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Spore Stats

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Re: Spore Stats

#81

Post by Ekaros »

grubbs wrote: post #23
stavros wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers expected even more. Gamers expected what was presented in the initial demo. A really dynamic world that changed depending on your creature's abilities, a sandbox game where you could affect things by designing different types of creatures. All this was scrapped, and what was developed was very different than what was shown in the early prototype demo: https:…

I remember playing this game quite a bit instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)

And an other that hugely disappointed when compared to hype. It had entire multi-year series of columns hyping it selling all kinds of various ideas and other stuff. With most of them ending half-baked and poorly done...

Re: Spore Stats

#82

Post by Ekaros »

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.

Black & White is other one I saw hyped... Outside the hype, it was at least somewhat interesting.

Re: Spore Stats

#83

Post by raincole »

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…

Using FTL as an example of "stand alone full budget game" is quite weird.

I mean it's a good game but...

Re: Spore Stats

#84

Post by Andrex »

ethbr0 wrote: post #34
jeroenhd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were plenty of good gameplay loops, they just didn't get enough time and development. Spore's biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is that there's not enough of it. The creature stage is interesting and fun, partially because it lasts long and there's an exploration element. Then you get to the tribal stage and the second tribal stage but with cars and honestly I kind of just rush through that. Then you get to t…

The right way to do this is what Jane's / EA started in 1999 -- individual games that contain code to hook into a unified larger world. It would have been branded "Jane's World War" and shipped with every subsequent sim game, allowing different sim gamers to participate in the same conflict at the same time, from different perspectives. https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/04/29/janes-world-war Sadly, the sim market cra…

That idea is so cool. Eve and Dust got a lot of hype for something similar but I never followed up on how it ended up working out.

Re: Spore Stats

#85

Post by roughly »

lightedman wrote: post #69

Hey, the only game I sued over (and won!) I wouldn't touch that game after the DRM in that garbage screwed with my GPU (9800GTX+ suddenly no longer to utilize 16:9 resolutions) and my DVD drive writing capability was wiped out, both immediately after installing the Spore Creature Creator. EA got smacked really hard in that courtroom. They settled immediately.

I’d forgotten about the DRM! I think that was another significant contributor to the game’s lack of commercial success - it came with this horribly onerous & invasive DRM system/root kit (that affected game performance too, as I recall), and was naturally cracked and available unencumbered online day 2. I know I’m not the only one who would’ve paid money for it without that, but as was, I downloaded it.

Re: Spore Stats

#86

Post by NeoTar »

pmarreck wrote: post #42

How many of those creations were phallic though?

This may be just a rumour, but I heard that there was a big community of moderators on the search for penises for the online interactions

Re: Spore Stats

#87

Post by toast0 »

delusional wrote: post #11
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…

Spore wasn't really a victim of high expectation, but rather a cool ambitious idea that just didn't work as a game. Unlike many others, I think the game they delivered matched very well to what they demoed. The issue was that it just didn't congeal into a game. The sacrifices they did have to make (making it linear and limiting the freeform sandbox aspects) were necessary to make it a game at all. The ambitious "this…

> Unlike many others, I think the game they delivered matched very well to what they demoed.

That's not really enough. If you watch The Fountain, it's pretty much the same as the trailer. But while it's a great trailer, it's a terrible movie. There's an expectation that a demo shows parts of a game, and the finished product will be more and cohesive. Spore really wasn't cohesive, but imagining the parts demoed as a cohesive game was super compelling.

One of a couple lessons from that time that have me pretty much sworn off pre-ordering things. Or at least pre-ordering things without predicting my feelings if the product isn't great and being ok with that (hello Looking Glass Portrait)

Re: Spore Stats

#88

Post by [deleted] »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #56
tharkun__ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spore is the only game I ever actually sold. It was just so bad and boring. The first stage was the most fun and felt too short. The space exploration part was so tedious and boring I just restarted the game a few times to play the fun parts. Then I sold the game.

I agree, I also likes the first part the most. But it wasn't that amazing either, it was just barely good as opposed to the rest of the game. 1st part: Cell - on the level of free Kongregate/Newsgrounds flash games, except with better graphics. Later an online game agar.io came out which I find better in regards to challenge, fun, replayability. 2nd part: Evolution - Very basic MMORPG, except single-player (the mmo p…

[deleted]

Re: Spore Stats

#89

Post by starkparker »

ilyt wrote: post #75
SilverBirch wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sid Meier learned that lesson, though the game he learned it in (Covert Action) remains one of my all-time favorites, up there with XCOM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Covert_Action#De...

> The mistake I think I made in Covert Action is actually having two games in there kind of competing with each other. There was kind of an action game where you break into a building and do all sorts of picking up clues and things like that, and then there was the story which involved a plot where you had to figure out who the mastermind was and the different roles and what cities they were in, and it was a kind of an involved mystery-type plot. ... In Pirates!, you would do a sword fight or a ship battle, and a minute or two later, you were kind of back on your way. In Covert Action, you'd spend ten minutes or so of real time in a mission, and by the time you got out of [the mission], you had no idea of what was going on in the world.

> So I call it the "Covert Action Rule". Don't try to do too many games in one package. And that's actually done me a lot of good. You can look at the games I've done since Civilization, and there's always opportunities to throw in more stuff. When two units get together in Civilization and have a battle, why don't we drop out to a war game and spend ten minutes or so in duking out this battle? Well, the Covert Action Rule. Focus on what the game is.

Re: Spore Stats

#90

Post by Mezzie »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #45

As dumb as it sounds, I think I didn’t like it because it was too “Will Wrightish”. Felt more like Sim City than The Sims. Sim City was too brainy, my 10 yr old self didn’t want to do homework about power/water resources. The Sims was a complete sandbox. Spore wasn’t brainy, but I expected it to be more free form. The 4 stage concept kills any reply value because there’s not much left to be curious about. The creatur…

> Sim City was too brainy, my 10 yr old self didn’t want to do homework about power/water resources.

Aw, I always thought those were the best parts (my 4 year old self fucking loved the SimEarth manual - the one that went into detail about things like prokaryotes vs. eukaryotes - and there was a giant SC2K strategy book that was The Best) and didn't like Spore because it wasn't Will Wright enough.

Which was probably the problem: It didn't know which audience it was going for. The Sims was great because you could go as deep as you wanted. Like in the Sims 2 I had about 200 unique genetic markers all arranged in a very complex inheritance system, but you didn't need to do that. Whereas with a lot of the Maxis games you did have to and that's what you've identified here that I never really thought about.

Did you ever play any of the 90s Maxis Kids games? I'd be curious what you thought of them - especially something like Sim Town.

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