about the great fight they had in Morrowind? Compare that to the number of people who boast about frags and kill:death ratios, complete with dramatic reinactment.
Spore will do well, I'm planning on buying it, and playing it (for a while). But in the long term, with out some form of multi-player competition, cooperation, and communication, it'll be nothing more than a nice single player game.
-Rick
No other game has done this... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to be sappy, but I think there's a point to games that make people think about the real world. Hopefully Spore will make people think about Mother Earth, the Solar System and the Universe, the same way The Sims makes people think about their Mum, Family and Society.
Here is a message about The Sims titled "No other game has done this... [google.com]", posted in April 2000 (one month after The Sims was released) in the alt.family-names.sims newsgroup (the Sims fans took over the alt.family-names.sims, newsgroup because there wasn't a newsgroup for The Sims game yet).
-Don