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Spore Is EA's New Ace
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 on Google: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330 420559198&q=spore
Video of Will Wright's Spore Demo (~35 min): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330 420559198&q=spore
PA's take: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27
It's so much more attractive / inside the moral kiosk.
Electronic Arts: A Radical New Game Plan
The gaming giant is ditching tired tie-ins for more daring, interactive video game ideas
Video game giant Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS ) had a very simple formula for success: base a product on a popular sports or movie franchise, spend a fortune marketing it, and then push out a new version of that game year after year. The strategy netted big bucks with games based on the Harry Potter, James Bond, and Lord of the Rings movies, as well as with EA'S Madden NFL series. It also delighted investors with a reliable stream of revenue in the notoriously hit-or-miss video game business. In 2005, the company landed the No. 34 spot on the BusinessWeek 50 list of top corporate performers.
But now 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.
SLUGGISH SALES
The plan is nothing if not challenging. It's forcing EA's president of Worldwide Studios, Paul Lee, to rethink the way the company creates games and to figure out a way to transform a risk-averse organization known for its operational efficiency into a hotbed of creativity. Lee has little choice. Movie studios and sports leagues are driving the costs of licenses higher, while video game sales have stayed sluggish. Making matters worse, EA flubbed its debut on Microsoft's new Xbox 360 console, failing to grab its usual No. 1 market share and losing out to smaller competitor Activision (ATVI ) Inc. Although the company's revenues, an estimated $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion for the fiscal year ending on Mar. 31, remain more than twice the size of its next-largest U.S. competitor, it has either lowered or missed its earnings guidance for the past six quarters. The reasons include delayed games, higher-than-expected development costs, and disappointing sales of key titles.
To reverse the slide, Lee needs the EA home team to hit a few home runs. He wants to push the number of games based on internally created concepts above 50% of EA's total portfolio in the next 12 to 18 months, from about 30% today, and create at least one new franchise a year. The company is aggressively snapping up marquee talent ranging from award-winning game designer Doug Church to movie director Steven Spielberg, who will consult on the story lines of three original games. It is also building a brand-new development studio in Montreal that will focus entirely on cooking up new, original titles. With some $3 billion in cash and zero debt, EA is also eager to acquire independent studios.
At the heart of the Redwood City (Calif.) company's mission is figuring out how to inject creativity into its 6,100-employee operation without losing control. Most development houses typically rely on tightly knit groups of 40 or so programmers, artists, and designers, who focus on one game from start to finish for 12 to 18 months. Many such studios are wholly owned by large game publishers but have tremendous autonomy. And these little outfits have created some of the most imaginative and best-selling games today, from the Grand Theft Auto series, which came out of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO ) subsidiary Rockstar North (TTWO ), to Halo, which was created by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT )-owned studio Bungie. Studios in this model "create an environment where creative control goes without question, and the voices around the table are all supporting the same vision," says John Riccitiello, a former
http://www.thesporezone.co.uk/screens/index.php?ID =1
http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The video links people are posting are about a year old. So yeah, they're cool, but they're nothing new, and we haven't heard a peep about the game since then.
All along, they've been saying "winter 2006" as a release. I think everyone was hoping that would mean Q1, but Q4 2006 seems to be the target.
Knowing Wright, though, he won't let it out the door until he feels it's done completely, so it may be later.
It's really something new. If you watch the demonstration, this game is basically many games in one. You start off as a microbe basically eating other micro-organisms in order to gain strength or points or whatever and trying not to get killed by other microbes. As you evolve you eventually go from bacteria->sea creature->land creature, then after you are finished that evolution, tribes form allowing you to have control over the tribe. After this cities form and a civ like game goes on. After you have populated the whole world you can leave your home planet and populate others. Magnificent. The most impressive bit had to have been when I saw him drop a creature from one planet onto a moon and the creature simply exploded because the moon had no atmosphere. Then there's the fact that this will use an online database to link up everyone's creatures and try to maintain an eco system. I mean, I honestly think this game is a little bit more than a "sim" something. It's more like a computer incarnation of the living breathing thing, maybe a little sillier looking, but very scaled and nice otherwise.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
It's homo sapiens, which is Latin for wise man. Homosapien doesn't even really make sense. (Sorry, I need to make my study of classics useful)...
err, registration?? pfff... no need to waste your time.
http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=www.pqhp.com
have fun...
I watched the shorter length google movie, and that was addressed towards the end. He says that when your civilization(s) advance enough, that manipulation of creatures is possible, and that when you get to that stage of the game most of the editors are freely available (i.e. that you don't have to follow the usual rules that drive evolution in the game, feeding, reproduction)
It certainly looks and sounds as if you can micromanage to your heart's content once you get to that point, including growing new colonies, managing old ones, creating new ecologies, etc.
Maybe it's not open ended, if you take the definition of "open ended" to not include growing, and becoming better... Who knows where evolution is supposed to take us, maybe we're supposed to transcend our existence beyond what we can imagine, maybe we're meant to roam the stars, and maybe we're supposed to stay. It looks open ended from our view, but if you had the perspective of some enlightened, omniscient being, our existence might not look open ended. It might look like a continuation of many, many stages. I'd say that this game appears to be as open ended as the player wants to make it.
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