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Evolutionary Scientists Test-Drive Spore, Gripe
ahab_2001 writes "The computer game Spore has been marketed partly as an experience that makes evolutionary biology come alive in a game setting. But does that claim hold water? To find out, John Bohannon, a correspondent for Science Magazine (writing as 'The Gonzo Scientist'), sat four card-carrying scientists, ranging from evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge to JPL astrophysicist Miles Smith, down in front of a terminal to play the game. The upshot, says Bohannon: Spore flunks basic science, getting 'most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong.'"
Reminds me of some decade ago or so, when someone warned that the stone age wasn't like in The Flintstones. I never would have guessed ;)
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Doesn't spore teach much much more about the idea of creationism (under the form of 'guided evolution') than it does about true evolution?
If you want to teach about evolution, make an RTS where everyone starts out with the same units, but depending on how you use them (and which units come back alive) they change over time. Still guided evolution I guess, since you could put your units in situations that would produce traits that you desire, but at least a few steps up the ladder of scientific validity.
But it is a user driven game, and natural selection takes too long. Its more fun to let the user make a creature which is not even remotely adapted to its environment and just pretend that selection pressures don't exist. Otherwise the likelyhood of getting a creature to the "tribe" level, or even just past the "cell" level aren't very good.
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Well, I think the main point is that "Evolution" in spore is not driven by Natural Selection at all, but rather by the whims of the user, or at least changes are made in way that the user perceives will help them be successful in the game.
If anything, Spore gets right (in a very broad definition of the term) the different possible eras of evolution. Cell to pack to tribe to city to space-faring civiliation. And that only parallels advanced intelligent civilizations.
Some species have evolved so well to fit a niche (like Honeybees) that they haven't evolved that much.
If anything, I would say that Spore is part of an experience that makes "Intelligent Design" come alive in a game setting! After all, it's the user who's "designing" the creature! ;)
I wonder how that would be for marketingspeak!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Not everyone who believes in a higher power (and by extension, that life has value)
Huh?
Why does NOT having a higher power deprive life of value?
And if life has no value intrinsically, then why does a higher power "give" it any value at all?
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=199
I get the feeling that Spore originally was meant to be more but Maxis has always had trouble delivering. SimCity of course were amazing games. For their time. It is the reason the francise died. Because as it aged, the graphics improved but the quality of the simulation didn't and we as players became aware that more was needed. More paths, more options, more choice. Instead SimCity and the likes have always had a rather narrow path to victory and if veered of that path, the game model couldn't cope.
Spore is perhaps the greatest failure. It seems originally to have been a game about evolution or at least to use evolution.
There have been games in this nature before, so it can be done. I remember an ancient game that used clay-motion animation for its creatures that allowed you to breed creatures and cull them to get the ones best suited to their enviroment.
But there is NOTHING of that in this game. As the article mentions, antlers on your back help you charge skill. You charge backwards?
There is just one TINY hint at the slightest possibilty of evolution, fruits. If you are small, you can only reach fallen fruit, if you are tall, you can get the highest fruits. There is no difference in the fruits but it is the one and only time the build of your creature seems to matter.
The rest of the time, it just don't matter. You can't even make a monster eater with a dozen mouths that devours everything in its path, or a super defensive creature because multiple items don't stack their bonusses.
The game just completly failed to live up to its early promises. I get the feeling Will Wright is following in Molyneux's footsteps. Once a person who made innovative and fun game but one who increasingly just can't deliver on his promises.
To bad because a game that uses evolution to judge your creationism could be a lot of fun.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Are you serious?
You guys have taken a game ... thats it, nothing more than a game, that no one in their right mind would consider to be based on anything scientific or religous and turned it into an evolution versus intelligent design thing?
For fucks sake, not everything is about advancing some agenda that you don't agree with. Put your damn tin foil hats back on and crawl back into your fucked up world of conspiracies instead of talking to those of us in the normal world.
Its just a damn game, nothing more.
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Saying its the "ultimate authority on morals" is not enough to explain why they should care about what he thinks. Why should they accept, rather than reject morals?
Its not enough to have a god that cares about life so that life would have value. You have to accept that god's values as your own, to inherit the view that life has value.
So why not skip the god part, and accept the view life has value without all the god mumbo jumbo?
I managed to get through your response despite its combativeness.
I'd like to school you on "science" and "science fiction", because you've made an error in your assessment, a fairly major one.
There's a difference in literary terms between "hard science fiction" and "soft science fiction". Star Trek falls under the category of "hard science fiction", as does almost everything by Isaac Asimov. Hard science fiction is science fiction that is as heavily based in science FACT as is possible. While Star Trek may be a little "softer" than Foundation, it still falls squarely in the genre of "hard science fiction" and deserves to be treated as such.
That said, "soft science fiction" is just as valuble in literary terms--its simply a slightly different genre. Soft science fiction includes authors like Phillip K. Dick (Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Ubik) and Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine). Soft science fiction sacrifices scientific fact for much weightier raw speculation, and generally uses this speculation to spawn plots and plot devices. _Dune_ is an excellent example of soft science fiction in this manner.
All of THAT said, the game is neither soft nor hard science fiction, it's just intelligent design masquerading as fun (and not very well at that). The reason that it's very important to understand this is that currently a very small number of very, very loud people are actually getting laws passed in the United States (and elsewhere) which are rooted firmly in the ethic of "ID". This is horrifying to me and all free-thinking people, and must be stopped at once. Shining a very clear light on suspicions of ID prattle in video games (and elsewhere) is important to start a dialog about it.
But you're not taking part of a dialog. In your assessment of some of our arguments as "blah blah bla whine whine whine", you yourself have become the biggest whiner of all.
But thanks for the irony.