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."

Comments

GTA model

[Douglas Simmons]

I'm surprised to see people going in the opposite direction that GTA did insofar as raciness considering they had the most successful game. Perhaps it wasn't just GTA's R-ratedness that made it such a hit but the quality of the game itself, and it appears that EA and other companies agree if they're making games about microbes in lieu of cop/whore/pedestrian killer games.

Re:GTA model

[chrismcdirty]

Of course it's the openness of the game that made it so popular, and not the fact that it's outright offensive to a multitude of people. Custer's Revenge had plenty of sex and violence, and a handful of people remember playing it. The Sims, on the other hand, managed to be one of the top selling games of all time by being an open-ended game with no real ending point.

Good idea, misguided goal

[the grace of R'hllor]

"Innovative" and "franchise" are incompatible terms. A franchise, after all, is exploiting an existing idea, and is all about "same". A game like Spore, should it be succesful, will be succesful because it is unique, not because there are a zillion and one Spore-a-likes.

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

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Innovative" and "franchise" are incompatible terms. "

Wrong. See Super Mario Brothers.

it's about damn time

[rayde]

while i dutifully buy an EA football game once a year, i really think EA needs to move away from its dependency on existing franchises and follow Nintendo's lead by innovating into new gameplay ideas. Let's hope it's not just lip service.

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:Intelligent Design Simulator

[Cy Sperling]

Actually, I think it is quite the opposite. It makes a very compelling case for the mechanics of evolution. Granted, the player exerts a guiding hand over mutations, but the whole point of the game is to grow organisms from single cells all the way to intelligent extra-planetary species. This is achieved by progressive mutations that, hopefully, give the newer organsim an advantage in it's environment. Intelligent design proposes that fully-formed complex creatures simply sprang forth onto the earth from a 'designers' hand. The beauty of Spore is that you cannot create your creatures with the end result in mind. You start with a single cell and intervene with it's design at intervals based on it's ability to succeed in the environment. You would never get to simply sculpt an intelligent humanoid from clay, give it a soul and toss it out into the world. Instead your end-game form is dependant on a multidue of generational mutations which were each a reaction to a gradually changing environment. Add in the fact that the other creatures in your world can be comprised of the creations of other players and, if anything, you get polytheism- multiple creators whose 'children' compete for success in the universe.

Re:I think that boycott comes on other terms

[iamlucky13]

Guess EA can't win that one 'gainst the religious right, huh?

If you want to speak for the religious right, you should first consider joining it. I personally think it sounds like a cool idea for a game.

Re:Christian Backlash? I think not.

[Manmademan]

Speaking as a full-on, 100% bible-believing Christian, I very very much would like to play this game. It's a game. It's not the real world. In that way, I see no reason to ban it, or whatever. Now, if the game claimed (which it does not) to represent the exact same structure as creation on Earth, then that's something else.

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.