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Spore on GDCTV

Posted by Zonk on from the beastmaster dept.

Will Wright's amazing Spore Presentation on "The Future of Content" has been added to the video selections at GDCTV. The streaming video offers up his vision of procedural driven gaming, sandbox entertainment, and a future where gamers own their entertainment experiences.

48 comments

  1. Registration required! by Nomihn0 · · Score: 1

    "You can now access the current GDCTV streaming lecture for 'The Future Of Content' (a brief, free registration process is required if you have not previously registered.)" Nevermind . . .

    1. Re:Registration required! by Sunspire · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can just fill in whatever crap you want in the registration form, there's no email to verify your info and you get to go straight to the video.

      Spore looks simply amazing.

      --
      It's like deja vu all over again.
    2. Re:Registration required! by Dioscorea · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.bugmenot.com/

  2. Stream? by Oldest+European · · Score: 1

    Anybody registered yet?

    Which of the stream formats I hate does it come in?

    1. Re:Stream? by TelJanin · · Score: 1

      It's in some wierd embedded Flash streamer. At least it's cross platform, I guess...

    2. Re:Stream? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 1

      I'm on Linux on PowerPC, you insensitive clod!

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  3. Slashdotted by barkholt · · Score: 1
    I was about in the middle of the presentation (which is very good, I might add), when it suddenly just stopped streaming. After waiting for a short while, I decided to go check slashdot while it worked it self out - then I see this. Argh!

    Oh, well - it'll be fine again tommorrow :)

    --
    - barkholt
  4. It's 2005... by Oldest+European · · Score: 1

    From the stupid webpage:
    BROWSER: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 Service Pack 2 or above, Netscape 7.2+

    Seems they are streaming from a cave... it's the year 2005 and they haven't even heard of Firefox yet...

    1. Re:It's 2005... by -kertrats- · · Score: 1

      Do you not understand that the little plus sign next to Netscape means Firefox?

      --
      The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
    2. Re:It's 2005... by Oldest+European · · Score: 1

      Do you not understand that the little plus sign next to Netscape means Firefox?

      Sure they share a codebase and sure it means that it also should work with Firefox, but since we are in the year 2005 a 'Firefox 1.0+' would make much more sense than a 'Netscape 7.2+', don't you think?

      Do you not understand that those are two different brands and that different people profit from it when the one or the other is listed?

      They also list for operating systems Windows 98, 2000, NT 4.0 Service Pack 6, and XP; Mac OS 9+

      And not just 'Windows 98, NT 4.0+, Mac OS 9+'...

  5. registered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    p_samty@yahoo.com

    thats all you need, no password required

    1. Re:registered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you sir. Put it on bugmenot.com or something, good site.

    2. Re:registered by psamty · · Score: 1

      Hmm.. looks like I shouldn't have sent that to everyone at work... now all I need to do is track the Coward down (I wonder if my boss reads slashdot - scary)

    3. Re:registered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that is where it came from

  6. Sandbox entertainment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where the urine is virtual!

  7. Slashdotted. by BuddyJesus · · Score: 2, Informative

    The stream (not the article) has been slashdotted. Check back later.

    --
    Derive Politics
  8. summary by bersl2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was going to write a quick summary of the video. Fuck that. Watch the video. It's worth it.

    1. Re:summary by LordStraun · · Score: 1

      I totally agree. I found myself clapping after a certain demonstration at the end.
      Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.

      Very cool demonstration, I look forward to the game.

      --
      Your Sig Here ($10)
    2. Re:summary by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

      Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.

      Speaking of funny looks - I think it's absolutely guaranteed that a family member, wife, girlfriend or whoever will peer at your computer screen just as your creations are, um, getting a bit intimate (described as 'procedural mating', complete with dodgy saxophone music)...

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    3. Re:summary by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 1
      Mod parent up! This has to be one of the coolest demo interviews I've ever seen.

      If they had a preorder link for the game on that article, I would have bought it, even if the game wasn't done yet.

      This looks like the killer game for MULTIPLE genre's of video games at once.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
  9. We need a rip and a torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get on it, Slashdot!

  10. Excuse me, by MrCopilot · · Score: 5, Informative
    While I wipe up my spittle. Color me impressed.

    Not a Sim fan but this may win me over, I love evolution games as an idea, but they still feel cookie cutter. & they would have to. Spore's system seems to break that. I welcome his ideas of genre hopping and asynchonous content sharing.

    I knew the demoscene was gonna get its props some day, I just didn't think it would come from the Sim master. Kudos Will, You can count my money now.

