[HN Gopher] Spore Stats
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Spore Stats
Author : DangerousYams
Score : 148 points
Date : 2023-06-11 08:17 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spore.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spore.com)
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Spore was kind of a disappointment.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I want a modern sequel for this. It was so good. Making your
| little wigglebugs and then conquering the other wigglebugs and
| burning their towns and taking their women.
| samstave wrote:
| Spore with Subnautica style graphics would be nice.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Kinda what No Man's Sky is, but with more of an emphasis on
| creature discovery than evolution.
|
| I guess it's not _exactly_ the same thing, but I always look
| forward to the shitty RNG-based plants and animals it cooks
| up. It feels right out of a Will Wright game.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Last time I played Spore a long time ago, it was very limited and
| linear.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Will's original intention, which didn't really come to fruition
| in the final game, was that Spore would have a "T" shaped
| structure, where you start at the base of the "T" and work your
| way up to the top bar, like a guided tutorial.
|
| The top bar of the "T" is is a horizontal intergalactic
| storytelling game spanning all the other levels, that lets you
| swoop back down to the lower levels.
|
| But the swooping down part didn't really work, because it was
| hard to come up with scenarios, missions, and stories about
| unicellular organisms that were relevant to intergalactic
| civilizations (or players).
|
| So the layers tended to be isolated from each other, and not
| have direct or interesting effects on each other, because of
| their different physical and temporal and technological scales.
|
| The fact that each layer was developed by a different team also
| caused dependency problems that limited the possibility space,
| the way each layer had to made its own assumptions that would
| constrain the adjacent layers (a problem you wouldn't have if
| they were all independent games).
|
| And the storytelling aspect didn't work as well as it did with
| The Sims, which let you simply take screen snapshots and write
| captions and publish them on The Sims Exchange. That was
| because people know more about the interpersonal dynamics of
| families (or even cities) than unicellular organisms or
| intergalactic civilizations, so players have their own stories
| to tell and don't need much support from the game simulation
| itself.
|
| For example, there is no need to actually simulate or model the
| motivations or feelings of Sims characters when you're writing
| or acting out a story about them: That's all up to the player
| to use their imagination to fill in.
|
| But there just aren't as many interesting topics to write
| stories about in the higher and lower levels of Spore, that
| aren't focused on individual people or communities.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-future-of-content-will-wri...
|
| >T shaped game.
|
| >The base of the T is a goal oriented gaming.
|
| >The player first goes through a tutorial and sandbox to learn
| editing tools and game play at each level.
|
| >Player can eventually surf down to the lower levels.
|
| >Goal oriented game trains you to use all the editors and
| teaches you the simulation dynamics at every level, from bottom
| to top.
|
| >Once you get to the top you can surf vertically down into the
| other games, that you've learned to use on the way up.
|
| >At the top of the T is a collection of science fiction story
| genres, that take place on top of all of the lower levels.
|
| >Once you make your way all the way up from unicellular life to
| intergalactic civilization, the storytelling begins.
|
| >Pull out to galactics level, 10's of thousands of worlds.
|
| >Like the movie Powers to Ten.
|
| >Always wanted to roll this into a game.
|
| >SETI: Drake's equation: N = R fs fp ne fl fi fc L.
|
| >Each term of the equation correspond to different power of
| scale.
|
| >"Wright linked Drake's equation, which computes the
| probability of life occurring in the universe, with the long
| zoom of Eames' Powers of Ten film." -Chaim Gingold, A Brief
| History of Spore
|
| Chaim Gingold, A Brief History of Spore:
|
| http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/02/brief-history-of-spore...
|
| >Story
|
| >Spore's early concept had no structured sense of time or
| sequence. Would players begin by forming a stable galaxy,
| stars, planets, and then set to creating life? Or perhaps they
| would evolve life on a planet, hit it with some asteroids, and
| try to get panspermia to happen? Like a universe before a
| creation myth, Spore had no obvious beginning, middle, or end.
| Deciding the game would move through a handful of stages, from
| cells to creatures, up through civilization, and then into
| space exploration, was crucial to getting the game concept to
| gel, at a high level.
