Latest posts for the topic "We Found Who to Tar and Feather!"

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[size=18][b]UPDATE:[/b][/size]
[size=9](Although perhaps a bit late on my part, heheh.)[/size]

Will Wright responded directly to the community and thread in this post:

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/210/8555.page#137577
[quote=MaxisWill]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]

This has been directed to in a sticky on the boards:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page

My response can be found here:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/255/8555.page#159779

Many thanks to Will Wright for responding to our questions and issues, and with both honesty and humility. Thanks to the Maxis employees and SporeMasters for allowing the community to speak our minds, even when our comments have gotten out of hand. In this topic post, I later state:[quote=Omni]I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs...[/quote]
Will has indeed said just that. It seems to me, this is just a case of "people make mistakes", especially when forging new ground. After this, I have regained a good part of my faith in Maxis, and look forward to what they have in store. (Can't necessarily say the same for EA, though. Freakin' EA.) I'm still a little disappointed with what we received in the base game, and will keep that in mind. But at least we can look forward to a Spore more like the Spore we dreamed of.

I'm not happy with having to pay more money for it, but I can understand why it must be done. These things don't pay for themselves. Or, not if given away freely at least. Perhaps they will surprise us with a happy mix of patches and expansions. Only time will tell.

Thanks again to both Will Wright and Maxis.

[i](The original post is available below for future reference.)[/i]
[b][size=9]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[/size][/b]
[size=9][i]This was originally a post to get people at xSpore up to date with the findings of the official forums, but it came out well enough I decided to post it here as well. My suggestions to Maxis are included near the bottom in a quote block.[/i][/size]

[U][B]Links[/B][/U]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5132.page]Seed article about devteam's debates over science vs cute[/url]
[URL="http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php"]Seed Magazine Article it Refers to[/URL]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page]Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern.[/url]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5293.page]Should Maxis make Science Spore?[/url]
[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/105/5293.page#92114]Particular post about Chris Hecker[/url]

So there's two sides of this debacle, the DRM issue and the dumbed-down gameplay. [I](The DRM issue has already been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, this topic is not about that.)[/I]

However, one man who is highly responsible for the dumbed down gameplay is Chris Hecker. [I](You may remember him as the Maxis employee who said the Wii is a "piece of ****" and merely "two gamecubes stuck together with duct tape".)[/I] While Will Wright headed the movement for science to take a primary role, Hecker apparently thought that would be too complex for the wider audience, and that instead cells should have eyes and creatures should wear sneakers. Excerpt from the Seed article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]This was Spore's central problem: Could the game be both scientifically accurate and fun? The prototyping teams were becoming lost in their scientific interests. Chaim Gingold, a team member who started as an intern and went on to help design the game's content creation tools, recalls a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata: "It was just about being engaged with the universe as a set of systems, and being able to build toys that manifested our fascination with these systems and our love for them." But from within this explosion of experimental enthusiasm came an unexpected warning voice. Spore's resident uber-geek and artificial intelligence expert [B]Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"[/B]

Soon rival camps had formed. New recruits were taken out to lunch and covertly probed to discover where their natural leanings were. [B]Quigley's microscopically accurate concept drawings were vandalized with stuck-on googly eyes; there were suggestions that it might be cool if the creatures wore sneakers.[/B] It might have been painful for the founding members of the science team, but Quigley acknowledges the need for compromise. "From a single-celled organism through the four-and-a-half-billion year history of life on Earth to a self-projected future where we are gallivanting around the stars? I mean, it is so absurdly vast, so radically outside of any scale that people can really empathize with, we knew we had to turn it into a toy."[/QUOTE]
Note that Chris Hecker states that Will Wright would be ecstatic about what he saw, things more like the earlier demos, while Hecker was opposed to this. There are numerous accounts on the official forums of people stating that they more enjoy the early prototypes than the actual gameplay. The hype was generated by the science-heavy early prototypes, and the actual reaction to the game has been mediocre, now that it lacks those science elements.

Further information posted by an ex-Maxis Intern on the game, now that the game is released and his [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement"]NDA[/URL] isn't a problem:
[QUOTE=mflux]First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=mflux][B]Creature creation seems over-simplified[/B]
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight. [/QUOTE]
And, [URL="http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page#48374"]a later post[/URL]:
[QUOTE=mflux]Oh boy here we go with the "prove it" post

I'm in the credits as Michael "Flux" Chang. Go check it in the credits section of the options menu.
And here's my old website from college (2005) users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux along with resume and all of that jazz. Anyway, take it or leave it. Those are my thoughts. [/QUOTE]

As said in the Seed article, apparently poor Hecker was having [I]"Strong misgivings about how all this hard science would appeal to the wider world."[/I] The poll on the official forums currently suggests that 75% of the forum users would have preferred a "Science-Spore" while only 6% dislike such an idea. [I](16 people, compared to the 192 wanting Science-Spore)[/I]

The Gamespot review gave it 8.0. IGN gave it an 8.8. Press average is 8.1. The consistent cons listed are generally a lack of complexity, and oversimplification.

Another Excerpt from the Seed Magazine article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]Steve Grand, who made the big sim-life hit of the 1990s, Creatures, also faced the task of reconciling the limited behavioral range of virtual life-forms with the advanced expectations of players. [B]"There are two ways to tackle this problem," Grand says. "Try to make the behavior look more real, or stop lying to people. As far as I can tell, Spore takes the former approach, to gently and quite openly fool the user into thinking she's engaging with real living things, while Creatures took the latter — I did my best not to fool anyone, even if that meant the results weren't so playable."[/B]

Spore's decision — to preserve the illusion of life at the expense of the actual facts of life — made for some substantial casualties. [B]First to go in the cute-versus-science war were the extreme ends of the scale — galaxy formation and originsof- life simulation — dismissed as being too abstract and dissipated. Next, small and then big laws were shattered and remade.[/B] Wright's determination to represent faster-than-light travel as impossible crumbled in the face of making the spacefaring section of the game enjoyable. [B]Evolution, despite his staunch Darwinism, became a massively telescoped process that depended on the external, deliberate interventions of the players.[/B] And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.

[B]The snag is that Spore didn't just jettison half its science — it replaced it with systems and ideas that run the risk of being actively misleading. Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed.[/B] Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways.[/QUOTE]

[I](This section is in a quote block as it is not as neutral as the rest of the post.)[/I]
[QUOTE=Omni][B]My Opinion:[/B]
It seems to me, the cute crowd led by Chris Hecker is responsible for a number of things. The ecosystem dynamics were removed. The Creature Game was replaced with a simple "Good or Evil" RPG where you either play Simon Says or grab your +5 Swo- uh I mean Hand and go grind on a few Generic Monster Nests. In addition, for the purpose of "creative freedom", a ten-foot tall SPORE can be as effective as a Lion in combat, as fast as a Cheetah, and as stealthy as a one foot tall chameleon. And because this is so, the Sporepedia is filled with such impractical creations.

Maxis moved away from Will Wright's original design choices and away from the theme of the original prototype. The resulting game is conceived as not meeting the expectation created by seeing the prototype. Why they chose to overturn the design decisions of their lead designer is beyond me. It seems to me the past few years were spent making the game less entertaining than the prototype, because the prototype was "too complex" for us dull consumers. We wouldn't be able to take that hard science. Ironically, I hear better reviews of the gameplay of the free released prototypes than the game itself.

I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs, including a complete overhaul of the Cell Stage and Creature Stage, at minimum. The forced linear progression of the game and forced evolution should also be removed from the Cell and Creature Stages, as it is not faithful to the freedom of the advertised product. (Evolution to a better brain should be optional, at least in the Creature Stage, as it was in the earlier videos.) I do not believe that we have a right to demand it be free, as the development costs of this game are already astronomical. This may have not been as much of a problem if they hadn't been spending the past few years removing content.[/QUOTE]
Discuss.

