how spore just sold itself.
Jun. 18th, 2008 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationOkay, so EA releasing the Spore creature creator ahead of time was basically a brilliant maneuver.
First off, it's a piece of one of the most anticipated games of the past few years, and that's always good. But more importantly, it puts a basic creation tool into the hands of loads of potential players. Even the free version (get it at spore.com) is enough of a tool to let players make some interesting little critters. Here is the Scary Bordie as one particular example. (Movie here (avi format).)
So now, I've made a handful of critters-- The Scary Bordie, the Nose Lizard, and a couple of others, and now, well. I've seen my creations MOVE and LIVE. Now I want to see them CONQUER the UNIVERSE!
Spore isn't a particularly obvious sort of game. It's too BIG. It goes from primordial ooze all the way to space travel-- that's a lot for a player to wrap his or her head around! In particular, where's the GAME? Where is the part where I win or lose, and how does this become fun without being simultaneously really really frustrating? Will I watch my critters evolve from protozoa all the way up to the industrial age, only to nuke themselves into dust and leave my little simulated planet floating alone and lifeless through the night? Consider how close we, the only actual real civilization we know, have skirted that potentiality. Would a game that avoids it be both playable AND believable? (Or would that depend, potentially, on how cynical I'm feeling at the very moment I sit down to play it?)
I'd been a little skeptical. It's certainly an ambitious concept. Does it become an entertaining game at the same time? A ship date has been set. Will it really ship this time? Can Will Wright pull this off again, after so many successes and so many failures? (I played SimEarth as part of a science class once, and it wasn't actually very entertaining, especially when one's grade depended on it.)
But now, well, it's a different story. Sure, the creature I named "Hexapodia is the key insight" is basically a goofy critter with unfeasible arms, but the Scary Bordie? It's also a silly sort of beast, but you know? I really want to see that little sausage with arms and legs reach the stars.
One suspicion that the people I've been talking with about the Creature Creator share is that EA is using user-created content to seed the universe, and that we may, while exploring the stars with our as-yet-un-procedurally-generated progeny, meet our own creations cheerfully living out their sausagey lives on one of the countless planets that will make up our universes. I suspect there is a seed of truth at the core of this theory. Personally, I hope it's true. Sure, I've given birth to these creatures as basically an evening's throwaway entertainment. They are born, live, move about on the screen, interact with the offspring I create with a click of my mouse, and then vanish again, saved to disk as I quit the Creature Creator and go back to browsing the web, but in my head they live full and interesting lives. The Scary Bordie (Bordaeus Territos) _deserves_ to walk the plains of some as-yet ungenerated planet, to build up its cities, and to finally leave the generative planet of its birth and fly to the stars, where, if chance and some random number generator somewhere are willing, it may meet the Nose Lizard, or the proud and terrible Nikkasaurus X...
And that's why the Spore Creature Creator has worked for me. It's silly, because I know on a purely intellectual level that it may end up being ultimately unsatisfying, or may, like The Sims, provide a few hours or a few days of dollhouse satisfaction before the formless open-endedness leaves me without goals and bored, but still, if I can see my progeny reach for the stars, it will be worth it. That all-important emotional bond has been forged, and that's why, in the end, I will most likely buy the damn game the day it comes out and rush home to install it (or download it as quickly as my internet connection allows). I am now connected to it through the bonds of, well, family. Or at least the bonds of pets. How could I desert my creatures?
First off, it's a piece of one of the most anticipated games of the past few years, and that's always good. But more importantly, it puts a basic creation tool into the hands of loads of potential players. Even the free version (get it at spore.com) is enough of a tool to let players make some interesting little critters. Here is the Scary Bordie as one particular example. (Movie here (avi format).)
So now, I've made a handful of critters-- The Scary Bordie, the Nose Lizard, and a couple of others, and now, well. I've seen my creations MOVE and LIVE. Now I want to see them CONQUER the UNIVERSE!
Spore isn't a particularly obvious sort of game. It's too BIG. It goes from primordial ooze all the way to space travel-- that's a lot for a player to wrap his or her head around! In particular, where's the GAME? Where is the part where I win or lose, and how does this become fun without being simultaneously really really frustrating? Will I watch my critters evolve from protozoa all the way up to the industrial age, only to nuke themselves into dust and leave my little simulated planet floating alone and lifeless through the night? Consider how close we, the only actual real civilization we know, have skirted that potentiality. Would a game that avoids it be both playable AND believable? (Or would that depend, potentially, on how cynical I'm feeling at the very moment I sit down to play it?)
I'd been a little skeptical. It's certainly an ambitious concept. Does it become an entertaining game at the same time? A ship date has been set. Will it really ship this time? Can Will Wright pull this off again, after so many successes and so many failures? (I played SimEarth as part of a science class once, and it wasn't actually very entertaining, especially when one's grade depended on it.)
But now, well, it's a different story. Sure, the creature I named "Hexapodia is the key insight" is basically a goofy critter with unfeasible arms, but the Scary Bordie? It's also a silly sort of beast, but you know? I really want to see that little sausage with arms and legs reach the stars.
One suspicion that the people I've been talking with about the Creature Creator share is that EA is using user-created content to seed the universe, and that we may, while exploring the stars with our as-yet-un-procedurally-generated progeny, meet our own creations cheerfully living out their sausagey lives on one of the countless planets that will make up our universes. I suspect there is a seed of truth at the core of this theory. Personally, I hope it's true. Sure, I've given birth to these creatures as basically an evening's throwaway entertainment. They are born, live, move about on the screen, interact with the offspring I create with a click of my mouse, and then vanish again, saved to disk as I quit the Creature Creator and go back to browsing the web, but in my head they live full and interesting lives. The Scary Bordie (Bordaeus Territos) _deserves_ to walk the plains of some as-yet ungenerated planet, to build up its cities, and to finally leave the generative planet of its birth and fly to the stars, where, if chance and some random number generator somewhere are willing, it may meet the Nose Lizard, or the proud and terrible Nikkasaurus X...
And that's why the Spore Creature Creator has worked for me. It's silly, because I know on a purely intellectual level that it may end up being ultimately unsatisfying, or may, like The Sims, provide a few hours or a few days of dollhouse satisfaction before the formless open-endedness leaves me without goals and bored, but still, if I can see my progeny reach for the stars, it will be worth it. That all-important emotional bond has been forged, and that's why, in the end, I will most likely buy the damn game the day it comes out and rush home to install it (or download it as quickly as my internet connection allows). I am now connected to it through the bonds of, well, family. Or at least the bonds of pets. How could I desert my creatures?
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 11:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 03:08 pm (UTC)I ask as there's a big motivational tool used extensively in eve-online - crushing your opponents, driving them before you, hearing the lamentations of their women, crushing the women, driving the women before you, hearing the lamentations of their partners, and so on. Oh, and taking their stuff.
Having your beautiful sandcastle/scary bordie kicked over occasionally can be a useful tool for motivation.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 07:55 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's sort of multiplayer. I don't know how that'll end up playing out in the long run, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 04:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 04:10 pm (UTC)Great tutorial, I didn't know I could hold CTRL to attach a limb to another limb, or use ALT to copy parts.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 07:55 pm (UTC)You can rate critters on the web site, too, and the scary bordie is rated generally well. So perhaps it will live!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 05:02 pm (UTC)http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/06/19/ea-bans-porny-spore-creature/
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 07:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 08:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-19 08:17 pm (UTC)