"Alex: The interesting thing about herbivores, is that you sit down to assess their basic functionality and how you might put it in a game you realize that herbivores are basically lunch on legs. They actually don’t do anything that interesting (this is a generalization, obviously, to all you zoologists out there) but carnivores are generally smarter, more active, and have more interesting behaviors."

---

Alex needs to see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

For those of you who don't have the patience to watch the whole thing...

First, the alpha female gives the lions whatfor ... then...
That waterbuffalo COMMANDED the other waterbuffalo to kick that lion's hieny!
Herbivores are a LOT more interesting than Alex gives credit for.

Mflux,

You have put a lot of things I have been thinking about Spore into a coherent piece of writing.

I would like to point out a few things.

-Spore was deliberately dumbed down for public consumption. It seems as if there was some false advertisement on the part of EA.

-Spore looked amazing at first glance, but most people will grow tired of the actual game play. Sure Maxis made some fun editors to make cells/creatures/airplanes etc. the actual GAMEPLAY experience seems to be thrown together and seemed very uninspired and repetitive.

-As a student of Biology and a reader of Dawkins, Gould and Diamond, evolutionary biology CAN be modeled mathematically.

HOWEVER, this process does not take years of corporate code crunching but rather a team of bright, creative people who understand the sciences involved in modeling life.

FIRST
-Why isn't mass/volume or bigness a MAJOR factor in food requirements etc.
-Why can you put wings on a creature and it automatically flies, A winged creature is the "optimal creature" so much maligned, Instead by not taking into account trade-offs aka the ENGINEERING of life.
-Why do you only lay eggs and why does every other creature lay eggs?
-Why no amphibians?
-Why no creature stage in the water?

The list goes on,

To me the cell/creature/tribe stage alone could have been the richest, most complex game every devised. BUT instead it was neutered and blanched by EA.


Everything is dumbed down to a pretty game of "Paint-A-Silly-Creature" rather than a revolutionary combination of graphics and science.

The creature stage alone could be use to generate entire ecosystems with infinite complexity.

HOWEVER the most bothersome part of Spore, that irks me as a student of science is the fact that EVOLVE = Progress in a linear fashion. Evolution is NOT advancement from bad to good, from simple to complex. The most successful living organisms, microbes and insects are far from advanced compared to a mighty reasoning human.

The issue here is how WINNING is defined. Why couldn't a species of TINY creatures, who could because of their small size and fast reproduction take over the planet? The reason is because of the concept of trade-off I'm talking about. The reason there will be no optimal creature in my model is because the potential food to be had will be capitalized on by larger predators. However some kind of equilibrium will be reached. By randomizing climate changes, catastrophes etc, one could "play" the story of an entire ecosystem, responding to the environment.

Just my $0.02

P.S. Maxis/EA didn't listen to anyone who knows anything about biology.

Micahgee

Thanks for your feedback on your thread (and everyone else who has responded... tremendous amount of great discourse... sorry I simply don't have time to respond to every single post but I read all of them!).

-Spore was deliberately dumbed down for public consumption. It seems as if there was some false advertisement on the part of EA.

I have some thoughts about this further below. Keep this in mind.

-Spore looked amazing at first glance, but most people will grow tired of the actual game play. Sure Maxis made some fun editors to make cells/creatures/airplanes etc. the actual GAMEPLAY experience seems to be thrown together and seemed very uninspired and repetitive.

That's a very interesting thought and I have some experience with that lately. I've been showing Spore to a lot of people at my place recently and, like Will in his demos, I was driving the game and showing off different sections of the game (cell, editor, creature, space). What I realized is how easy this game is to demonstrate to someone and provide a great first impression. That's the "breadth" that Will & team always talked about... how wide the spectrum of this game can be.

As soon as I sit someone down with this game for more than fifteen minutes though, the cracks in the gameplay starts to show. It's as if looking at the same magic performance too many times you start to see the tricks the magician uses, and you begin to call foul. That's just because the gameplay lacks depth, and we all know that now.

-As a student of Biology and a reader of Dawkins, Gould and Diamond, evolutionary biology CAN be modeled mathematically.

HOWEVER, this process does not take years of corporate code crunching but rather a team of bright, creative people who understand the sciences involved in modeling life.

FIRST
-Why isn't mass/volume or bigness a MAJOR factor in food requirements etc.
-Why can you put wings on a creature and it automatically flies, A winged creature is the "optimal creature" so much maligned, Instead by not taking into account trade-offs aka the ENGINEERING of life.
-Why do you only lay eggs and why does every other creature lay eggs?
-Why no amphibians?
-Why no creature stage in the water?