[SIZE="10"][i]tl;dr version (Too long; didn't read):[/i]
An employee named Chris Hecker decided that the game was too complex for "average folk" and managed to convince a bunch of people at Maxis, so that Will Wright was forced to give up on making the game scientific and they spent a year or two removing content from the E3 demo instead of adding new things. Apparently science limits creativity. This is why the gameplay feels like an undeveloped MMORPG and the animation went from "innovative" to "generic and boring". [i]This is a gross simplification of the situation and potentially biased. Reading the whole topic is suggested.[/i][/SIZE]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZeekSlider — GMT

Thank you for the TL;DR blurb, as it's late on my side of the world and I'm just doing my evening rounds before I go to bed.

In any event, and you can nail me to the cross for saying this if you want, I agree with that statement that the hard science Spore would not appeal very well to the average consumer. I don't buy games based on graphics, which is why when I look at the newest shooter that everyone is drooling over because it's so pretty, I just go "eh." I want games to be appealing first aesthetically and second gameplay.

Case an point are some of the classic point-and-click adventure games. Telltale Games has got me hooked, line, and sucker with their products because they are very aesthetically pleasing and they feature puzzles that I can actually finish. When I used to play these games in the 90s, they drove me up the wall with their insane (but now) logic-based puzzles.

With Spore, based on the "hard science version" aesthetic, I would have been made nausious. I have the GE version of the game; I've seen the art book. I know where they have come from and where they are now. (And that spider monster at the beginning part of the Creature phase chapter is so awesome!!) But that wouldn't have won me over asethetically if I knew nothing about the gameplay.

In the end, it was the gameplay that won me over, and from my seat, it just sounds like a lot of people are complaining about how it looks or the fact that a stage was cut out. The core foundation of the game is still there and still in tact. Some people just can't see it behind all the fluff and fuzzy-wuzzies that it became in order to sell it to a group of consumers that like to buy cute things. And I don't mean kids.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

igbee — GMT

I am sure the tard Chris Hecker got a big promotion at ea/maxis as Chris fits the profile what ea is looking for. I am sure Chris is proud of his cute game.

How Will could allow this to happen or go on when he was in charge is just inexcusable.

So now Will went from sale out to having no balls.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZsoSahaal — GMT

This is gaining momentum.

Someone already dedicated a creature to him...

[quote=PlasteredDragon][url=http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500138623438][b][size=18]Cute Hecker[/size][/b][/url]
[url=http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500138623438][img]http://ll-623.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/138/623/500138623438_lrg.png[/img][/url]

[i]The Cute Hecker is a curious creature who's sole purpose seems to be ruining everyone's good time. Its head is oversized to accomodate an inordinately large mouth, but appears to contain no brain at all. The ears are vestigal--Cute Hecker doesn't listen.[/i]
[/quote]

and I myself have coined the term Hecker, which refers to any creation that is overly cute or cartoony. (I guess I coined it, I haven't seen anyone else using it in this way)

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Visko — GMT

Chris Hecker's statement regarding the Wii is horribly innacurate. 2 Gamecube's duct-taped together is WAY better than a Wii.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ZeekSlider]In any event, and you can nail me to the cross for saying this if you want, I agree with that statement that the hard science Spore would not appeal very well to the average consumer. I don't buy games based on graphics, which is why when I look at the newest shooter that everyone is drooling over because it's so pretty, I just go "eh." I want games to be appealing first aesthetically and second gameplay.[/quote]I hate to pick on a particular part on your post, but what? You're saying you don't like the beautiful next-gen fancy games because you prefer looks to gameplay? Isn't that exactly what those games are about? Is there something I'm missing?

I don't so much care about the looks of Spore, but the drop in gameplay depth is painful.

[quote=igbee]So now Will went from sale out to having no balls.[/quote]
Give him some credit. It's tough being in that kind of position.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

jamal10 — GMT

Somebody needs to fire Mr. Chris Hecker.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

BlueLiquidPlus — GMT

Interesting post, but just to point out.. they're gonna lock or trash this one quickly... as the post about TheUltimateEnd who had the thing about Chris in his sig got emailed by maxis about how its against rules and regs... dunno how long its gonna last, but an interesting read none the less.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Visko — GMT

[quote=BlueLiquidPlus]Interesting post, but just to point out.. they're gonna lock or trash this one quickly... as the post about TheUltimateEnd who had the thing about Chris in his sig got emailed by maxis about how its against rules and regs... dunno how long its gonna last, but an interesting read none the less.[/quote]

And then I put it in my sig, and they have yet to contact ME about it. muahaha.. yu should put it in your sig.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

midian1369 — GMT

[quote=Finnical][quote=ZeekSlider]
[quote=igbee]So now Will went from sale out to having no balls.[/quote]
Give him some credit. It's tough being in that kind of position.[/quote]

um, it shouldn't be when HE was in charge, HE had to OK all this CRAP.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

midian1369 — GMT

[quote=Visko][quote=BlueLiquidPlus]Interesting post, but just to point out.. they're gonna lock or trash this one quickly... as the post about TheUltimateEnd who had the thing about Chris in his sig got emailed by maxis about how its against rules and regs... dunno how long its gonna last, but an interesting read none the less.[/quote]

And then I put it in my sig, and they have yet to contact ME about it. muahaha.. yu should put it in your sig.[/quote]

If that happens we then know who the real villains of this story are.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

Here is a thread about Chris Hecker and the cute team.

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6099.page

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZeekSlider — GMT

[quote=Finnical][quote=ZeekSlider]In any event, and you can nail me to the cross for saying this if you want, I agree with that statement that the hard science Spore would not appeal very well to the average consumer. I don't buy games based on graphics, which is why when I look at the newest shooter that everyone is drooling over because it's so pretty, I just go "eh." I want games to be appealing first aesthetically and second gameplay.[/quote]I hate to pick on a particular part on your post, but what? You're saying you don't like the beautiful next-gen fancy games because you prefer looks to gameplay? Isn't that exactly what those games are about? Is there something I'm missing?

I don't so much care about the looks of Spore, but the drop in gameplay depth is painful.[/quote]If you can't win me over aesthetically, which is very rare (only Okami has done that to date), then the next best bet is to appeal to my sense of gameplay.

I like games that help me excersize my brain. Brain Academy is still one of my favorite games and I really regret having to resort to ROMing it before I could actually afford a DS. I like games that also help my creative side, such as RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Where Spore won me over was the fact that I can create whatever I want and the game will allow me to play it however I want. This is still very true in the core gameplay.

Again, let me repeat myself so I can make myself clear one last time: [b]If a game cannot win me over by looks alone like Okami has done, the only game that has to this date, then the next thing I look at is gameplay.[/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

jamal10 — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ZeekSlider]Where Spore won me over was the fact that I can create whatever I want and the game will allow me to play it however I want. This is still very true in the core gameplay.[/quote]
I won't deny the creators are masterful. I'm still playing the game, daily. But that doesn't mean I don't want to see it more realistic.

[quote=AnotherPoster]Here is a thread about Chris Hecker and the cute team.

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6099.page
[/quote]
Interesting info in there. Let's keep the ball rolling.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZsoSahaal — GMT

This quote kills me inside.

[quote=Chris Hecker]
Chris Trottier and I founded the "cute team" really early on, mostly as a joke and reaction against Will and art director Ocean Quigley, who we called the "science team" to tease them. They would show these prototypes that looked exactly like looking at a petri dish through a microscope, and some of us would look at it and say, "yuck". The final game we shipped split it right down the middle so the creative tension there turned out to be healthy; you can look at the Sporepedia and see really gross monsters, and silly cute unicorns, and everything in-between.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/spore/907887p3.html
[/quote]

It was all a joke to them at first, teasing Will and the others who knew what the spore they were doing. Spore you, Hecker.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

jamal10 — GMT

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SporeMasterShardsOfBlue — GMT

[quote=jamal10][quote=ZsoSahaal]It was all a joke to them at first, teasing Will and the others who knew what the spore they were doing. Spore you, Hecker. [/quote]

Agreed. SPORE you Hecker, you SPORE up the game with your SPORE ideas.[/quote]
This is an interesting discussion thread, but please don't turn it into a personal attack on Hecker (despite the "tar and feather" title), or it will need to be closed. Thanks!

