From the video footage and fact sheets I've seen on Spore, it looks like one of the best things to come out of Maxis since SIM Copter.
It is unfortunate that in recent years Maxis has been a pawn to EA's money-hungry ways. Don't get me wrong, The Sims is an amazingly popular franchise that holds a special place in many peoples' lives (I personally like to find the most creative ways to kill my Sims). Other then The Sims and the continuation of SIM City, Maxis has been off the map.
EA has been known to latch on to good concepts and release sequel after sequel after painfully repetitive sequel. It's refreshing to see something new coming out of their publishing doors. I am glad to see the creative genius that is Will Wright being set loose on a new project, one that will change the way we look at sandbox games, something Maxis seems to be good at.
You have a valid point, that its all personal opinion. I enjoyed the side-bar, it allowed for easy access to build units from anywhere, and made the feature of construction/training rally points a lot more useful.
I've been a fan of the sci-fi stuff, so again, all personal prerference.
C&C Generals didn't have as much of a following as the original C&C games. I found it had more of a Warcraft 3 feel then a classic C&C game, which was a turn-off for some players such as me. It was also the first RTS game published since EA's assimilation of Westwood, and was under a different director.
Westwood is now just a shell of the company it once was, since a lot of the staff have moved on to other projects. I hope whoever is left at the development house knows how to design with the same concepts that started the franchise.
Going back to its roots is something I think this series needs to do. Red Alert 2 was the name's last huge success, and the bad sales of Renegade and the mediocre response to Generals should show that a new direction is needed.
Japan and North America are two different markets. Japan is a very interesting testing ground for new concepts and ideas. North America relies on a more tried-and-tested methodology. In the end this leaves North American and even European gamers is a stagnant rut of the same-old concepts continually rehashed and re-released.
Japan is what is keeping creativity in the industry, because companies know that whatever they make will sell to some success over there as long as its not foreign. Foreign meaning Microsoft, mostly. In North America, we see games made for our market fail miserably (Mark Ecko's Getting Up, for example) when some new ideas and brought forth.
It's not an end-all equation, but the people wearing suits in the game industry want to make money and Americans will buy the same thing repeatedly again and again. Sell them what sells, you'll do fine. Or will you? The American market is now so saturated with the same ideas that without any fresh ideas and concepts the market may crash. That's only speculation, though.
"software glitch"? Right. That's the most pathetic attempt at damage control I've seen in quite a while. I do agree that something has to be done about unwanted e-mails that keep flooding my inbox (my main e-mail address gets about 300 such e-mails a day) but AOL is driving down a road that will further alienate them from their users. By pulling stunts like this, they clearly demonstrate their motives as benefiting themselves and not the customers.
This does not bode well for the acceptance of e-mail tax. As if the general public wasn't against it in the first place.
Wal-Mart has had this impact on developers and publishers for quite some time. One of the most publicized occurrences was with BMX XXX - Wal-Mart didn't want to sell it because of its nature, so they toned it down to fit within Wal-Mart standards. It is unfortunate that one company with so much buying power runs the market.
Gamestop is second though, with their recent merger with EB Games. But that's like comparing Godzilla to Oprah. You don't want to make either of them mad, but only one of them is powerful enough to destroy the planet. unless... http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Oprahsaurus.jpg
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From the video footage and fact sheets I've seen on Spore, it looks like one of the best things to come out of Maxis since SIM Copter.
It is unfortunate that in recent years Maxis has been a pawn to EA's money-hungry ways. Don't get me wrong, The Sims is an amazingly popular franchise that holds a special place in many peoples' lives (I personally like to find the most creative ways to kill my Sims). Other then The Sims and the continuation of SIM City, Maxis has been off the map.
EA has been known to latch on to good concepts and release sequel after sequel after painfully repetitive sequel. It's refreshing to see something new coming out of their publishing doors. I am glad to see the creative genius that is Will Wright being set loose on a new project, one that will change the way we look at sandbox games, something Maxis seems to be good at.
You have a valid point, that its all personal opinion. I enjoyed the side-bar, it allowed for easy access to build units from anywhere, and made the feature of construction/training rally points a lot more useful. I've been a fan of the sci-fi stuff, so again, all personal prerference.
C&C Generals didn't have as much of a following as the original C&C games. I found it had more of a Warcraft 3 feel then a classic C&C game, which was a turn-off for some players such as me. It was also the first RTS game published since EA's assimilation of Westwood, and was under a different director.
Westwood is now just a shell of the company it once was, since a lot of the staff have moved on to other projects. I hope whoever is left at the development house knows how to design with the same concepts that started the franchise.
Going back to its roots is something I think this series needs to do. Red Alert 2 was the name's last huge success, and the bad sales of Renegade and the mediocre response to Generals should show that a new direction is needed.
Japan and North America are two different markets. Japan is a very interesting testing ground for new concepts and ideas. North America relies on a more tried-and-tested methodology. In the end this leaves North American and even European gamers is a stagnant rut of the same-old concepts continually rehashed and re-released.
Japan is what is keeping creativity in the industry, because companies know that whatever they make will sell to some success over there as long as its not foreign. Foreign meaning Microsoft, mostly. In North America, we see games made for our market fail miserably (Mark Ecko's Getting Up, for example) when some new ideas and brought forth.
It's not an end-all equation, but the people wearing suits in the game industry want to make money and Americans will buy the same thing repeatedly again and again. Sell them what sells, you'll do fine. Or will you? The American market is now so saturated with the same ideas that without any fresh ideas and concepts the market may crash. That's only speculation, though.
Viva la Revolution.
"software glitch"? Right. That's the most pathetic attempt at damage control I've seen in quite a while. I do agree that something has to be done about unwanted e-mails that keep flooding my inbox (my main e-mail address gets about 300 such e-mails a day) but AOL is driving down a road that will further alienate them from their users. By pulling stunts like this, they clearly demonstrate their motives as benefiting themselves and not the customers.
This does not bode well for the acceptance of e-mail tax. As if the general public wasn't against it in the first place.
Wal-Mart has had this impact on developers and publishers for quite some time. One of the most publicized occurrences was with BMX XXX - Wal-Mart didn't want to sell it because of its nature, so they toned it down to fit within Wal-Mart standards. It is unfortunate that one company with so much buying power runs the market. Gamestop is second though, with their recent merger with EB Games. But that's like comparing Godzilla to Oprah. You don't want to make either of them mad, but only one of them is powerful enough to destroy the planet. unless... http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Oprahsaurus.jpg
When then pen it into law that companies can look inside of out machine to "fix" problems, does that mean it is illegal to prevent them from doing so?