|
| >Structured narratives are unusual for Maxis games, but Spore's
| vast scope required a skeletal structure to hang the game off
| of. Besides, what story could be more appropriate than the
| evolution of life, and development of civilization? The story
| allowed both the developers and players to locate themselves in
| a narrative about the growth and expansion of life. It became
| possible to inhabit one phase of the game, and think about
| where you were coming from, and where you were off to. As
| developers, we could divide our efforts, and think about how
| the design grew out of the previous level, through this one,
| and into the next phase of the game. Even with this high level
| linear structure, Spore was still a monster project, in terms
| of scope. And, of course, by dividing our production effort
| into level based teams we set up any kind of inter-level design
| tradeoff and coordination to be an organizational hassle.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I really like that T shaped concept. It almost seems familiar
| to me, I may have ran across something about it at the time.
|
| I remember looking forward to the game for quite a while--
| then after release, when the reviews were so mixed, I lost
| interest. It didn't sound close enough to what I'd been
| reading about.
|
| This part seems key to me:
|
| > the layers tended to be isolated from each other, and not
| have direct or interesting effects on each other
|
| If that could be looked at more closely, reworked & resolved
| better, another attempt at executing the original vision
| might turn out to be worthwhile. I would love to see a team
| with enough expertise (and budget) give it a try.
|
| After seeing how No Man's Sky has evolved, it seems to me
| like Hello Games might be one possible strong contender. Or
| at least someone who was heavily involved with working on
| that title.
| vidarh wrote:
| When my son plays it, I think he spends the majority of the
| time on the creature creation rather than actually playing.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Same. The overall game itself is a bit meh, but it's fun
| creating different kinds of creature.
| __jonas wrote:
| when I played it extensively a as a kid, it was never about
| playing the actual 'game' part of it, the whole community
| emerged around creating things in the in game editor and
| sharing them.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And that is the whole point, how you win the game: become
| involved with the content creation community!
|
| The powerful but easy to use direct manipulation editor
| tools, the automatic content sharing system, and the online
| community around user created content, were together the most
| innovative and successful things about Spore. (As contrasted
| with the not as well realized gameplay and storytelling
| design goals.)
|
| Direct Manipulation Interface:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_manipulation_interface
|
| Chaim Gingold, A Brief History of Spore:
|
| http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/02/brief-history-of-
| spore...
|
| >Creativity
|
| >Of course, these aren't any old aliens we ask players to
| invest in -- they're your creation, your aliens. Once you
| start customizing, and design your creature, emotional
| investment is generated. It's magic. Even the ugly ones are
| loved by their parents. Many games thrive on the interest
| generated by players' creative investment. Console role
| playing games, for example, get this effect when players
| invest time in equipping and naming characters. I've always
| felt more attached to my characters as I fuss over their
| outfits and equipment. Creative interaction seems to always
| generate emotional involvement and attachment.
| Psychologically, it would seem that part of this stems from
| the sunk cost fallacy -- we become attached to things we've
| invested time and energy into. Of course, it's not just the
| hundreds of hours invested in a World of Warcraft character,
| their relationships, and possessions that generate
| attachment, it's the sense that our fabrications are
| extensions of ourselves. As recipients of our attention and
| creative energy, our handiworks are reflections of who we
| are, tangible manifestations of our personalities. It's no
| wonder we become attached to what we make, and take the
| success or failure of our own work and ideas very personally.
|
| >Spore neatly solves the alien attachment problem by asking
| the player to design them. If a player makes a creature, and
| it's appealing, they'll be quite invested in it. Reflecting
| on the success of The Sims Exchange, where players shared
| stories, characters, houses, and objects for The Sims, Will
| realized that shared creativity would give Spore a broader
| appeal. Why not build creative exchange into the game, rather
| than as a website that orbits it? Player created assets are
| constantly being uploaded and downloaded by Spore, enough
| material to fill a galaxy. There's nothing like taking home
| your latest finger painting, and having mom hang it on the
| fridge for everyone to see. Sharing not only fills up the
| galaxy with cool stuff, but allows the entire world to see
| your fridge, motivating you to continue creating.
