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Spore Stats

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Re: Spore Stats

#71

Post by PsylentKnight »

I enjoyed Spore a lot. I never saw any of the apparently overhyped marketing, so there were no disappointments for me there. I will admit the gameplay itself was pretty flat - I probably played through the whole game, which was pretty short, only 3 or 4 times. But I'm surprised no one has mentioned the creators, which I think were the really interesting part of the game. They were essentially 3D modelers that were constrained enough that a kid (and I was a kid) could easily use them. I had a ton of fun pushing these creators to their limits.

The Galactic Adventures DLC had an "adventure creator" where you could create simple scenarios with your other creations. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was my first exposure to programming. It really lit my imagination on fire and got me interested in game development, and is ultimately how I ended up as a programmer.

Such was my love for this game, I ended up getting involved in the Spore forum ("The Sporum", ha). Strangely enough, one of the official boards was "Creationism vs. Evolution", or CvE as it was known by the forum's denizens. I grew up in a deeply rural and fundamentalist area, so CvE was my first real exposure to the beliefs of the other side, rather than the strawmen the church presented. I argued sincerely on the side of Creationism and got handily defeated by facts and logic many times. It didn't fully change my mind at the time, but it planted the seeds of deprogramming.

So in a way, this game that was so disappointing for many has a lot of personal significance to me. It had a big influence on my personal beliefs and my career. Thanks I guess, Will Wright.

Re: Spore Stats

#72

Post by acdha »

ehnto wrote: post #18
guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

It's usually not the developers fault, games media exploits hype from ferverent speculation to the point where even the things unsaid become evidence for features that don't exist. It doesn't happen to every game just like not every video goes viral, but if the community picks your game to be next life changing event in their lives you will 100% disappoint them. It's been getting worse over the years and I basically…

The big game studios set that narrative entirely for marketing purposes. They make hugely expensive games and expect epic profits so they want things to be hyped up “must buy” phenomena rather than slow growing, similar to how Hollywood focuses on the opening weekend sales.

If they wanted to change this it’d be easy to fun smaller games (or ones with less expensive assets), release them only when they’re completed, and pitch them realistically to the press … but then they’d be targeting modest profits and their executives wouldn’t be getting yachts. It seems similar to how the VC model encourages failures trying to turn every concept into a unicorn.

Re: Spore Stats

#73

Post by ilyt »

guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

That game stopped me from being hyped for video game releases after.

Re: Spore Stats

#74

Post by acdha »

mattl wrote: post #62
guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

I remember the DRM ruining it to the point where it was unusable. Or was that the new Sim City?

That was Spore - and the DRM was an issue even when the game wasn’t running. I had an iMac I chose to wipe & reinstall rather than play whack-a-mole deleting its kernel extensions and background processes.

Re: Spore Stats

#75

Post by ilyt »

SilverBirch wrote: post #26
guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

It's funny I actually had it in my head that this game was from Molyneux because it so overpromised and under-deliverd. It was a good game, but it essentially had 5(?) sections - amoeba, hunter, community, city builder, and spaceship. Each of those sections can be done as a single stand alone full budget game. Imagine if Spore had released with FTL as it's spaceship stage? And Cities Skylines as it's city builder? Th…

That's why I'm always cautious when game developer advertise "game within a game" like this.

More modern examples would be both Pathfinder games with mediocre kingdom management minigame in first, and bad HoMM clone in the second. Thankfully the main game was still good.

On other side there are games that successfully pulled it but usually it's a some simple-but-satisfying minigame, not some big element of the game.

Re: Spore Stats

#76

Post by ilyt »

qamorgan wrote: post #50
guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

A professor of mine once succinctly summarized that principle as: Success = Outcomes / Expectations

game that was expected to be shit and turned out to be shit is not a success

Re: Spore Stats

#77

Post by ilyt »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #68

People who aren’t old enough won’t understand how much hype this game had. I’m in my 30’s and still to this day no game has been more hyped and flopped for myself than spore. The interesting part is had they went ahead with the “scientific” and realistic route, I’d bet the game would have sold so much more.

Yup. As teenager back then I stopped being hyped for video games as much after that, such a disappointment.

Re: Spore Stats

#78

Post by ChoGGi »

guidedlight wrote: post #6

Oh, Spore. That game was hyped so much, given it was designed by none other than Will Wright it previewed like it would be the most amazing game ever made. Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. It's a good example of how it is important to temper your customer's expectations regardless if you believe you have a solid product, as you may inadvertently set expectations higher tha…

> as you may inadvertently set expectations higher than you can possibly achieve

The expectations were mostly from the GDC video, I believe?

Gameplay starts around 12:30:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6YWVTURU

Re: Spore Stats

#79

Post by ilyt »

Pxtl wrote: post #67

I'm always disappointed the tech behind Spore hasn't gotten more use. I mean, Spore the game was bad, but Spore the system where players could build any kind of animal and vehicle in easy user-friendly tools? Why didn't that take off in other games? The only spin-off was Darkspore which flopped.

...probably because the spin-off flopped

Also still need to invent fun game to do with your created monstrosities.

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