~Shards

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

igbee — GMT

Lets take a look at this Chris for a second.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hecker

http://chrishecker.com/Homepage

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/11595/Chris_Hecker_Doesnt_Really_Hate_The_Wii.html

A question for Maxis.

How did this loser get this job to begin with? Then, after it was clear he was a loser.
HOW DID HE KEEP HIS JOB?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=SporeMasterShardsOfBlue]
This is an interesting discussion thread, but please don't turn it into a personal attack on Hecker (despite the "tar and feather" title), or it will need to be closed. Thanks!

~Shards[/quote]
Indeed. This is not about attacking Hecker, this is about getting Spore back on track to what it should be.

[quote=igbee]How did this loser get this job to begin with? Then, after it was clear he was a loser.
HOW DID HE KEEP HIS JOB?[/quote]
[b][i][size=18]SLAP[/size][/i][/b]
What did I just say?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

superserial — GMT

[quote=ZsoSahaal]This is gaining momentum.

Someone already dedicated a creature to him...

[quote=PlasteredDragon][url=http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500138623438][b][size=18]Cute Hecker[/size][/b][/url]
[url=http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500138623438][img]http://ll-623.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/138/623/500138623438_lrg.png[/img][/url]

[i]The Cute Hecker is a curious creature who's sole purpose seems to be ruining everyone's good time. Its head is oversized to accomodate an inordinately large mouth, but appears to contain no brain at all. The ears are vestigal--Cute Hecker doesn't listen.[/i]
[/quote]

and I myself have coined the term Hecker, which refers to any creation that is overly cute or cartoony. (I guess I coined it, I haven't seen anyone else using it in this way)[/quote]

I'm going to HALP you.
[img]http://ll-015.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/148/015/500148015974_lrg.png[/img]
[url]http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500148015974[/url]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Arriana — GMT

I love that Steve Grand was quoted and had a say! I'm an avid Creatures player and have many times thought of the potential that could come forth if Steve Grand and Will Wright were to team up.

For those of you who've never played Creatures, it'd be a Sci-Spore dream come almost true.
Assuming the science-y best of both worlds came through, you'd get DNA, organs, brains, evolution, mutations, chemicals and reactions from the Creatures side and incredible possibilities concerning interface and specie, graphics, ability to interact with gravity, arm/foot length, things that would have the creatures truly come to life and be realistic.

I highly doubt people would be turned away - I myself have been playing Creatures for ten years now, and I know others who've been playing far longer than I have and still enjoy it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZeekSlider — GMT

I wonder if everyone would have the same opinion if it was Cliffy B. instead of Chris Hecker.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Visko — GMT

[quote=igbee]Lets take a look at this Chris for a second.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hecker

http://chrishecker.com/Homepage

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/11595/Chris_Hecker_Doesnt_Really_Hate_The_Wii.html

A question for Maxis.

How did this loser get this job to begin with? Then, after it was clear he was a loser.
HOW DID HE KEEP HIS JOB?

[/quote]

No f-ing kidding, I'm sure most 10 year olds would probably keep the cooler looking game. Hell I know my two nephews would have found the game more interesting. Who IS this moron trying to appeal to other than his SPORE?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ZeekSlider]I wonder if everyone would have the same opinion if it was Cliffy B. instead of Chris Hecker.[/quote]I'd be more shock than anger if it were him. That'd just be out of character.

[quote=Arriana]I love that Steve Grand was quoted and had a say! I'm an avid Creatures player and have many times thought of the potential that could come forth if Steve Grand and Will Wright were to team up.

For those of you who've never played Creatures, it'd be a Sci-Spore dream come almost true.
Assuming the science-y best of both worlds came through, you'd get DNA, organs, brains, evolution, mutations, chemicals and reactions from the Creatures side and incredible possibilities concerning interface and specie, graphics, ability to interact with gravity, arm/foot length, things that would have the creatures truly come to life and be realistic.

I highly doubt people would be turned away - I myself have been playing Creatures for ten years now, and I know others who've been playing far longer than I have and still enjoy it.[/quote]Creatures is just a little too much for me, hehe. I can't deny I enjoyed that game tremendously, but I always felt like I wasn't getting to most out of it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SoupLLJK — GMT

Will's over there giving NASA presentations and this other guy is sitting here turning it into Britney Spears: The Game. No wonder...

igbee — GMT

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

People are angry, they feel maligned, abused as consumers, and they're fed up. The reason Chris is taking all of the heat is because of how public he was about his opinions. Of course they will latch on to him as a scapegoat.

I pointed out that it was more than one person - but his name is out there now, and because of it he will take the heat. There is no stopping the monster of mobthink unless they start taking actions like bannings, lockings, and closing the forum.

We're dealing with a herd, and sure I have taken shots at Chris, but that's because he's got his name out there being quoted about what he accomplished as far as cute goes - and until he makes any kind of defense of himself, if EA ever allows it, that is going to be a constant.

If EA wanted to really let things go, they would un-restrict all the people who worked on the game from giving their opinions and applying freely to our mass anger, prejudices, and overall foaming at the mouths.

You can only starve and abuse an animal so long before it starts to get angry. Consider the starvation here as the information and ability to have any kind of meaningful discussion with the team that built spore. Until that is allowed, these attacks are likely to never go away.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

NASAROG — GMT

SPORE him..

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=mflux]I have misgivings about jumping this discussion, since the post I made caused quite a bit of misunderstanding, mis-quoting, and general confusion. Not even sure why I was quoted here... using me to prove some point!

I know the OP was not made here on Sporum, but rather on XSpore. However this general bashing of Chris has to stop. Despite the post being thoughtfully written, it mainly quotes the Seed article and that's really the only instance of Chris stating his opinion, which may or may not have changed over the intervening years. Also, whether or not he liked the Wii is completely irrelevant.

Chris himself doesn't need any defending, but since he has no voice here (Maxis or EA will not allow any of their employees to post in most general cases) you are not inciting a dialogue, but simply causing a riot. And since he's not here to defend himself, I feel free to state that Chris I've met is very professional, obsessed about video games (and as much of a Spore "fan" as you or I), a brilliant programmer, and much a harder working than you or I.

In fact, the first time I googled for "rigid body dynamics" to learn about physics in game programming, his name came up number one on the list. That's how big of an influence he has.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=91a&q=rigid+body+dynamics&btnG=Search

My point is, you simply cannot come to any sort of conclusion based on some measly snippets and quotes. Your perspective of the situation completely changes once you take into account the fact that the design team is a highly complex entity, and not one person could have force the game along a particular path. Throwing blame down on one person is entirely unfair.

Sporum, I think you're better than this. This community should be better than a lynch mob. I think the Spore community should support constructive criticism, not be assigning blame, and least of all, to single Maxis employees. It's ugly, and it shows no restraint. It's much better to allow the developers be on your side, rather than against you.[/quote]
Well said. I apologize for quoting you somewhat out of context, but your comments prove my point... to a degree. If you look at my comments throughout the thread, I'm not particularly anti-Hecker. I think he may have put himself in the limelight by careless accident, but I still think his cutesy approach may have been notable bad judgment. As I said slightly higher up, I don't question his motivation, or his personality, I question his judgment.

I don't want to see blood, I want to see the game that was advertised. The anger of the community is transitory, it's an expression of extreme disappointment. Whether Hecker is at fault or not, the point is that something went wrong, and has damaged Will's creation. The community wants to see acknowledgment, and a shifting of gears. The uproar is to remind EA and Maxis of that.

His comment on the Wii is an example of slipping judgment. He admits it himself. I'd like him to admit the same for his cute approach to Spore. In all honesty though, I'm disappointed at all the Maxis employees who sided with him far more than him. This should not be a problem. You should trust your head designer, that's what he's there for. Perhaps Will should have pushed his side a bit harder. For a moment he forget he's not just trying to sell something, he's trying to make something.