    --
    OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
    1. Re:Excuse me, by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

      Spore's system seems to break that. I welcome his ideas of genre hopping and asynchonous content sharing.

      It reminded me a little of the venerable Elite - but instead of the game firing up the random number generator and hoping for the best, it gets the players to design the content to populate the worlds with, using the resulting popularity as the basis of survival of the fittest.

      It does sound a rather impressive game, and the fact that you can design (or at least guide) your own life-forms, buildings, cities, planets and solar systems is just amazing.

      Something both scares and fascinates me, though - how someone might find some tiny, backwater planet their computer has based on your own hours of work. The idea of anonymously setting your creations free for perhaps millions of players to discover sounds mind-bendingly cool to me - and I wonder if fan-designed systems for encoding information (such as nicknames) into creations will emerge.

      Hmm... Encoding an email address into the arrangement of limbs on a millipede...

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  11. More Info by AngryScot · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can find more information here

    --

    All spelling mistakes are due to solar flares...honest

  12. "your headline reader has been banned" by British · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, this makes no sense...

    I have Slashdot's "Games" Section slashbox on my main account prefs. All the headlines just say my headline reader's banned. Uh, no. I'm not even using one(I doubt the slashbox counts).

    Anyone else getting this? Might explain the so-few comments on this story. Nobody can see it unless they directly go to games.slashdot.org.

    New! From the makers of the lameness filter!

    1. Re:"your headline reader has been banned" by Chyeld · · Score: 1

      Did you read the link provided when you saw that message? It gives you a pretty straight forward explaination of why you are getting the message.

    2. Re:"your headline reader has been banned" by British · · Score: 1

      I skimmed over it, assuming it was for RSS feeds and such. I'm not doing that, nor am I hitting reload 2000 times a second. If I did that, wouldn't the whole site freeze me out for 72 hours?

    3. Re:"your headline reader has been banned" by CoffeeJedi · · Score: 1

      yeah, mine did that too this morning, its fixed now

      --
      May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
    4. Re:"your headline reader has been banned" by slashrogue · · Score: 1

      Weird. But no. I also have the Games section in my slashbox and the headlines show up just fine.

  13. Amazing by Walkingshark · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just got done watching this, its absolutely amazing. As he goes on and keeps pulling out to the next level of gameplay, I find myself thinking "wow, cool... it'd be cool if you could go further, but I bet it stops here..." Around the local stellar group level, I just stopped thinking and let the drool cup slowly fill up.

    --
    The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
  14. Pretty Amazing by netfool · · Score: 1

    From a small, single life from oozing out of the primodial soup to visiting (or destroying) other alien species in other galaxies via your UFO. I can't wait for this one!

    --
    Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
  15. Um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um.
    Um.
    Um
    Um
    UM

    1. Re:Um by kafka47 · · Score: 1
      UMMM UMMMM!!!!!!

      (Didn't you guys figure out he was humming the theme from 2001?) /Kafka

  16. Mpeg? by Swift(void) · · Score: 1

    Anyone got this in a mpeg yet? All these pauses are getting annoying.

  17. Slides by niai · · Score: 1

    I'm watching this with IE6 but the slides don't seem to be updating. I can only see Will talking. Anyone else got this?

  18. SimEarth? by fireduck · · Score: 1

    I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned SimEarth in any of the Spore discussions. Spore really is the grandchild of Wil's earlier efforts in this arena. SimEarth basically was an evolution sim, however you had less direct control over the species but lots of control over the environment. Plate techtonics, ocean currents, etc. could all be adjusted to provide the proper environment for whatever little slime you wanted to cultivate through to sentience. And it's clear that Wil's dream hasn't changed much. Just like in Spore, the obvious goal of SimEarth was to evolve dinosaurs with guns that would eventually rocketship off the planet.

    As a sim it was interesting, but you never really felt connected or that you had much control over anything, so it got old fast (at least for me). Spore looks amazing. He's clearly taken all that has happened in computer games over the past 15 years and applied them to his original SimEarth concept and made what looks like the single most amazing sandbox ever...

    1. Re:SimEarth? by Kash-Mulc · · Score: 1

      While I realize that the game still has a long ways to go, I think that the galaxy stage, lacking any real goal, also has the potential to get boring quickly, like Sim Earth. Although there is a trend towards more open ended games, has there ever been a successful game that hasn't had an (or several) ultimate goal(s)? Even in the Sims, there was the implied goal to create a more and more successful family--but what would be the goal as the controller of a godlike spacecraft? Unless there was competition between other space-faring creatures or something, I just think doing the War of the Worlds/The Day the Earth Stood Still/First Contact things Wil mentions would get old pretty fast.