|
| >Of course, a lot of deep magic must work properly for
| something like Spore's creature creator to function properly.
| It must be natural to use, easily producing satisfying
| results for anyone, from beginners to advanced users. And
| these aliens, lumps of polygons that no animator has ever
| seen before, must be brought to life. These are rather
| complicated endeavors, from a design, aesthetic, and
| technical point of view, but the player should never notice
| any of it. The game design implications are also challenging
| -- the game must be playable and interesting, regardless of
| the creatures dropped into it.
| ranguna wrote:
| I replayed it a few weeks ago and in terms of linearity, that's
| partially true. The game progress is pretty much set in stone,
| but you can chose how you play each stage, by being a diplomate
| or hostile (or a mix of both). Both options vary the game to
| some extent.
|
| I for one see this simplicity as a feature. Recent simulation
| games are waaaaaay too complicated, and although fun, they
| start to overload my head after a few 10s of hours played.
| Spore on the other hand, is part of the classic game era where
| the control nobs are simple, but the fun you take out of
| rotating each nob is immeasurable.
|
| If they do remake it, I hope they keep it simple.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| Yup. As teenager back then I stopped being hyped for video
| games as much after that, such a disappointment.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Black & White is other one I saw hyped... Outside the hype, it
| was at least somewhat interesting.
| lightedman wrote:
| 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.
| roughly wrote:
| 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.
| Cupprum wrote:
| Spore was the first game i ever played, so maybe thats why i
| liked it that much. I was still a kid back then. I think the
| target group of spore was younger than they originally planned
| for.
|
| However i must say, that i really did not like the DLCs, those
| were just weird. It seemed like Spore thought the community is
| going to create the content for the DLCs, which never happened.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I did not even know Spore had DLC's lol
| pierrec wrote:
| I love that the submission is a direct link to an API endpoint
| serving straight XML and no one seems to even notice, never
| change HN.
|
| The API seems to be documented here:
| https://www.spore.com/comm/samples
|
| Conspiracy theory: the documentation I just linked uses
| "MaxisDangerousYams" as an example user. The user who submitted
| this on HN is "DangerousYams". I guess we have a Spore dev here?
| [deleted]
| pmarreck wrote:
| How many of those creations were phallic though?
| ilyt wrote:
| 165M
| NeoTar wrote:
| 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
| gilbetron wrote:
| No spore thread is complete without the video of Robin Williams
| playing spore:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5TXEUiR1Xk
|
| (although it makes me a bit sad to post it)
| naillo wrote:
| At this point I feel like people should just feel free to remake
| clones (with improvements) of classic titles such as spore and
| other games that for some reason hasn't gotten a modern version
| or some kind of continuation. (15 years seems well outside the
| time where if nothing like it has appeared again, making improved
| clones shouldn't be discouraged.)
| joshuaissac wrote:
| For Spore, there is Thrive, an attempt at an open-source
| replacement: https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
| Pxtl wrote:
| 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| ...probably because the spin-off flopped
|
| Also still need to invent fun game to do with your created
| monstrosities.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| 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.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| I felt it was a bit underwhelming that when I traveled to the
| center of the galaxy and got that staff of life thing that
| instantly makes a planet level 3 habitable. The character that
| gives it to you tells you to find the 3rd planet from Sol
| (Earth). I found Earth, expecting another cutscene of some sort,
| but nothing happened. Earth was just a level 1 (if i recall
| correctly) habitable planet, so I used the staff to make it level
| 3 and then I just colonized it and kept it as my main base for a
| while.
|
| I didn't bother trying to kill all the Borg but I did manage to
| ally myself with them, which makes the rest of the galaxy your
| enemy.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| 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 creature creation was fun, but I
| don't remember my models having any unique behavior. At least
| nowhere near like The Sims where I could make them pee and cry
| >:)
| Mezzie wrote:
| > 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.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I guess to be fair, I was never a big Maxis fan lol.
|
| I briefly played just about all of them, but not enough to
| form an opinion.
|
| I found Streets of Sims to be my favorite because I always
| loved Twisted Metal and the extension to Sim city maps was
| really cool. Sim copter felt like well...a Sim and I really
| didn't know what that was when I was little, so they all just
| felt like boring intellectual games.
