I hope I am not being too abstract

All of Maxis's games seem to be about the user creating a story within the setting of a simulation. For example in the Sims you created your characters, their house, and threw them into the simulation and saw how things played out. While this happened you still had control and can modfy things on the fly within the constraints of the simulation. Basically, you created then experimented and back and forth, on and on.

This is style is as true for the old Maxis games (SimAnts, SimEarth, SimCity, The Sims) as it is for Spore, especially since they said they want the user to feel more like George Lucus and not a character taking part in a prepackaged story. To do this they gave the player powerful tools to shape and/or create most every aspect of the story which are:

- Setting (environment)
- Character
- Interaction between characters (social interaction)
- Interaction between characters and environment
- Accepted constraints of the story's world (predefined by what the game is a simulation of)


So my question is if any what of the four main aspect (ignoring the contraints) needs most work on. I feel the game has little social interaction and this is the reason why people feel Spore is dumbed down (unlike Sims 2 with ton of character interaction). The most advanced social interaction are the silly Simon says games or to simply destroy the enemy. I don't think there is much wrong with the war/hunting side of the social interaction but other then that it is just silly and boring. Am I six? Do I really like Simon says that much?

Please feel free to discuss your thoughts on this or how these issues might be fixed.

I said character-enviornment but not really sure if that matches up to what I was thinking. The problem that I'm seeing is that the world just looks like it exists for you and that it has no life of it's own. A couple of things that I'd like to see.

Creatures that venture away from their nests (yeah they do a little but you know what I mean, intermingling).

Tribes that actually fight each other, not just me. Thankfully Civ does that, too bad it's over in 20 minutes since it's so easy.

BETTER COMMUNITY TOOLS!!!!

Maybe what I termed character-environment interaction should have been cleared up a bit. I see what you mean though. By environment I ment the physical world or the setting. By "social interaction between creatures" I ment interaction between you and any other lifeform. Like you and creatures, you and other tribes, you and aliens. It is kind of a fine line in the way you ment it. I could see it going either way.

But I do see what you mean. Without real interaction between you and everything else it just seems like a plasic world made of plasic animals and aliens.

Right now "Character-Environment Interaction" leads, although perhaps more people need to vote for the statistics to be sagnificant... This is interesting as by this I mean the environment minus the creatures, tribes, and aliens. That is, in Spore, the world not created by the player. But I assume people are including player created characters in the defition of environment. How else do you interact with the "environment" (if you include living creatures) of spore besides socialization? You can shape the land in the space stage or eat the fruit of plants... Space stage gives you complete access to the landscape of spore. It is quite interesting that the answer to this poll is not as I expected. yay!

I was wondering if people who do answer this way could say what "Character-Environment Interaction" means for them. This would help me understand what a lot of people want in Spore.

*bling*