The list goes on,

To me the cell/creature/tribe stage alone could have been the richest, most complex game every devised. BUT instead it was neutered and blanched by EA.

I'm also a student of Darwin, as well as an avid reader of Richard Dawkins and his kin. I studied in college about several related topics, for example Complexity theory, theories of emergence, and dabbled with artificial evolution.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that ideas taken from evolution can be made into a deep, fun, engaging game with high replay value. A lot of us (fans) thought that was what Spore might be, but it turned out to be untrue.

Everything is dumbed down to a pretty game of "Paint-A-Silly-Creature" rather than a revolutionary combination of graphics and science.

The creature stage alone could be use to generate entire ecosystems with infinite complexity.

HOWEVER the most bothersome part of Spore, that irks me as a student of science is the fact that EVOLVE = Progress in a linear fashion. Evolution is NOT advancement from bad to good, from simple to complex. The most successful living organisms, microbes and insects are far from advanced compared to a mighty reasoning human.

The issue here is how WINNING is defined. Why couldn't a species of TINY creatures, who could because of their small size and fast reproduction take over the planet? The reason is because of the concept of trade-off I'm talking about. The reason there will be no optimal creature in my model is because the potential food to be had will be capitalized on by larger predators. However some kind of equilibrium will be reached. By randomizing climate changes, catastrophes etc, one could "play" the story of an entire ecosystem, responding to the environment.

I've spent a lot of time recently reading the Creator's Corner and Spore Showcase forums, and spent a lot of time commenting on and showcasing Spore editor designs. Despite all the flaws with Sporepedia, I now have to re-assess the strengths and weaknesses of Spore given this new perspective.

The greatest strength of Spore is, without-a-doubt, the editors. From these, the Spore community has become somewhat of a budding deviant-art collective. The people who spend the most time in the editors now are the people who have the most fun. Going through the Sporepedia and the forums to collect, subscribe, and comment on the awesome creations that people are putting out, then challenging yourself to make creative designs is a very rewarding experience.

To this end I think that Spore is somewhat schizophrenic in what its goals are. On one hand it has these awesome editors and a creative community, but is sold and billed as a game with that aspect but on the back-burner. Had these two been released as two separate products there would have been much less confusion.

This brings us back to your opening statement:

-Spore was deliberately dumbed down for public consumption. It seems as if there was some false advertisement on the part of EA.

I don't think that EA is some nefarious company out to destroy games. I think Maxis made decisions based on their best guesses at the time, which is that people would value creation over gameplay, and allowed the gameplay to become overshadowed by the editors. While this is innovative and different, many people disagree on their decision and demand that a game should be a game, and not just any game.. but a game from Maxis with the same quality of gameplay from The Sims or Sim City.

Admittedly, I'll wager that this delicate balance (game? or art toolkit?) is incredibly hard to strike. From what I gather, the creative types only create and never really use their creations in-game (for game-playing), and the gamers don't spend as much time in the creators as the creative types do (you're also limited by dna, parts, etc). In the end it's a bit upsetting that so many awesome creations are only there for show, existing in the Sporepedia and never getting used, all because the gameplay that support these creations are too boring to bother with.

mflux wrote:Admittedly, I'll wager that this delicate balance (game? or art toolkit?) is incredibly hard to strike. From what I gather, the creative types only create and never really use their creations in-game (for game-playing), and the gamers don't spend as much time in the creators as the creative types do (you're also limited by dna, parts, etc). In the end it's a bit upsetting that so many awesome creations are only there for show, existing in the Sporepedia and never getting used, all because the gameplay that support these creations are too boring to bother with.

Agreed completely.

mflux wrote:

-Spore looked amazing at first glance, but most people will grow tired of the actual game play. Sure Maxis made some fun editors to make cells/creatures/airplanes etc. the actual GAMEPLAY experience seems to be thrown together and seemed very uninspired and repetitive.

That's a very interesting thought and I have some experience with that lately. I've been showing Spore to a lot of people at my place recently and, like Will in his demos, I was driving the game and showing off different sections of the game (cell, editor, creature, space). What I realized is how easy this game is to demonstrate to someone and provide a great first impression. That's the "breadth" that Will & team always talked about... how wide the spectrum of this game can be.

As soon as I sit someone down with this game for more than fifteen minutes though, the cracks in the gameplay starts to show. It's as if looking at the same magic performance too many times you start to see the tricks the magician uses, and you begin to call foul. That's just because the gameplay lacks depth, and we all know that now.