|
| I also touched Sim Towne, Sim Ant, and other weird stuff like
| that. Again, same feelings.
|
| It wasn't until I touched Roller Coaster Tycoon and Red Alert
| 2 that I REALLY got into rts games more.
| pickingdinner wrote:
| A few modern youtubers have great Spore videos. My 7yo wanted to
| play and I assumed it was going to be in the app store, just to
| find out it was a Windows game from 2012. An easy install through
| Steam though.
| JoshuaRedmond wrote:
| Spore was especially interesting if you used the in game friend
| list. I had a great time experiencing worlds full of various
| creatures - a lot of which were from my artistically talented
| friend playing around with the creation tools. His experience was
| unfortunately ruined because the game decided that each evolution
| of my creature was distinct and deserved to be shown to him
| separately - it was like his whole galaxy was overrun with my
| (admittedly unimaginative) "wobba-pods" with just different
| variations of hats and facial hair...
| haunter wrote:
| The original demonstration from 2005 is one of my earliest
| Youtube memory https://youtu.be/T8dvMDFOFnA
|
| I wish we got this game, or at least they would release that
| build one day...
| tuukkah wrote:
| Full talk: https://youtu.be/N4ScRG_reIw
| hekec wrote:
| This was the game of my childhood. I really hope someone creates
| a remake
| ur-whale wrote:
| I think there's a huge opportunity to do a 2023 remake using
| generative 3D AI.
| guidedlight wrote:
| 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
| than you can possibly achieve.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| An evolution sandbox was promised in the early demo, a boring
| railroaded game was delivered.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| > 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
| dougmwne wrote:
| For as ambitious as it was, it just didn't have any fun
| gameplay loops. It ended up being a bunch of mediocre and
| simplistic clones of much better games tied together with a
| rather academic concept. It was absolutely innovative, just not
| in any way that made it fun to play.
| Krasnol wrote:
| ....and then came Star Citizen.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| One day, maybe, as long as whales keep pumping money into
| hypothetical ships that they might be able to use in a
| hypothetical upcoming game.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Star citizen is the most obvious money laundering scheme
| imaginable. I await the documentary in 15 years.
| ehnto wrote:
| 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 don't
| pay attention to negative reviews anymore.
|
| It feels like an over-centre mechanism, games can't be "good",
| they have to be the best ever or total trash, no in between.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| delusional wrote:
| 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 will
| make you see the connection between all stages of life" goal
| isn't achievable if the game you're building isn't going to
| actually be a good game.
|
| There just wasn't any good gameplay loop in there.
| drones wrote:
| Interestingly enough, I think the core gameplay loop of the
| first cell stage has actually influenced gaming much more
| than anything else in spore. All of the popular .io games I
| know (Agar.io, snake.io, diep.io) all have some feature of
| that stage as part of the game. Growing in size, fighting
| other players, getting new abilities: it's all there.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There was a lot of potential, and I think that if they did a
| sequel where they added depth to every stage it would've been
| a lot better. I mean the last part of the game is a 4x like
| Stellaris, other parts are RTS / city builders, etc.
|
| On that note, I wonder why there hasn't been anything like it
| from the indie developer space.
| cubefox wrote:
| There was a community effort to make such a game since the
| original Spore came out.
|
| https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
|
| Since this was too ambitious, they focussed just on the
| cell stage. They are working on that to this day.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1779200?updates=tru
| e
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I think the fundamental creature tech was so expensive
| (time and scale) to develop that indies couldn't possibly
| replicate it
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "There just wasn't any good gameplay loop in there. "
|
| Opinions differ, to me it _was_ a fun arcade game, with some
| evolution theme. No more, no less. But I also did not read
| anything about it before and had no expectations.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Until it turns into an action RPG, then an RTS, then a Civ-
| like. Which all sounds cool on paper, but usually games
| that stack on systems and genres like that end up cleanly
| integrating them with each other. Spore treats them more
| like they're a minigame collection, it never feels like a
| cohesive game.
|
| The building tools are great though.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Ok yeah, I stopped at the civ like stage, where it was
| too weird, that I can adjust the evolution of fighting
| machines and make them fast or strong just as needed in
| real time. That felt so half baked.
|
| And the "action rpg" was also not very thought through,
| but still enjoyable.
