What Spore May Spawn

ches_grin writes with "A new look at Spore, including a slideshow that examines the broad influence that the game is expected to exert on fields ranging from law to education. From the article: 'Spore's unprecedented level of user-generated content is sure to send ripple effects through and beyond the video-game world. Could the mass-market game provide the tipping point for the burgeoning retail trend of mass customization? How will it redefine the roles of game designers and publishers alike? We asked a variety of experts to predict the economic, educational, legal, and other effects of the game.'"

Comments

None of the above

[MuNansen]

Because like all Will Wright games, people will try it and admire it for its creativity and inventiveness, and then go play something else that's a good deal more fun.

Re:None of the above

[Bodrius]

This may be moderated as funny, but if you replace 'people' with 'gamers', I think it is quite correct.

The interesting thing is that his target hasn't been 'gamers' for a while, if ever.

And I still see non-gamers playing with their Sims and virtual doll-houses longer than I could think humanly enjoyable.
They don't play his games because of his creativity, inventiveness and reputation. They don't have any idea who Will Wright is, and to be honest, they would never call the Sims 'creative' or 'inventive' in any way.

They still play it because it is just a game, and they enjoy playing it.
And maybe because they didn't have to spend a quarter of their free time honing reflexes and virtual skillz to 'p0wn and not be p0wned'.

Yeh Right

[Anonymous Coward]

This game will dissapoint in much the same way Black and White promised us the world and turned out slightly dull.

Videos of Gameplay

[se7en11]

These videos might prove to give you a better idea of what the game is all about.

If Robin Williams likes the game, it must be good. ;)

Easy to read page

[RickPartin]

Nice clean printer friendly version. Yum. http://www.businessweek.com/print/innovate/content /jul2006/id20060720_289503.htm

The jury's out...

[retro128]

It sounds cool and looks cool, but I want to get my hands on it before I decide. I hope it's not like Wil's other games where it's fun in the beginning but then just gets tedious as you get farther along. The Sims was fun for me at first, but I ended up hating it because all I ended up doing was chasing the stats instead of doing cool stuff like putting them in unique predicaments. Those damned Sims have to hit the can more than my girlfriend.

With that said, even if Spore isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be, I'm hoping it will spawn a new class of games that use procedurally generated content for some incredibly unique gaming experiences.

Here's my prediction

[Chris_Jefferson]

Spore will turn out to be a good idea, but have the odd spot of poor execution. There won't actually be that many ways in which you can evolve creatures, and there will be fairly obviously fixed levels where you progress to another level of evolution. The game when first released will work poorly, and require a series of patches. The CD copy protection will be annoying. There will be many expansion packs.

Don't get me wrong, I think Will Wright is great, and I think this game will be too. But I don't think it's going to "change the face of gaming", any more than the sim, simcity Psychonauts did (sure a lot of people bought the sims, but has it really effected anything else?)

Customization is King

[drinkypoo]

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but gamers want to interact with their environment. How long have we been screaming for fully deformable terrain? When I miss someone with a rocket launcher I want it to take out the fucking wall. Granted the technology hasn't been there, so it's understandable it's taken this long for even a few games to do such a thing.

If you look around, just about every multiplayer game has some customization. At the lower end, you can usually pick colors. At the upper end, you have... Well, Spore :) Somewhere in the middle you have custom models, custom skins, tags, decals.

But also, keep in mind that customization is the difference between good and great in a lot of genres. Sure, I still love Civilization 2, and play it. (Civ 3, on the other hand, I found to be ugly, with muddy graphics.) But Alpha Centauri keeps me captivated far longer, mostly because of all the things you can do with customizing units and so on.

Gamers want control. Otherwise they could go live life, where you have much less of it. :)

Will Wright sent by aliens to neutralize us!

[StefanJ]

Really. No kidding. The Mutual Interdiction Service of the m'Guhk Meld and the Federation of Eight and the One sent him to neutralize future competition.

Here, read this:

I suggest a different, even darker solution to the [Fermi] Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don't blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they're too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don't need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain's ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels...ever so good.

More:

Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens

Moreover: Battlebots viewers with long memories may recall that Wright's daughter built at least one entry for the robot combat game. No doubt as part of a contingency plan to eliminate those who try to avoid the Games.

Stefan

Who the FUCK tagged this "hype"?

[I Like Pudding]

I am the most jaded gamer you can find, but this is a Will Wright game. WILL FUCKING WRIGHT. You know how American McGee get's his name plastered inexplicably onto shipping product? That's hype. Contrast that with a totally white box, save for the words "WILL WRIGHT MADE THIS" printed in bold on the front. That, my friends, is the closest thing you will get to guaranteed quality in the gaming industry.

Game-trained Apparatchiks

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Wright makes excellent games.

But there are severe problems using them as educational material.

SimCity's demolition is a case in point: $5 to bulldoze a city block. No fair market value, no Fifth Amendment (or the equivalent, if there are any), no neighborhood groups, no angry owner mounting a campaign against you.

Maybe it's prophecy, and Will Wright foretold what America will be like post-Kelo.

Now of course, there are hundreds of games which have valuable educational content. With an appropriate counter-bias, even SimCity could be educational.

But out-of-the-box, it trains people to become authoritarian apparatchiks.

In interests of fairness, I should say that I was a programmer at Maxis. We were supposed to make non-violent games. Those who say we succeeded just don't realize how violent totalitarianism is.