And this has been exactly my experience as well, no matter whom I show it to. One person stopped playing and said, "This game is stupid," while she had all but fallen in love with her bizarre creation only minutes before. She is the casual gamer type, notice that she had a worse reaction to the game than the hardcore gamers. Where EA/Maxis got the idea that casual gamers enjoy being bored and patronized I have no idea.

My god, this thread is still alive?

*Throws asparagus at the first post*

simsmac wrote:

*Throws asparagus at the first post*

I kinda like asparagus , they are tastey

Parvati wrote:

simsmac wrote:

*Throws asparagus at the first post*

I kinda like asparagus , they are tastey

You bet they are.

Parvati wrote:

simsmac wrote:

*Throws asparagus at the first post*

I kinda like asparagus , they are tastey

Makes your pee green =P

Splycer wrote:

Parvati wrote:

simsmac wrote:

*Throws asparagus at the first post*

I kinda like asparagus , they are tastey

Makes your pee green =P

No it doesn't, it makes it smelly

Finnical wrote:

mflux wrote:Admittedly, I'll wager that this delicate balance (game? or art toolkit?) is incredibly hard to strike. From what I gather, the creative types only create and never really use their creations in-game (for game-playing), and the gamers don't spend as much time in the creators as the creative types do (you're also limited by dna, parts, etc). In the end it's a bit upsetting that so many awesome creations are only there for show, existing in the Sporepedia and never getting used, all because the gameplay that support these creations are too boring to bother with.

Agreed completely.

Whereas that wager is probably mostly true, I'm a creator type who would have also loved to have seen those creations in gameplay...

I got too frustrated with all the shortcomings on how in-game Sporepedia works, and decided to pull my creations out altogether, as they seemed to have no point...

For all the hours spent, comments received on my creations without even advertising myself (intentionally), I still was not happy with how pointless/meaningless my carefully constructed creations felt to me...

It might be because I'm not the kind of person who enjoys seeking out praise? ... But am rather a person who takes pride in producing something that feels worthwhile to me...

Just my opinion...

My thoughts on the matter:

EA got SPORE to become the simplistic but user-friendly, creativity driven game where "every design" works and there's no possibility of failure. Also, they got some sort of introductory game aimed at a larger audience that may use it as a learning ground before moving on to more complex and intense simulation and RTS games.

Now they want to keep it like that, and I can understand (and support) this attitude.

However, I see no reason why EA cannot listen to the wishes and request of countless more experienced players and release a new installment of the game with a whole new (or old, if you take the 2005 demos into account) level of gameplay.

It could be called something like "SPORE Advanced: Evolution Hardcore". Then they could bring in the rough, the tough and everything else they dropped away from the 2005 SPORE that a lot of us thought would be the best game ever and were so disappointed to lose.

It would not be that much of an investment, since they've already created most of it, and it would be a way to keep both ends of the consumer chain satisfied. You want a simple, easy-to-play game that will allow you to unleash all your creativity without you having to worry whether it'll work or not? Go for SPORE. You want a challenging and scientific accurate (at least to a degree) game that will play as a constant battle for survival and force you to channel your creativity into a form that is both effective and cool looking, but with the risk that you may ultimately fail and be run over and destroyed by the game or other people's creations? Go for SPORE Advanced: Evolution Hardcore.

My two cents.

As a side thought: I'd buy the SPORE Advanced game without even blinking.

Planet to Planet wars - Currently the game does not allow two types of sentient life in one Star System. Why? This seems like a really artificially imposed limit. There's no UI / gameplay reason I can possibly think of that would require this limit. Having wars fought from planet to planet (two planets home to two space-faring species) is a staple of science fiction (War of the Worlds), and it allows some early introduction of alien races, early space flight and battle (instead of inspecting some random artifact), and produces some cool dynamic.

The reason for this probably so that you could determine which empire had the system in cluster view.

Jonandra wrote:
Alex needs to see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

For those of you who don't have the patience to watch the whole thing...

First, the alpha female gives the lions whatfor ... then...
That waterbuffalo COMMANDED the other waterbuffalo to kick that lion's hieny!
Herbivores are a LOT more interesting than Alex gives credit for.

I totally agree with that, and more: even the vegetation is a lot more active than we usually think. Many trees and other plants are quite aggressive in their chemical war against potential predators and the competition from other plants.

For those who are not prone to scientific publications and prefer fiction novels, take a look at Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World" (the books, NOT - for the love of Spode - the movies). The guy may have stretched it out a little, but he definitely did his homework prior to writing (also considering the information available at the time). There we see a lot of notions that could have gone into SPORE, mainly regarding to pack behavior and creature interaction (both within the same and between different species).

wait....what?!