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| There actually were things of note from the early demos that
| didn't make it into the final game. For example, the way you
| created your creature had gameplay implications. Things like
| limb length, limb count, limb placement, center of mass, etc
| were going to influence the viability and pros and cons of
| your creature. However, there were philosophical
| disagreements between team members and ultimately the
| decision was made that they'd throw the systemic approach out
| the window in the name of cosmetic freedom.
|
| Personally, that isn't the decision I would have made,
| because I think the game is more shallow because of it. Maybe
| it would have made the game less enjoyable for people who
| just want to make whatever they want with no consequences,
| but that could have been solved with a difficulty option.
| Levitz wrote:
| Entire sections of the game were cut. I remember a puzzle
| section at the very start in which you had to combine
| aminoacids to start creating life that never made it, for
| example.
|
| The option to be a water-based species didn't make it
| either.
|
| The game did overpromise and underdeliver, hard.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I've seen it hinted that the ~half dozen designers had
| pretty different visions and that seems to have caused a
| bunch of churn and disagreements.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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 the end game which is the most interesting (but least
| customisable) part.
|
| The building blocks for two RTSes are there, but they've been
| dumbed down so far that there's no fun to be had. With a tech
| tree and bigger tribes, I think a minor Age of Empires stage
| could be great. The city stage would have the same benefits,
| but I can imagine a civ style game portraying the
| technological and cultural progress from the bronze age to
| the space age would be a nice intermediate. Instead of your
| evolutionary tree picking one or two arbitrary flags in each
| stage, you could keep the tech tree going for much longer.
| Show me how I got that teraforming equipment, don't just
| teleport it into the store because I traveled a thousand
| spots!
|
| The end game could do more. Perhaps a Stellaris style unit
| distant unit control mechanic would allow for a more
| realistic galactic simulator, with different ships of your
| empire whizzing around while you go on your space adventure.
|
| I have a feeling that if the game were developed by a Paradox
| or a Firaxis, the later stages would be a lot better.
|
| It would be fun if Paradox were to set up a system where you
| can automatically launch the next game, all the way from Rome
| Total War through Hearts of Iron, and maybe jump to Stellaris
| from there. I know converters exist but it's not a perfectly
| clean process with fan projects needed for some steps.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| 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 crashed around then, and/or EA and
| Jane's parted ways over the trademark. Thus, it never came
| to fruition.
|
| But if the components of the metagame you want to build
| each need to be games themselves... just build them as
| individual games, and contain latent linking code inside
| them!
| Andrex wrote:
| 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.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I have a soft spot in my heart for ahead-of-their-time or
| there-but-for-mismanagement game oddities. :-)
|
| There's also an alternative universe where the Japanese
| game industry cracked the MMO formula instead of Ultimate
| Online / EverQuest. See Sega's Heat.net / 10six:
| https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-
| archaeologist-se...
|
| As a beta player, it was hellaciously fun, in a very
| similar way to EVE, even on dialup.
|
| Other oddities:
|
| LucasArts' 80s Habitat:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
|
| 3DO's pre-Niantic Meridian 59:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59
|
| Sierra's The Realm Online:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online (also
| beta'd this one, which was really slick and well-
| executed)
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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)
| acdha wrote:
| > Despite it being reviewed every well upon release, gamers
| expected even more.
|
| I don't think that's true - this review seems representative:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/09/spore-review/
|
| > Perhaps the whole concept of Spore is just too high, when all
| is said and done. I honestly had more fun with the rather
| middlebrow The Sims series. But one also gets the uncomfortable
| feeling that each phase is now just a shell to be filled in
| with upcoming expansions and for-pay content packs. Imagine an
| expansion pack release for each phase, adding in the depth
| that's sorely missing. It's not a fun thought.
|
| There was also a problem with the DRM system being buggy (the
| iMac I installed it on had to be wiped to return to normal
| system performance) and the whole game crashing too often.