Bottom line, they have not done as they said they would. The community is annoyed. Since I have faith in them, I expect they will fix it. But they need to [b]shift gears and say so.[/b] As Jackuul said, you can only starve and abuse an animal so long before it starts to get angry. If Maxis says they feel Spore is currently lackluster and plan to change that, the animal will settle down. Until then, it'll keep rolling.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Orihalco — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]People are angry, they feel maligned, abused as consumers, and they're fed up. The reason Chris is taking all of the heat is because of how public he was about his opinions. Of course they will latch on to him as a scapegoat. [/quote]

He is not really a scapegoat though. He is a big reason why Spore is the way it is today.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

midian1369 — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=midian1369]Forget tar and feather.....drop him into a swimming pool filled with rubbing alcohol and double edged razor blades.

+100 to whomever identifies the origin of this saying.[/quote]

The likelihood of that causing pain is about equal or less than tarring and feathering, because with the impact into the razors nerves would likely be cut, and it could be a fatal thing to do, as exsanguination is likely within the first ten to twenty minutes. [/quote]

er...no....it's from a weird Al yankovic song.....you do have a point though

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

NASAROG — GMT

Who ever 1-starred me is a child.. I said d-a-m-n him.. I do not profane.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

RedLightning777 — GMT

[quote=Visko]Chris Hecker's statement regarding the Wii is horribly innacurate. 2 Gamecube's duct-taped together is WAY better than a Wii.[/quote]

HAHAHAHA that was funny. I happened to agree with that part of his bio!

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

NASAROG — GMT

Who ever you are... please find every single one of my posts and one star them if it makes you feel better. because the concept of Karma is far and above your understanding of the concept.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Gritmonger — GMT

[quote=ZeekSlider]...
With Spore, based on the "hard science version" aesthetic, I would have been made nausious. I have the GE version of the game; I've seen the art book. I know where they have come from and where they are now. (And that spider monster at the beginning part of the Creature phase chapter is so awesome!!) But that wouldn't have won me over asethetically if I knew nothing about the gameplay.

In the end, it was the gameplay that won me over, and from my seat, it just sounds like a lot of people are complaining about how it looks or the fact that a stage was cut out. The core foundation of the game is still there and still in tact. Some people just can't see it behind all the fluff and fuzzy-wuzzies that it became in order to sell it to a group of consumers that like to buy cute things. And I don't mean kids.[/quote]

It doesn't matter. You didn't have to be a civil engineer to eventually "get" SimCity or experiment with it or blow up your cities. Nobody picking up the Sims is a social scientist in real life - at least, definitely not a majority, unless there are 100 million social scientists out there I haven't heard of.

You don't have to be a biologist to get a science-y spore. Long legs means faster, that's easy to get. Long limbs means reach. You don't have to know behavioral ecology to know why making a short animal makes it stealthier in order to make a short animal. Would it really have clobbered your gameplay if most of the stealthy things crouched furtively in addition to mostly being ambush predators or skulking prey animals? Instead, everything has the "Predator" shimmering outline.

Instead of looking out for and avoiding ambush sites (like low vegetation near an open area) you have to constantly look out for that "stealthing" Epic that has its two-story bulk shimmer into place directly overtop of you. How would the former have made life more unbearable? How would it have horribly ruined gameplay? Does it ruin gameplay that you have to have wings to fly? Based on the logic presented up until now, I'd have to say it would.

Without any meaning to the shape of these creatures, they are doodles. Their shape has no reflection of what they can do. They are husks for a collection of sets of four numbers, which only come with the "uber" parts.

If that is gameplay that you prefer, I would suggest a plethora of RPGs, except they are more complex. They have more than four "levels," and a lot more "parts." But they are basically similar point-and-click adventures.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Gritmonger]Without any meaning to the shape of these creatures, they are doodles. Their shape has no reflection of what they can do. They are husks for a collection of sets of four numbers, which only come with the "uber" parts.[/quote]Only a sliver of a well said post. The glory of Spore... or what it would have been, was that it was hard science, but the game did the science part for you. You just experimented. That's a sandbox. The hard science that is missing isn't biology questions every time you go into the editor, it's things you wouldn't see directly. Realistic behavior in animals, for one. The ability of the game to surprise you.

[size=9](Also, that is one sweet looking mollusk you've got in your signature. A fellow mollusk-lover?)[/size]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Didzo — GMT

Here's how I look at the victory of the Cute Team. They're decision made the game simple, cute, and easy to play for anyone. Even toddlers. However, this victory left the fans who followed the game's development from its beginnings sorely disappointed. I love science, and I was hoping for a game that at least incorporated a bit more complexity and added some relevance to the structure of the creatures. I find that the game is decent, but without any of the potential it showed early on.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

TwilightRealm — GMT

[quote=Finnical][quote=mflux]In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight.[/quote][/quote]
[i][b]Want.[/b][/i]

My interest was seriously peaked when I read this. It sounds awesome, more realistic, and puts more emphasis on the importance of how creatures are built! I'd take some realism and science over cutesy cartoonism in Spore any day.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Mowglia — GMT

[quote=mflux]My point is, you simply cannot come to any sort of conclusion based on some measly snippets and quotes. Your perspective of the situation completely changes once you take into account the fact that the design team is a highly complex entity, and not one person could have force the game along a particular path. Throwing blame down on one person is entirely unfair.

Sporum, I think you're better than this. This community should be better than a lynch mob. I think the Spore community should support constructive criticism, not be assigning blame, and least of all, to single Maxis employees. It's ugly, and it shows no restraint. It's much better to allow the developers be on your side, rather than against you.[/quote]

Indeed, but what you have here is a bunch of irate customers who feel like they got ripped off, and are likely to get more of the same soon, lol. They are always going to look for somewhere to vent and someone to blame. Although as you said, assigning blame solves nothing, and better to address the issue - is Spore fixable?

Someone suggested EA/Maxis might update Spore into what it ought to have been via expansion packs. I am skeptical. Even assuming they could wave a magic wand and fix the creature section (to apply the physical properties of a creature to its performance and success in the environment), I do not see how it could be implemented. How could a properly expanded version of the game possibly be compatible with the current "dumbed down" version? I think at best we will have to wait until Spore 2.

To me it seems Maxis misunderstood the fundamental concept. They got it the wrong way around. I have to assume the game was about evolution, but there is no "intelligent design" in evolution. If my creature spends time hiding from predators in green vegetation, then its hide is likely to start turning green. Similarly, if survival depends on evading a fast predator then running speed may increase (presumably at the expense of other things, like upper-body muscle-mass). Ideally the player should have NO input over the evolutionary process other than simply to control the actions of their creature. The evolutionary changes in the creatures ought to be the result of the environment, creature behaviour, interactions with other creatures, and the sequence of events over time (i.e., chance).

In other words, the form of your creature should represent the many triumphs and disasters the generations have experienced along the way. The fascination lies in not knowing how things will turn out. There ought to be a hardcore mode where it is possible a creature will not survive for a vast array of reasons, ranging from predators, food shortage, drought, to unsuccessful creature behaviour, and even just plain bad luck (local supernova evaporates planet). I reckon players would identify with their creatures most strongly if their very form was a physical record and testimony to their struggle for survival. As ours is.

Unfortunately I cannot reconcile my expectations of such a game with this designer pink-fluffy-bunny thing Maxis have got going. These perversions obviously would not last 10 seconds outside a toy shop, and this is not what I had in mind at all. Who in their right mind would allow the creation of such things? Oh, the humanity!

Now to be fair, obviously a realistic model of evolution has to be massively simplified, and I am not saying doing it is going to be easy. It is probably the most sophisticated thing computer-game engineers have ever attempted. However, you might be surprised at what can be achieved by simple systems. There is no need to go crazy or get too ambitious to obtain an outstanding result.

I came across a good example of this the other day in a freebie called Fantastic Contraption. The idea is you have access to some bits and pieces, and you have to build a machine to do a simple job (typically move a blob to a specific location). So you build your machine, and test it to see if it works, and then if necessary modify and test again over cycles to get it working. Some of the results are spectacular failures, some ingenious successes, some downright pathetic, some hilariously optimistic, some horribly unpredictable, and many rather amusing. I was staggered by what other people had done for more reasons than I care to explain here. And amazed by how such an apparently simple mechanism with such simple components could yield such a playable, addictive, and sophisticated result.

