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Spore Almost Ready for Production, Complete With "Sporn"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the people-will-always-find-a-way dept.

It seems that there has been some backlash over questionable creature creation with the Spore creation tool. Some of this content has been cleverly and obviously nicknamed 'Sporn'. For better or worse, Spore's Producer Thomas Vu is saying the long-awaited game should be ready for production in about a week, keeping it on track for the announced September 7th release.

9 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. DRM? by Kamots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And... has there been any announcement in changes to DRM?

    I'll gladly give them my $50 if I get a game that'll stay a game.

    But when the single player aspects of a game will only work as long as the DRM servers are kept up... well... $50 for something that turns into a plastic coaster whenever EA wants seems just a tad excessive.

    1. Re:DRM? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And that changes what? That it will be working as long as there is Steam? Where's the difference, if I may ask?

      Even Steam being around forever doesn't mean the game will work forever. Let's assume for a moment that the whole parents' outcry crap hits the fans and Jack Thompson or some other loonie hypes it so far out of proportion that a court declares that hey, EA can turn the game off any time they want, so they have to.

      And snap.

      And then? Oh sure, if you can still find that receipt, you may even be allowed to get some other EA game as compensation. Now, I buy my games online, I don't even have a "real", physical receipt. And I buy EA games at a rate of about 1 every 10 years or so. Then again, I buy games at a rate of about one or two a year...

      Whatever you do, it all comes down to one single flaw: You buy a game, but EA retains the ability to disable your copy or all copies essentially at will whenever they either want to or are forced to for some reason. They could decide that you should have bought the game elsewhere, so your copy is invalid (see orange box for reference). They could decide that you created such a porn animal and thus for some reason your license is invalid (yeah, you can try to fight that out. Good luck). They could essentially pull whatever reason out of their ass and just disable your copy.

      Why, again, should I spend money to hang at EA's leading-string?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:DRM? by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 4, Insightful

      $50 for something that turns into a plastic coaster whenever EA wants seems just a tad excessive.

      Then you must hate going to the movies and paying $12 bucks for not even a coaster. I don't know about you but I judge the cost of entertainment based on, well, the entertainment aspect of it. For $50, you're not getting a cd, you're getting a certain amount of entertainment. I'm probably gonna be modded down as a DRM apologist, but Spore is probably the most anticipated game of this year and it's been in production for around 6 or 7 years. As such, it will also be the most pirated. The DRM will of course be cracked eventually, and probably pretty quickly, but I don't see anything wrong with trying to delay the piraters so they might actually go out and purchase the game.

      To some (like you), having the DRM on their disk will be inconvenient enough that they will wait for the crack. To others, not having a crack for the game immediately will be inconvenient enough for them to purchase it. Since regular people still don't even know what DRM is, I'm betting that the latter outnumbers the former, and that Microsoft made the most logical move.

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
    3. Re:DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah... because millions of people can't use XP anymore now that Vista is official. The DRM boogie man has killed XP. OHS NOES!!! Guess I'm the exception, because afaik, I'm still on XP and going just fine.

    4. Re:DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Padron the pedantry, but Spore was the most anticipated game three years ago, a highly anticipated game two years ago, an overdue and expected game last year, and an 'awaited' game this year.

  2. Wait for the screaming to start.... by sshuber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know that after this launches and little Johnny visits his friends planet with giant penii walking around and his Mom and Dad see it there is going to be a meltdown in the parent sector. I think if GTA San Andreas proves anything, it's fine for our children to shoot cops all day long and beat up hookers, but as soon as they get a glimpse of something sexual the parents' heads start spinning a la the Exorcist.

  3. What the British head censor said... by OmniGeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Screwed up? Yep, we've got lotsa that, all right.

    I recall reading, several years ago, an interview that the head of Britain's film censorship board gave on the occasion of his retirement (i.e, now that he was able to speak his mind freely without contradicting policies he was required to uphold). Basically, he said that he thought that, as regards media depictions, that sex was a fine and healthy thing for society, while violence wasn't. He thought that Britain (and societies in general) would do well to be less concerned with censoring sexual content, and more concerned with violent content.

    Now, while I thoroughly enjoy playing CS with a group of fellow forty-somethings who understand that IT'S JUST A GAME, I must say that I agree with that fellow's opinion. (I don't really know how to reconcile the inherent conflict here, BTW. )

    --

    "My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
  4. Re:Rule 34. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Everyone seems to love rule 34 but I wish more people would remember rules 1 and 2!

  5. Re:The only question worth asking: by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is despicable! A lot of people bitch about Steam, but the thing is it WORKS. I've been using it for three years and have never had a problem with any facet of it. And it's saved me a ton of time which would have been spent trying to find disks.

    If that's what EA did with their creature creator, I can only imagine the problems when the game itself is released. I usually go with a digital download of a game if it's available. But Spore's will apparently be with EA's Download Manager which, if what I read was correct, will A) give you no actual installable files so you can't burn anything to disk, and B) it's ONLY valid for six months. So if after six months you need to reinstall, you'll have to buy it again. Now I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere, but if the cap fits... And that certainly seems to go in with EA's strategy. I mean the CEO has said about monetizing the contents of the game. Clearly the game itself will be so if you need to reinstall and you downloaded it, EA gouge you again. Certainly fits the current EA business model.

    May as well just strike Spore off the list of games to buy this year. Will sit back and sit how this plays out. Given that Spore creatures seem to be downloadable as simple PNG files, I wonder if one could pirate the game and just use creatures that way?

    Whatever the case, I hope the pirates get this out before it's in stores, showing once again how pointless copy protection is. I used to pirate a lot in the late 80's and early 90's. I'm seriously at the point where EA is making me consider going back to that for titles like Spore. I'd still support indie developers, and companies like Stardock... (Even in the days when I was an avid pirate, I still bought games if they were any good. Sensible Software had so much money off of me...) The good guys and the small developers etc... They deserve the support.

    I saw this TV thing years ago. This guy is digging a hole in his basement to bury some pipes or something. His friends laugh and joke that it's to kill his wife and bury her. He defends himself and says it's for plumbing, but his friends get on him so much about it that eventually he snaps, kills his wife and buries her in said hole. That's pretty much how I feel about the likes of EA now. They've spent so long tacitly accusing me and many other of being thieves via their protection schemes that it may as well fulfill their prophecy. While it may not be morally or legally right, I challenge ANYONE to defend EA's practices.

    (Man, reading up on all this and writing after a mere 3 hours sleep is rough... Apologies for the rambling.)