|
| Like others, I think it goes back to massively over-promising:
| the amoeba game on the iPhone was the most fun because it was a
| complete game. The full game was like they tried to make 4
| separate games and made each one progressively less fun because
| they just didn't have the resources to do any of them well. I
| spent many hours playing Civ, SimCity, SimAnt, Railroad Tycoon,
| Master of Orion, Master of Magic, etc. so I was expecting a
| game with similar rewards for spending time on it but never
| even completed Spore because my completionist drive couldn't
| make up for the boredom.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| Funny story. I worked at a firm that was commissioned to do
| some market research on Spore before its launch. We were given
| some videos of game play elements to show gamers and get their
| response to the game ahead of launch. We hosted the videos on
| our company server and scripted an online survey with the
| videos embedded in them. Participants could watch the videos
| and then answer questions.
|
| We launched the survey on a Friday to pick up responses over
| the weekend. When I got to work on Monday I logged on to my
| computer and noticed that everything was running really slowly.
| Wasn't just me, my coworkers were experiencing the same network
| issue.
|
| We got out IT team to investigate...turns out our server (on-
| prem) was busily handling a lot of network traffic, serving up
| video links to folks. Someone answering the survey had copied
| the links to the videos from the survey and posted them on to
| Kotaku. Since the game was so hyped the post got a lot of
| interest and our server got a lot of traffic.
|
| As you can imagine, the next 24 hours was spent eating *@#t and
| apologizing to the client....
| etempleton wrote:
| It was hard not to let your imagination run wild after SimCity
| and then The Sims. Both games felts infinitely complex at the
| time. The Sims 1 in particular had so many hidden interactions
| and secrets.
| ouid wrote:
| No, it was not a good game, and it was not particularly well
| received. The nigh universal hatred for the game was not
| because the marketers did a bad job. It was because it was a
| bad game that they lied about being a good game. It was a case
| of fraud, and it was more or less repeated in exactly the same
| way with Sim City 2013.
|
| It's worth noting that these two games bookend the career of
| John Riccitiello as the CEO of EA, and basically ever since
| then he has been the CEO at Unity.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| 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? The scope was
| just way too big and the result was very thin.
| lordnacho wrote:
| That's what I thought as well. I thought it was a bunch of
| little games glued together into a... little game.
|
| I didn't quite understand what you were carrying with you
| from one stage to the next, and why it mattered.
|
| I ended up not playing it much after buying it, such was the
| disappointment.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| 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.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| 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 part is being able to see other creations
| in your world). Animal creation was quite innovative, but
| also underwhelming, because it didn't affect the physics
| of the animal... Something like QWOP would be nice, where
| the computer would try to automatically convert simple
| controls to animal muscles...
|
| 3rd part: Tribe - Again, a simple flash game, boring
|
| 4th part: Civilization - again a simple game, I think the
| most challenging phase and quite fun, but building
| designing being only decorative was again
| underwhelming...
|
| 5th part: Cosmos - it had a Star Control feel to me,
| except it was simpler, and Star Control is a much older
| game!
| [deleted]
| ilyt wrote:
| 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.
| starkparker wrote:
| 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| But that works perfectly fine in XCOM! But there both
| elements are build up to the level player will be using
| it. The combat is main game, but while the "management"
| certainly wouldn't be enough to make whole game around
| it, for the few minutes between combat engagements it
| fits just fine.
|
| Spore problem was that you switched from one game mode to
| another completely so it was essentially playing next
| game for few hours.
|
| I think it just needs to be balanced in effort to the
| time player spends with it. Like players remember Gwent
| or Triple Triad with fondness.
| gs17 wrote:
| Covert Action is also one of my all time favorites (I
| bought an external numpad for my laptop to be able to
| play it decently). I can fully understand why people
| wouldn't like switching modes for so long so often, but
| that was part of the charm for me. You got to play
| detective, cryptographer, James Bond, and maybe could
| catch everyone in time. Shadows of Doubt scratches a bit
| of the itch for me, but ai really want a remaster of
| Covert Action.
| thom wrote:
| Ha, seconded on the Molyneux thing.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It was certainly part of the "Molyneux-like" genre.
| raincole wrote:
| Using FTL as an example of "stand alone full budget game" is
| quite weird.
|
| I mean it's a good game but...
| mattl wrote:
| I remember the DRM ruining it to the point where it was
| unusable. Or was that the new Sim City?