Granted it is not everyone's cup of tea, but it proves that simple systems do not have to be cute or non-scientific to be radical fun, yet also model reality in a fascinating albeit simplified way. Maxis/EA ought to take a long hard look at this freebie. It is very simple, very clever, very playable, and precisely captures the spirit of what Spore should have been about - the uncertainty involved in the nature of evolution, and the fun that can be had with failure as well as success.

Someone will make a "Fantastic Contraption" Spore one day, and it will spark a gaming revolution. But I doubt it will be EA/Maxis. I think it will take programmers and designers with a genuine interest in both science and games to do this, whereas EA seem to be more commercially oriented

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tetrol — GMT

scapegoat

• noun 1 a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings or mistakes of others. 2 (in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Leviticus, chapter 16).

Definition 1 - as a self proclaimed leader of the cute team - not sure that you can be separated from the "others"

Definition 2 - as the company policy is not to allow response - he may well be a goat sent out into the wilderness!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

CainoMDK — GMT

[quote=jamal10]Somebody needs to fire Mr. Chris Hecker.[/quote]

Well... The internet provides you a tool that gives you the power of making him never get another job again if you really hate him or whatever... But thats just a tip...

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Parvati — GMT

Agh, its not worth it to ruin someone else his life over a game.Chris isn't the only one to blame you know.
Will always had the final vote.

I think they have gotten the message.

All they have to do is comment on the situation.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

CainoMDK — GMT

I should put a "/sarcastic" before my line like you

But that whats I meant parv... The topic title says the same as what Ive wrote there... He, Chris, as the leader of the guys who made this "mess", should stand for it and write a letter to the community... Because my prediction will be that its just a matter of time that the Anti-Hecker party would swap to the www. That would be something that no one can control. The forum and the SPORE fans doesnt just consist of "matured" thinking people...

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Parvati — GMT

True.

But I am afraid they will ignore it.
They hope its going to go away.

That people like me are going to cave in and accept defeat.

Trust me, we are not.
We love Spore, but as a consumer we feel duped and we want answers.

but yes, /sarcasm helps on the internet

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

CainoMDK — GMT

Yeah... well maybe it will go away... This forum isnt a big problem anyway since most guys are here because they like to play spore (they cant for some reasons) and would like to inject thier idea to the further developments and they are dissapointed of the fact that spore is dumb down. Well they found a guy who probably the one that "took" thier beloved Spore away. They make fun of him. Thats not a big deal... BUt the whole noise the forum and the fans are making are heard from others (not only spore fans) and the next thing you got are "copy-cats". Wiki-profiles are messed up, Myspace profiles are hacked and so on... Look at the Obama campagne... I keep getting Powerpoint presentations about Obama and how bad he is and... really, they are not from the US... That whole thing is going mad... Unstopable... Look... If a crusade is started, there is no going back...
A mad man can be intelligent, but a mass of mad people arent...

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Parvati — GMT

Yup, I am aware of that.

But never forget that you are dealing with public figures.
Different set of rules.

Look you may not know this but I'm a digital musician.
If I would post for who I write music I would get spammed with nonsense. But it was my choice to step into the lime light.

The same goes for any public figure.
Sounds harsh, but thats the reality.

But I wouldn't say a crusade has started around here.
Far from it. I am very sure that soon we won't be able to mention anything bad because these boards will be over run by fanboyz. Mark my words.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Moach — GMT

* opens up the "death note"

chris..... he...cker....

let´s wait... 10 seconds now...

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JPFrostfox — GMT

The issue of Spore put aside, Hecker's opinion on games, what people should/would find appealing and his general tendency against realism and complexity makes me wish to stringently avoid any project he so much as touches.

As far as what kind of person he is, don't know and don't really care - so personal labels and attacks don't enter into it for me. It's a purely 'consumer experience' based decision, and I find his vision of the product repulsive.

Seems to me that Will got flat run over by EA and their swarm of minions, because I just can't see him approving very much of what Spore had become - especially game play wise. I apparently overestimated his influence and ability to resist the EA crush.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Parvati — GMT

[quote=JPFrostfox] I apparently overestimated his influence and ability to resist the EA crush.[/quote]

I think I still do.
I thougt Will being the lead designer or developer, he had the deciding call on the direction of the project.

Atleast thats what I think.
Maybe I still give him to much credit

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Worldbreaker276 — GMT

As the years have passed, I've seen Wright become more and more like Sid Meir, a name slapped on titles he had nothing to do with.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JPFrostfox — GMT

[quote=Parvati][quote=JPFrostfox] I apparently overestimated his influence and ability to resist the EA crush.[/quote]

I think I still do.
I thougt Will being the lead designer or developer, he had the deciding call on the direction of the project.

Atleast thats what I think.
Maybe I still give him to much credit [/quote]

Perhaps, though the thought is dreadful.

I've been sailing on the Wright/Maxis ship for over a decade and mostly enjoyed where it took me... until this somewhat ignoble release. I have to admit though, that I had misgivings when EA entered the picture. It seems every developer I like EA buys, and then promptly bugger up beyond toleration. As I said, I guess the reason I stuck with it was faith in Maxis and Mr. Wright... it just didn't pan out how I'd hoped.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Seems like this Thread is holding on . I guess they have will let the unhappy ones have their Witch hunt!

BURN HIMMMMMM BURN HECKER BUUUURRRRRNNNNN HIMMMMM ALIVE!!

that feels better thank you

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ZeekSlider — GMT

[quote=Tetrol]scapegoat

• noun 1 a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings or mistakes of others. 2 (in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Leviticus, chapter 16).

Definition 1 - as a self proclaimed leader of the cute team - not sure that you can be separated from the "others"

Definition 2 - as the company policy is not to allow response - he may well be a goat sent out into the wilderness![/quote]Does the dictionary you got that from have a picture of Nixon next to it? Mine does.

[b]EDIT:[/b] Ooops, sorry, that was W.'s picture. Wow, I wonder when that was taken, because he looks so haggard.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

CainoMDK — GMT

/sarcastic

Yeah live on TV... During the superbowl...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Guineh — GMT

I saw the Creatures Series mentioned here, and FWIW, it may have had hard science, but it, too, had "Cuteness" and appealed to all ages. Members in the community ranged from the single digits to their 40's. It was cute, but there was hard science behind it. So, obviously hard science won't detract, and something with a cute façade doesn't necessarily mean it has to lack hard science.

Where Spore went wrong was the early demos showed a lot more being put into the hands of the player than there is now. Everyone remembers the Willosaur dragging is prey. That was cool. Verbs could be combined to create composite actions.

What happened is the demos promised the world, and what we got was significantly less that what the demos appeared to show. For one reason or another, featrues were culled from the game as it neared release. I don't know how much (and neither does anyone else, save for those who were involved) was culled by the cute team.

The main thing that has baffled me from the day the game was released was the lack of relevance the test animations really have. Oh, yeah, and the parts pack will have more irrelevant and completely useless test animations. Hmm. I suppose their only purpose was to make neat videos to send to Youtube. The other thing was the change from being able to stack attributes of parts, to only the highest part counts. That was baffling as well. Making morphology count would have been great.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ickabod — GMT

I'm bumping this becasue if all of this is true then this "person" stole Will's game and ruined it for all of us.

Seriously, who on Earth has the right to overrule Will Wright on game design. Sure you can question things, but it's Will F'kn Wright.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

johnJonston — GMT

ok lets get him them, who is gonna bring the tar and feathers?

serioulsy tho he should be fired

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

simsmac — GMT

[quote=Finnical][/quote]

Didn't read it all, but I think I agree with you. That guy ruined the game by making everyone backtrack and remove stuff.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

RaptorZefier — GMT

. . .I swear to god if the 'Cute and Creepy Parts Pack' has -Sneakers- as something for our creatures. . . . . . . . .