  19. Snore. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Katamari Damacy kicked off the procedural leveling genre. Who cares what Will Wright has to say?

    1. Re:Snore. by UWC · · Score: 1

      Somebody's using the wrong definition of "procedural." I took it to mean that the direction of the gameplay is figured on the fly based on some relatively small starting condition/string/etc.; I don't think "procedural" refers to the gameplay perspective widening as play progesses. Unless there's something about Katamari Damacy that no one told me, the definition of "procedural" used here doesn't apply to it.

      --
      Honor Among Slackers. A veri
  20. hrm..? by th3space · · Score: 1

    I've never really been too big a fan of Wil Wrights games and concepts, but for some reason, Spore most certainly appeals to me...it seems to me the right balance of quirk, gameplay and simulation. But, of course, this is conjecture, as I won't know for sure if I like it or not until I've had my hands on it...but it intrigues me, to say the least. *fingers crossed for it to be worth playing and not just Sims of the Genetic Mess*

    --
    "How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
  21. The first of many steps. by neo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was very impressed with this concept, or more specifically that someone in the mainstream got it. Proceedural content is the best way to give a massive amount of content to players. In addition to laying that basis, Will realized that player content is just as important.

    Leveraging the content created by the players is indeed a very smart move. From the ground up there will be entire universes of content overnight.

    What Will missed was the next logical step in this evolution of game design and how this will affect MMOG games.

    At the end of the remarkable series of player driven content, he imposes several end games at the highest levels. First Encounter games for the space fairing creations of the player. He quickly listed off several examples of mini-games that players can explore with their final creations.

    What would be more impressive and would point to the future direction this technology will advance, is if a similar simple tool system used for creation of your creatures could be used for creating proceedural plots.

    In the same way that software can be used to figure out how to make a three legged creation walk, it could also be used to find a way to make a three planet storyline work.

    Obviously MMOGs need this technology to actually achieve the next level of play, where players are allowed to create plotlines dynamically for themselves and other players. It's not possible to create unique plots for hundreds of thousands of players from the publisher, nor is it required. Players are more than happy to supply plots themselves and they will be much richers content experiences for having done so.

    1. Re:The first of many steps. by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 1
      What Will missed was the next logical step in this evolution of game design and how this will affect MMOG games.

      I'm not so sure Will "missed" this logical step so much as he decided not to bite off more than he could chew. Judging by the Spore video, one can imagine that he's already got an insanely complex game to take care of; I'd wager he'd be thrilled to get this one out the door before he starts trying to tackle massively multi-player network synchronization and content sharing issues.

      Making a game is hard.
      Making a good game is insanely hard.
      Making a game as ambitious as Spore is nigh on suicidal, even for the gods of video gaming.
      Trying to cram MM functionality onto what could very well be a genre-redefining game is sheer madness.

      Either Will has consciously decided to ignore the realtime MM possibilities for Spore, or he's elected to delay them for future iterations of the game. I doubt the possibility hasn't crossed his mind, though.

      --

      Obliteracy: Words with explosions

    2. Re:The first of many steps. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Either Will has consciously decided to ignore the realtime MM possibilities for Spore
      I'm guessing this one. When he blew up the other planet, he said that it was important that other players couldn't ruin your fun by doing this to you. So you download their planets and blow them up in your Universe, but in their Universe they're still OK. Otherwise every time you started a game your microscopic blobule would get nuked by some kid who's played it long enough to unlock the Death Star.
    3. Re:The first of many steps. by shoptroll · · Score: 1

      MM-ing this would be a hard task, but probably not impossible. It would probably be no different than going from The Sims -> Sims Online. You would just swap out the AI playing a race with an actual person.

      However, it sounds like this will be fairly close to an MMO anyways, since you will have a community interacting indirectly with itself (through the content server and content ratings/interactions).

      If this is as good as it appears to be this will definitely land on some "stranded on a desert island" lists (ironic since you won't have 'net access there).

      --
      Insert Sig Here
  22. Good Place for Spore Info by uedauhes · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.gamingsteve.com/

    1. Re:Good Place for Spore Info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It has nothing that wasn't in the presentation. And since we (the public) have the video now, it has nothing.

      That is, except this latest little interview with Will Wright. It's not huge though, or even well transcripted. Just a way to draw more people to his site.

  23. Not on Main Page by sparkhead · · Score: 1

    I'm amazed this didn't make it to the main page. I've never seen a game demo as impressive as this. Was completely worth watching the entire video.

  24. Non Streaming video? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gah. I hate streaming video. Does anybody have a source for this mind blowing video that *won't* stop at the same fricken spot every goddamn time?