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| > 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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA
|
| No wonder gamers wanted the thing they got excited about in the
| first place.
| grubbs wrote:
| I remember playing this game quite a bit instead:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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...
| Levitz wrote:
| One of the few games in which I couldn't for the life of
| mine advance, even years later.
| stavros wrote:
| I really liked that one as well.
| dicytea wrote:
| I still sometimes dream that someone would leak the demo game
| (if you let me be a bit more greedy, along with the source
| code). Hey it might not be _that_ functional, but it would
| still be awesome to explore what it was actually capable of.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah... I just worry that it'll be very geared towards that
| exact demo, and unable to do more or less anything else.
| hinkley wrote:
| The lessons from World of Warcraft and Doom are give your users
| tools to write their own features/maps, then promote the best
| of the best to be part of the game.
|
| Just be sure to reward the winners with something, like a
| lifetime subscription.
|
| Spore tried to make everyone a creator, and "everyone" are
| terrible people. In the YouTube Era he may have had more
| options, like taking creations from popular streamers, or
| highly upvoted contributions.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Here are my notes and summary of the GDC 2005 talk where Will
| Wright first revealed Spore, which I asked Will to review and
| check for accuracy. It's interesting to compare the design he
| described in the talk with what Maxis eventually shipped.
|
| Video of the hour long talk:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ScRG_reIw
|
| One of the essential problems with designing a Massively Multi
| Player Online Game like Spore is that players at different
| levels of the simulation run at different time scales.
|
| Maintaining time synchronization between players is also the
| reason The Sims Online doesn't have a "Pause" button or speed
| controls, or automatically pause in build and buy mode, like
| The Sims.
|
| So instead, Spore is a Massively Single Player Online Game.
| Users don't interact with each other in real time, but instead
| users can create their own content, and it exchanges that
| content between users asynchronously.
|
| That's also how The Sims Exchange lets players asynchronously
| upload and download their Sims save files along with web pages
| describing their house, sims, and photo album.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-future-of-content-will-wri...
|
| >The Future of Content -- Will Wright's Spore Demo at GDC
| 3/11/2005
|
| >What I learned about content from the Sims.
|
| >...and why it's driven me to procedural methods.
|
| >...And what I now plan to do with them.
|
| >Talk by Will Wright, Game Developers Conference, 3/11/2005.
|
| >Based on notes taken by Don Hopkins at the talk, and other
| discussions and review by Will Wright. The title of the talk
| "The Future of Content" was purposefully vague, because Will
| wanted to show Spore in public for the first time, but he had
| to flat out lie about the title and send a fake set of slides
| for the EA executives to review, so they didn't know what he
| was about to do. A more accurate title for the talk would be
| "What I Learned About Content from The Sims, and Why it's
| Driven Me to Procedural Methods, and What I Now Plan to Do With
| Them".
|
| >Introduction
|
| >Will Wright started his talk by saying that he wanted to show
| this to the game developer community first, before a commercial
| show like E3.
|
| [...]
|
| Here's my favorite feature that never made it into the final
| game, which is still a hardcore AI problem ;) :
|
| >Procedural Mating
|
| >Mating calls. Listen for answers. Approach a compatible mate
| (same type of body you just created) in a nest. Get a good
| response.
|
| >Procedural mating: Animals squawk and crawl over each other in
| allkinds of ways, then find something that works, and start
| humping.
|
| >Rewarded for mating by laying an egg.
|
| >Player rewarded for reproducing: the currency of the game. Go
| into edit mode to spend currency to buy features and edit the
| next generation. You have to start saving up for brains, which
| are expensive. Think of it as a college education fund.
|
| And I love his vignette through the lands of Pokemon, Neopets,
| dinosaurs, and deep into the star-speckled, rainbow-trimmed,
| cotton candy, cloud world called "Care a Lot":
|
| >Make the editor a toy.
|
| >Make portability of content transparent to the player. Game
| downloads content automatically, without requiring user to
| visit a web site or download it themselves.