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

And yet, there are days that I don't wonder if Chris Hecker didn't dumb-down Spore [i]enough[/i]...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Guineh]I saw the Creatures Series mentioned here, and FWIW, it may have had hard science, but it, too, had "Cuteness" and appealed to all ages. Members in the community ranged from the single digits to their 40's. It was cute, but there was hard science behind it. So, obviously hard science won't detract, and something with a cute façade doesn't necessarily mean it has to lack hard science.[/quote]
This speaks volumes. The changing of the game was to appeal to a larger audience, but the result is a game with less depth and less options. How does this appeal to a larger audience? Just because it has hard science doesn't mean it's "E = mc^2 The Game". The hard science was behind the scenes. The front was cute, flexible, and free. The results were unpredictable and surprising, which pleases people of all audiences. I think you might find that seeing the reaction vary based on what you make would make people [i]more[/i] creative, and [i]more[/i] amused.

A real sandbox is still bound by the laws of physics and gravity. Using water, one can make more solid sand structures. But you can't just pick up the sand and leave it in the air. Does that mean it's inappropriate for children? No. The children don't have to do the equations for how the sand falls. It's just realism, not hardcore science nerdiness. We weren't expecting a game where you have to carefully design the central nervous system of your creature. We just wanted something that was more dynamic, more exciting, and more realistic.

[quote=Parvati]Agh, its not worth it to ruin someone else his life over a game.Chris isn't the only one to blame you know.
Will always had the final vote.

I think they have gotten the message.

All they have to do is comment on the situation.
[/quote]
Indeed. Will must have agreed, but I imagine he was choosing what he saw as the lesser of two evils. Reaching his original vision may have caused too much strife inside Maxis, for example. However, not reaching it caused a lot of strife outside, so it's hard to say.

Chris Hecker is the poster boy of a larger mistake. If he still has his job, which AFAIK he does, then he must be a very talented and dedicated person. Losing his talent to see blood would not be worth it; the past cannot be changed. But we'd like to see acknowledgment that mistakes were made, by someone somewhere, and that this mistakes will be fixed.

I think they have gotten the message. It's possible their comment on the situation is simply the announcement of the new expansion. However, I'd like to hear a straightforward statement that they plan on fixing the depth issues in many stages of the game, especially the Creature Stage.

[quote=Mowglia]Ideally the player should have NO input over the evolutionary process other than simply to control the actions of their creature. The evolutionary changes in the creatures ought to be the result of the environment, creature behaviour, interactions with other creatures, and the sequence of events over time (i.e., chance).[/quote]
Okay that might be a little too far. Another excerpt from the Seed article on a more positive note:
[quote=Seed Magazine]Stephen Webster, a science communications expert at Imperial College, London, answers unequivocally when asked if he feels Spore could further muddy waters already clouded with ignorance and misinformation: "No, I don't, and I'll tell you why. My experience of working with science and communication is that people separate quite clearly one domain of their life from another. These games work not because people think they're teaching them science, but because you can do the manipulation... You can see the results from what you do." It's this latter element which may make Spore much more useful as an educational tool than its omissions and inventions might suggest. "No one feels involved in evolution," says Webster. "It's hard to imagine evolution, and it's very hard to see, because of the lengths of time involved. When people talk about evolution happening in front of your nose, they're usually talking about bacteria — it's not something you can see."[/quote]
Letting the player experiment and make their own creatures is a way of anthropomorphizing chance, in a way. If we wanted to see natural evolution, we could watch bateria with a microscope. [i](Okay, that'd be slow and boring. But at least you could see the evolution in your lifetime.)[/i] This is about letting people be the ones to make the mutations and be the result, and let them see how natural selection affects even their own behavior. [i](This is, of course, now missing from the complete game, which is more about making yourself look like whatever you want while playing a basic RPG.)[/i]

[quote=RaptorZefier]. . .I swear to god if the 'Cute and Creepy Parts Pack' has -Sneakers- as something for our creatures. . . . . . . . . [/quote]
Oh god, I hadn't even thought of that. I will [i]literally[/i] ban any creature wearing sneakers from my game. There's a line between cute and directly mocking nature.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

mager56723 — GMT

compared to the GDC video i saw when i first heard about spore, the current version is more like a game about evolving teddy bears.

btw, what is this "creatures" game that everyone is talking about?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

deity — GMT

When I first saw about him and the 'Cute Team' thing I got really pissed, but then when I saw he was the same guy that said the stuff about the Wii I though: "Why isnt he dead yet?". Seriously Chris, you should start running. But I dont think Will should have let him do that do the game, bet Will dosent really care. I felt sorry for Chris, but after I saw he said the Wii thing I realized he didnt understand anything about games. And now he copies nintendo trying to do a cute game. Didnt work.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SnuggleFairie — GMT

I remember reading Chris' statement about the wii. The most amusing thing is he pulled a "wii." He took a good game and dumbed it down for the casual gamer. That is what most wii game makers are doing. He caused spore to pull a "wii."

I for one preordered the game when it first became available for preoder. That was when they were still referring to the 2005 videos, screenshots, and gameplay. The closer it got to release, the more things changed. Unfortunately it was preordered so long that they wouldn't let me cancel the preorder.

I have learned to never preoder anything again.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=mager56723]compared to the GDC video i saw when i first heard about spore, the current version is more like a game about evolving teddy bears.

btw, what is this "creatures" game that everyone is talking about?[/quote]
Well the game Creatures is a 1990s game by Steve Grand. Wikipedia article [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatures_(artificial_life_program)]here.[/url]

I also sometimes use "Creature Game" interchangeably with "Creature Stage".

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

I'm surprised they didn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE to make the game.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=SnuggleFairie]I remember reading Chris' statement about the wii. The most amusing thing is he pulled a "wii." He took a good game and dumbed it down for the casual gamer. That is what most wii game makers are doing. He caused spore to pull a "wii."

I for one preordered the game when it first became available for preoder. That was when they were still referring to the 2005 videos, screenshots, and gameplay. The closer it got to release, the more things changed. Unfortunately it was preordered so long that they wouldn't let me cancel the preorder.

I have learned to never preoder anything again. [/quote]
I'm just glad I never did. I considered it. As a policy, I never pre-order, in case the game isn't what's advertised. Turns out that was a worthwhile precaution. The only company that consistently [i]beats[/i] my expectations is Stardock. Maybe because they know how to advertise. They're the only ones I would consider pre-ordering from now, and it's not likely.

[quote=deity]When I first saw about him and the 'Cute Team' thing I got really pissed, but then when I saw he was the same guy that said the stuff about the Wii I though: "Why isnt he dead yet?". Seriously Chris, you should start running. But I dont think Will should have let him do that do the game, bet Will dosent really care. I felt sorry for Chris, but after I saw he said the Wii thing I realized he didnt understand anything about games. And now he copies nintendo trying to do a cute game. Didnt work.[/quote]
He needs to stick to what he does best. My understanding is that's programming, and AI programming specifically. My guess is that at first he was angry at the Wii for being such a success, but then realized maybe he was being too hardcore about the whole thing and decided to go cute instead. Which was also a questionable choice. Pick your target audience, Chris.

On the other hand, the current Spore game might be perfect for the Wii.

[quote=Jackuul]I'm surprised they didn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE to make the game. [/quote]
I love the internet.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Nonomu198 — GMT

Weight support?
Cell with no eyes?
A creature creator with better coloring?
fun..?

I'm too stupid to understand these terms. Therefore I must buy part packs to feel better about myself!

