Why Spore Is Special

The New York Times is running a long piece by Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." In 'The Long Zoom', Johnson describes just what is so special about Will Wright's Spore . From the article: "Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."

Comments

Please stop the Hype

[HappySqurriel]

"Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."

With such simple, easy to obtain, objective like that I'm sure they will have absolutely no problem living up to people's expectations. After all claiming a compeletly open gameplay experience was easily obtained by Diakatana, and Black and White certainly lived up to people's expectations of a trainable, inteligent agent.

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well.

... or it'll keep them glued to their computers because it's much more conveniently fun than "the real world."

Get Real...

[XenoPhage]

And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well.

Yeah.. sure.. Let's get real..

Spore looks really cool and I'll be more than happy to play it for a few hours (assuming it truly is as engaging as it looks), but the first thing going through my mind was now "Wow, this has taught me that I can shape the universe," but something more along the lines of "Whoa.. I wonder if I can make a creature that kills everything on sight."

Hrm.. maybe there is something to this video games promotes violence thing...

I call bollocks

[Captain Splendid]

I'm as optimistic as the next guy, but to think a videogame will make us more aware and caring about our environment is just pure shit. We have a plethora of other mediums all telling us this and we're still not listening, what makes him think a game can do it?

Firsthand?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions.

No they won't. Spore is...um...for want of a better word, fiction. The dynamics of the game have been tweaked to behave this way. There's no 'firsthand' experience of 'global repercussions'. If a bunch of major polluting companies decided to release an ecological game in which the effects of any decision were always purely local could we expect Fox News to report how players could experience, firsthand, the robustness of nature against human interference?

Now if spore was built as an accurate simulation based on parameters measured out in nature, maybe one could argue that we were experiencing 'firsthand'. Otherwise this is just nonsense.