|
| >Most other evolution games don't make you feel like you own
| the creature.
|
| >Pokemon, Neopets, Care Bears. Give kids a sense of ownership
| and mastery over the facts and details of the characters.
|
| >Loved dinosaurs as a kid. Knew the rock-scissors-paper of
| different species of dinosaurs, which was something his mom
| didn't know. Mastery of facts.
|
| >Which Care Bear are you?
|
| >Care bears. Started as greeting cards. Found a web app that
| categorizes your personality: Which Care Bear are you? Each
| care bear has special abilities. Care bear have cousins, that
| aren't even bears. Care bears live in a star-speckled, rainbow-
| trimmed, cotton candy, cloud world called "Care a Lot". If they
| fall out of the clouds, they land in the "Forest of Feelings"
| (Kingdom of Caring). Forest of Feelings is over the earth. So
| the Earth must be the "Kingdom of people who don't give a
| shit".
|
| Spore is an homage to many other games:
|
| >There's a rule that you don't mix genres. Always wanted to
| break that rule.
|
| >Homage to many different games at different levels:
|
| >Tidepool: Pacman.
|
| >Evolution: Diablo.
|
| >Tribal: Populous.
|
| >City: SimCity.
|
| >Civ: Risk/Civ.
|
| >20% of the best of those games. 40% of the game experience is
| really just aesthetic, appreciating the content.
|
| >A different editor associated with each level.
|
| Also:
|
| >Wired asked for an illustration to print in the magazine,
| anything he wanted. So he made a diagram of Spore that Wired
| published, but he didn't tell them what it was. The design docs
| for Spore have been out in Wired Magazine for a year now. (It's
| in the Feb 2004 issue of Wired.)
|
| Will's Secret Diagram of Spore published in February 2004
| Wired:
|
| https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/1*6s2...
|
| And of course the 1977 film "Powers of 10" was a big influence:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
|
| Will's advice for game designers and creative humans in
| general:
|
| >Advice: If you have a weird idea that's so outside of the box,
| don't forget it. You should go back and revisit your weird
| ideas later, because you can never know where they might lead
| to.
|
| >Epilogue:
|
| >For more about how Spore was designed and developed, check out
| A Brief History of Spore by Chaim Gingold:
|
| >A Brief History of Spore
|
| http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/02/brief-history-of-spore...
|
| >This essay was written part way through Spore's development,
| and summarizes one of the biggest transitions the project made
| -- unknown to many -- from what could have been a SimEarth like
| game/science toy to a capital-G computer Game. It tells how
| Spore made some of its early, and most crucial, navigational
| decisions down the branches of design possibility, to use
| Will's own language. I feel like a discussion of how Spore
| turned out versus audience and developer expectations is a
| whole other story that should be distilled and told, but this
| is not the place for that.
|
| >There's also the Joystiq interviews Spore's Chaim Gingold and
| Chris Hecker:
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2006-11-13-joystiq-interviews-spore...
|
| >On the first day of the Montreal International Game Summit,
| Chaim Gingold and Chris Hecker presented a keynote on the topic
| of "advanced prototyping," specifically as to how it pertains
| to Spore, the game that currently occupies their time over at
| EA/Maxis. The same talk, given at the 2006 Game Developers
| Conference, was rated higher than any other presentation,
| including Will Wright's, their boss's. Before the keynote,
| Joystiq had a chance to chat with both Chaim and Chris, and
| discuss their impetus for joining Maxis, the evolution of
| Spore, and the relationship between Maxis and EA.
|
| >And don't miss Chaim Gingold's talk about Spore's Magic
| Crayons:
|
| https://www.gdcvault.com/play/527/SPORE-s-Magic
| qamorgan wrote:
| A professor of mine once succinctly summarized that principle
| as:
|
| Success = Outcomes / Expectations
| ilyt wrote:
| game that was expected to be shit and turned out to be shit
| is not a success
| ilyt wrote:
| That game stopped me from being hyped for video game releases
| after.
| Decabytes wrote:
| I played spore a few years back for the first time and was
| impressed by how well it held up. I had a lot of fun playing it
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