[quote]And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.[/quote]

lmao

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[code]HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
PLZ OPEN FILE "SPORE.ORIGINAL"?
AWSUM THX
VISIBLE FILE
O NOES
INVISIBLE "ERROR! DO NOT WANT - KTHXCHRIS"
KTHXBYE[/code]

Output: ERROR! DO NOT WANT - KTHXCHRIS

Caps are from coding.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ickabod — GMT

I think we found what to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]I'm surprised they didn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE to make the game. [/quote]

HAI
CAN HAS SPORE?
PLZ OPEN FILE "InstallSpore.exe"?
AWSUM THX
VISIBLE FILE
INVISIBLE "SecuROM"
O NOES
VISIBLE "UR A PIRATE!"
INVISIBLE "Format C: > Null"
KTHXBYE

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

FuzzballsJr — GMT

So...
none of THIS.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIsc2D2B-Yo[/youtube]
[b]or cool behavior like THIS[/b]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJZMunpgOtI[/youtube]

THEY MURDERED THEM ALL!!!!!! !!!! !!!! !!! ! !! ! !!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Nonomu198][quote=Seed Magazine]And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.[/quote]
lmao[/quote]
I also laughed thoroughly at that part. Not [i]exactly[/i] what the rest of us were thinking. Wait, idea:
[quote=Seed Magazine]And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became a mediocre game.[/quote]Fixed.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Pugnap00 — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]I'm surprised they didn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE to make the game. [/quote]thats so amazing LOL

Screw C++ and C# im going LOLCODE

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

rattslayer — GMT

i think Hecker should be in deep SPORE,

I like the gameplay, but i would prefer it if there was more science. I actually AGREE with Hecker on the fact that there needs to be FTL drive (Faster Than Light) because you DO need do balance Science and Cutness (ie simplicity), but this was too far

i have a creature with these "Accordian" legs, and it looks like it should "skim" across the ground, but it moves slowly.
[url=http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500147464916][img]http://ll-464.ea.com/spore/static/image/500/147/464/500147464916_lrg.png[/img][/url]
It would be really entertaining if i could have this guy move like *******, but be absolutly weak, but it is sad.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eyegore — GMT

Great post. This should be a STICKY!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=rattslayer]I actually AGREE with Hecker on the fact that there needs to be FTL drive (Faster Than Light) because you DO need do balance Science and Cutness (ie simplicity), but this was too far[/quote]Agreed. Though, theoretically the method of propulsion isn't explained, so it could have to do with relativity and shortening the distance to travel.

[b]EDIT:[/b]
I'd like to quote another user from xSpore for this well stated point:
[QUOTE=Logester]I agree about how it should have been the science game made; and as for why, we should look at things in retrospect. Why was Spore so hyped? Because it had a HUGE following! Why did it have a huge following? Because everyone thought it was going to be the science game that Will Wright first presented back in 05-06. Wobbly 3-legged Willosaur being chased by a giant multi-limbed spider, all done with procedural coding to combine actions and so forth.[/QUOTE]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

[quote]This is an interesting discussion thread, but please don't turn it into a personal attack on Hecker (despite the "tar and feather" title), or it will need to be closed. Thanks!

~Shards [/quote]
Shards, you have to understand that many people are very, VERY pissed off about what happened here.

In fact, Hecker could not possibly be solely responsible, but until such time as there is some word from Maxis about what you intend to do about your real longterm fans and how we got completely and utterly ROBBED OF OUR MONEY BY MARKETING LIES, you are going to have to expect that we'll continue to say something about it.

If we're shouted down or shut up here, we'll go elsewhere and spread massively negative word of mouth in places where Maxis doesn't control the ban stick.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

waymack91xj — GMT

He could've started alone. It takes one spoiled apple to ruin a barrel, and hes all bout SPOREing people off from wha tI understand. This is probably a good victoy for him

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/11595/Chris_Hecker_Doesnt_Really_Hate_The_Wii.html

He just loves ruffling feathers! He wanted to change spore to get into your heads is all

edited to add "ing" after my censored word that appears on G rated movies

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

TheMissingSock — GMT

Great post, put it all together well.

I'm another one that feels deceived into a buying a game they never really released.
The big following for this game was all for the science in it, mostly from the 2005 show with Will.
Sad the way they removed it all, I have no idea what Will was thinking letting all this happen...after doing all those shows on evolution...he releases this?

I wonder what some of those scientists you see in the many science vidoes with Will Wright think of him and Spore now?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

Yah, I was wondering that too. I wonder how the NASA astronomers feel when they see that the terraforming gameplay consists of "Chocolate Swirls" and a "three of each kind" creature scavenger hunt?

I wonder if they felt taken advantage of?

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Cesar8002 — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]I'm surprised they didn't use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE to make the game. [/quote]

Pure awesomeness!

I still think this Hecker guy is being used as an scapegoat. This is all the fault of marketing and accounting drones blinded by imaginary sales numbers.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ghadis]Shards, you have to understand that many people are very, VERY pissed off about what happened here.

In fact, Hecker could not possibly be solely responsible, but until such time as there is some word from Maxis about what you intend to do about your real longterm fans and how we got completely and utterly ROBBED OF OUR MONEY BY MARKETING LIES, you are going to have to expect that we'll continue to say something about it.

If we're shouted down or shut up here, we'll go elsewhere and spread massively negative word of mouth in places where Maxis doesn't control the ban stick.[/quote]
Having it on the official forums gives Maxis the ability to direct the flow slightly to prevent the situation from escalating too much. As such, they can keep us on the main topic and what needs to be done, not on being a raging mob. I think Maxis knows this, which is why they let us discuss it here. That is what Shards is getting at, and as long as they keep things open, this is exactly what needs to be done.

[quote=Cesar8002]I still think this Hecker guy is being used as an scapegoat. This is all the fault of marketing and accounting drones blinded by imaginary sales numbers.[/quote]
As I've said before, Hecker is just the poster boy of a larger problem. EA and Maxis need to remember that they are trying to provide a product we like because it is [i]good[/i], not because it's [i]shiny and sparkly.[/i] Many, many companies miss this point. Don't try to hit hot buttons, like "kid-friendly" or "cute" or "edgy" or use brand names, just give a good product. We want a product that meets what the hot buttons suggest, not a product taped onto some hot buttons.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

[quote=Finnical]Having it on the official forums gives Maxis the ability to direct the flow slightly to prevent the situation from escalating too much. As such, they can keep us on the main topic and what needs to be done, not on being a raging mob. I think Maxis knows this, which is why they let us discuss it here. That is what Shards is getting at, and as long as they keep things open, this is exactly what needs to be done.[/quote]
Do you think they are listening to us?

*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"

There have been some great suggestions here. Awesome ones. If EA aren't listening they're... EA or something.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ghadis]*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"[/quote]Actually, I can imagine that too. Hopefully someone will get it on tape.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Aurok — GMT

[b]I don't see any problem here that couldn't be fixed with a simple expansion.[/b]

The lack of any physics (especially in the way attacks work) is incredibly disheartening in the CREATURE stage, so wait, why not just release an GAMEPLAY xpack for the creature stage that makes weapon placement and center of gravity meaningful. You could have these creatures right along side the cuddly & cute ones, and choose to only populate your planet with "realistic" creatures if you so adamantly desired science. Not only would this add substantial depth to the ultra-shallow "WoW-lite" gameplay of the creature stage, it would add a whole new dimension to creature creation & animation. The population of cute creature would still be determined by popularity ("survival of the hippest") while the realistic ones would be subject to an evolution simulation, and particularly unfit ones would likely never surface in a game.

The lack of complex social behaviors during the universally reviled TRIBAL stage could likewise be fixed in an xpack, other creatures' tribes could be domesticated through several means: domesticated as livestock if they're big & ugly, domesticated as travel if they're fast and can support more than their own weight (see above calculations), and domesticated as sacred animals if the tribe has enough religion. Some creature behaviors would still be based on biology: very deadly creatures might be intra-competitive, making pack hunting and organizing raid parties difficult. This would force players to choose between the optimally killer creature and one with enough social sense to allow for advanced tactics. Likewise, players should still have the option of using natural weapons in a fight, complicating the rock-scissors-paper of the RTS stage by making tools (justifiably) expensive, and allowing creature to hold more tools or more armor with the appropriate designed arms and legs.

Since Maxis doesn't like expansions which require other ones, a "simulation" gameplay expansion for both Creature and Tribe stages would be ideal, allowing a better flow between them while satisfying the biology freaks AND the hardcore gamers.

The aversion to "realistic" versions of the civ and space stages is utterly retarded. [b]Running a massive empire is freaking onerous[/b]. If you want to see what a realistic version of these stages is like, buy Civilization 3 and Alpha Centauri, you eventually spend your entire game micromanaging each city, only to be taken under by revolts and pollution, instead of your opponents. Abstraction was a necessity for these stages, [b]"realistic" intergalactic travel simply doesn't exist[/b]. As such, simply deepening the gameplay would be enough enhancement, which has me psyched for the new Space xpack, but I think adding back in some of that simulation-style complexity is a no brainer-way to expand the gameplay.

