Spore Editor Available June 17th

Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica heralds the coming of the creature editor for the highly anticipated Spore. A previously promised downloadable demo of the creature editor from the game, due on September 7th, will be available June 17th. Furthermore, a full version of the creature editor will appear as a standalone product at the same time for $10. According to EA: 'The demo lets players shape, paint and play with an unlimited number of creatures, using 25 percent of the creature-making parts from Spore. Gamers can then share these creations with their friends, including seamless uploads to YouTube.'"

Comments

Re:Will this be the most hyped game of all time?

[pandrijeczko]

I see this game as one that "could" bridge the gap between "The Sims" crowd and the rest of us.

You mean bridge that previously impassable void between adolescent giggling girl & overwieght middle-aged grumpy fat bloke? Impossible!

Re:money off the full game?

[CogDissident]

Actually, they have said that the reason they're releasing the creature editor early, is to populate the game with creatures (that we make) before the game comes out. So non-networked players will have species to play against from the start.

So they're actually being paid by us, to make content for their game. Which is actually kind of the premise of this game (for good or for ill, they count on people making their content for them).

Sounds like a great deal to me, personally

[patio11]

No offense to the starving college students in the audience, I was one once and I've been there, but: $10 is far, far below my care threshold these days. I'm a grown-up, I earn a salary, and $10 for an oodles-of-enjoyment toy is an absolute no-brainer for me even if it doesn't come with a discount for the actual game. Typically, nothing I buy for $10 is intended to last, anyhow. That doesn't even cover a sandwitch or movie ticket these days, and I can virtually guarantee that I will get more child-like glee out of that critter editor than I did out of seeing, e.g., Jumper.

(Maybe I can mock up that Anakin Skywalker guy, just so I can feed him to hungry predators.)

Re:fisher-price creatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

In short, What was M. C. Escher is now M. C. Hammer.

*has visions of parachute pants that appear to billow both outwards and inwards at the same time*

Re:Vaporware?

[Talderas]

Spore has generated a great deal of hype. But endless delays and brief glimpses of demos are starting to give this whole project the feel of vaporware. Far from it. Spore is finished, they are just in Beta-testing to work out all the kinks. The Spore we saw when Robin Williams created a creature, the Spore which Will Wright first demoed, is nothing like what it looks like now. September 7th is the release date, which is directly stated in the article. Call it Vaporware if you will, but in just over 4 months the world will suffer a slight productivity drop as many individuals start playing Spore.

Re:Hmm, let me guess...

[Talderas]

Conspiracy theory #2 is that they don't want to pay artists to create the models of things for the final launch, better to sell the useless editor and make people do the work for them.

Am I right? Or am I right? I would assume that Maxis is going to pick and choose from the user-generated creatures to put in release. I suspect there will also be some sort of method to identify you to your submission so if they end up using it in the game your name gets plastered on the credits. Heck, if you're really good with submissions, Maxis might come out and ask you to work for them.

People talk about how great OSS is, yet when the very same premise is put out there to develop content for game (albeit at $10 a participant), people bitch and moan about it. It's brilliant on Maxis's part. The developers and the team can focus on testing the game rather than creating content for it. It's a win-win situation for the end users.

Spore Wife

[hansamurai]

All my wife wants to do in Spore is make creatures, heck, all she does in the Sims is make us and then produce 10 spawns from "us". She's got a real bun in the oven now though, so maybe she'll get over this faze, but the whole point of this is: if I can spend 10 dollars to make her happy until we have to take care of a real spore, I'll take it.

Re:Hmm, let me guess...

[Snowmit]

Well, you're something.

From day 1 Will Wright has been saying that the content would be user generated, it's kind of the point of the whole 'procedural world' game play. Whenever people connect to the Internet with the game it will pull creatures that fit into your environment from a database of created creatures.

So where you see a conspiracy theory, I see a chance to mess around with the editor before the game comes out and for my creations to be some of the early creatures that are populated across the network.

Who wants to play with the editor? Me and people like me who really enjoy the creation half of video game play. We're the same people who spent hours customizing CJ in GTA:SA despite that fact that no one but us would ever see him.

We're not all of the players, to be sure. But we're enough of the players that this is probably a really great business move. EA gets more cash and I get something I want.

No arguments here!

My big concern

[rAiNsT0rm]

I have been awaiting Spore for quite a number of years, since I saw it demoed the first time in person, even though it really isn't a game I would normally enjoy. Since then I have had one massive concern which is already proving out... that I am going to be totally brought out of the experience with stupid/inappropriate user generated creatures.

Sure they can be marked offensive and eventually removed, but I will still have to play against boob-shaped creatures, and flying butts. Leave it to nerds to instantly go for the juvenile garbage. Even national gaming mags have pieces where they state they can't wait to make crap like that.

Ugh, I've lost my interest. Sorry EA this is going to be the downfall. Guaranteed.

Re:My big concern

[Dr. Eggman]

In demoing the Sporepedia, a card-like encyclopedia of user generated content, the creators have stated that creatures/veichles/buildings automatically added are based on a sort of dynamic filter created out of your own choices in creation/selection. So, if you do not want to see such things then you simply need not create/select them and they will end up at the bottom of the selection choices as more favorable selections are pushed up.

SimShow tool was released before The Sims

[SimHacker]

I wrote The Sims character animation for Maxis, and also a tool called "SimShow" that we released before the The Sims release date.

SimShow enabled players to view and create their own character skins, so that when The Sims was finally released, there were already web sites publishing hundreds of characters for the game. (Many of them would have been impossible for EA to legally publish themselves, like Spiderman, Star Trek characters, etc.)

The Sims was much to complex to release a demo version, because it required a critical mass of objects to work. We could not release a stripped down version with only a few objects or levels, like most other video games. Instead, by releasing a tool to create content instead of a hamstrung demo, it improved the game when it was eventually released, instead of delaying it.

That approach worked quite well for The Sims, so it's no wonder that EA is repeating it with Spore.

-Don