As a bonus, nothing is stopping them from releasing a "Single Cell" expansion pack which forces you to work up to the CELL stage, expanding the entirely too brief experience and adding yet another opportunity for more realism. [b]Spore is not just a game, it's a platform, and we shouldn't underestimate what Maxis can do with this aspect of the game, especially when it comes to pleasing different segments of the audience.[/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ickabod — GMT

[quote=Finnical][quote=ghadis]*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"[/quote]Actually, I can imagine that too. Hopefully someone will get it on tape.[/quote]

That would be a great underground promotional video for the community, right before announcing a Science expansion.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

...Right... WW thinks like us, and maybe RocketGirl, really is him on disguise!

(no need for sarchasm quoting there, I hope)

To me: Chris-cute = Scapegoat, damage-control.

He really was very much a nobody... And probably now, his account looks a couple of digits bigger. Or not even that. We are talking about somebody who had to pick a job he didn't like to "feed his family"... according to his own "really-big mouth" not-the-one-you-would-put-a-million-dollars-project on his hands.

I have nothing against this guy. I really don't buy the cute-team affair. Even if it was true, he would only be guilty of being mistaken. The fault is for the ones that "supposedly" agreed to his ideas.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

That's an interesting take on it. But i must say the "cute team" line of reasoning makes sense to me, given the following:

* Will wright's track record of massive depth in games
* Early gameplay videos and prototypes which allude to a massively deeper gameplay experience
* EA's pattern of dumbing down gameplay

I can easily see it happening. Funding guy comes in: 'Naw naw, this is all too complicated, yank it and make it more WOW-like.'

And wham, the deal is done.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MrLuso — GMT

Hecker is not the only one who did this to Spore, it was a team, even if he chosed the path the other members agreed with him, so it wasn't just him who created this [i]thing[/i].
Anyway, I am sceptical about the fixing of Spore, I think Spore 1 died and they will keep these "science ideas" to Spore 2, to make more money, while endless fluffy and cute expansions will keep flowing for Spore 1. Why fix a game for free if you can make more 60$ in another game?
I first heard of Spore in space.com site back in 2005 as the "evolution game". I followed the development. Can anyone answer when exactly the old spore died? The development was advanced or just in the start? The answers to these questions may be the answer if Spore can be Spore again.

PS: Can anyone confirm that the "old spore" packages are still present in the game dvd? I read this somewhere but I doubt it is true.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

LightWarriorK — GMT

I really hope Maxis pays attention to everything that's being said here and elsewhere. Man...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Guineh — GMT

[quote=ghadis]*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"[/quote]

We'd absolutely HAVE to have that on a Youtube video. Man, a moment like that would be priceless.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=Guineh][quote=ghadis]*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"[/quote]

We'd absolutely HAVE to have that on a Youtube video. Man, a moment like that would be priceless. [/quote]

Or he's trapped in his office with a lawyer watching his door.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

FuzzballsJr — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=Guineh][quote=ghadis]*I* would be listening if I were Wright. I can see him bludgeoning people down in the corridor with a huge stack of dotmatrix printouts of the forum posts from here saying "SEE? SEE I SPORING TOLD YOU THEY WOULD BE FURIOUS!!"[/quote]

We'd absolutely HAVE to have that on a Youtube video. Man, a moment like that would be priceless. [/quote]

Or he's trapped in his office with a lawyer watching his door. [/quote]

need this...
[b]
[size=18]Rated PG-13 for intense science fiction terror. [/size][/b]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpZCwvRSrW8[/youtube]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

DarthDoggie — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MarvinKosh — GMT

I'm guessing that the focus groups for this game either didn't exist or didn't represent the vocal community. Otherwise, a train wreck of cuteness could have been avoided. Even if one bunch of designers get it fixed in their head that cute will sell, if the focus groups fire the game back at them with a cannon then they have to think again.

I think that the lesson to be learned here is not to make science cute, but rather to find a way to sell a game that is oozing with science. Certainly on TV there's no problem pushing science fiction on viewers. The trick is to keep the plot engaging without info dumping all the time. You don't need to be a wormhole physicist to appreciate Stargate SG-1 for example, because any time something complicated comes up it's usually Carter that finds some way to simplify things for the benefit of the audience at home.

Simplifying something doesn't always mean taking things out of the equation, but making the equation easier to understand. It's a bit easier to take the roots of a quadratic equation if you've got 0 on the one side and x's on the other. Similarly, it's easier to appreciate the interactions between cells if we don't have to worry about the internal workings of each cell, only that each cell works a certain way which is determined by DNA (or in the case of non-terrestrial life, any molecule that accomplishes the same task as DNA). Building on this concept, if you change the DNA of the cell, you change the way the cell works.

What matters a great deal is that the interactions between those cells are meaningful, especially if you're playing a cell game. The cells don't have to look fancy to accomplish any of their goals.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Wullen — GMT

This is a very interesting thread. Thank you for sharing it with an obviously bewildered community.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

kentu — GMT

Our (people who would really like a better spore) only hope is that someone will invent a time machine, give it to Will, he will go back in time and massively change spore, for the better, and when we wake up tomorrow we will have a awesome game

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MarvinKosh — GMT

If you had a time machine, you could go back.... way back, and mess with evolution. Or go way forward to the age of interstellar travel. Then you wouldn't really need to play Spore.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

KwKiller — GMT

So that is why it took so long, cause they had to dumb it down? If all that article is true, then my defence of spore about how the programming was just to complex to do what I was looking forward to is... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

KHAAAAAAAN!
[img]http://gwally.com/avatars/photos/kirk_khan.gif[/img]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SivCorp — GMT

Interesting read. So it looks like the target has been spotted. Will was trying to make the Spore we all wanted... and then this Hecker character decided that we were to dumb to enjoy it. [u][i]"watch your head, wanka!"[/i]
[/u]
Sounds like the USA public school system... lets make the stuff easier so that kids don't have to feel bad.
Boo hoo. Grow some balls and then expand your brain. Your brain is the only thing that keeps us sorry humans on top of the food chain anyways. We would all be cat food by now.

[b]Stop insulting us and start engaging us. We can handle it![/b]

Grrrr - now I'm mad. Time to make some carnivores.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

"Your brain is the only thing that keeps us sorry humans on top of the food chain anyways"

We're not on top of the food chain. Viruses are predators that romp on us at will, willy-nilly, all over the world. Smallpox killed over a billion people last century.

KW, that purple critter is the shiznit.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=SivCorp]Sounds like the USA public school system... lets make the stuff easier so that kids don't have to feel bad.[/quote]See [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle]Peter Principle[/url]:
[i]"In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."[/i]
Reworded; As long as someone is capable and competent, they will be promoted. Eventually they will no longer be competent, and they will be left at this point. Surefire way to make everyone feel bad.

Not that I'm saying the US education system is good, to the contrary, but I think it's a bit too complex to be answered with one fix like that. It needs funding, redesign, and a lot more. Treating people like people is only the first step of a [i]long[/i] road to proper education.

In other news, in the past I've been able to explain complex theories like evolution to a generic jock in a matter of minutes. You mostly start by treating them like they have a brain. It's amazing, when you make people use their brain, they think. Of course, I had the benefit of being one-on-one with my "student", which many teachers don't.

[quote=ghadis]We're not on top of the food chain. Viruses are predators that romp on us at will, willy-nilly, all over the world. Smallpox killed over a billion people last century.[/quote]The "top of the food chain" is relative anyway. Depends on the food chain you're talking about, and depends on how you define "top". At this point we're almost something separate from the food chain(s).

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Helmkat — GMT

Took me awhile to get to this thread. Glad I finally did read it.

Very enlightening and it explains why the gameplay is so mediocre.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

luckygreentiger — GMT

i'm more upset about EA's approach to DRM and the removal of the sea stage than the cute v. science part of it.
the game is fun to play and there is still the meta message will wanted (the different stages of life) -- besides, some of that stuff does still matter (shorter creatures won't eat fruit off of the trees since they can't reach).
once the expansions come out who knows how the game will evolve -- but i'm ok with the cute, it's a fun game either way.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Foxkoun — GMT

Let's compare a game to spore. We'll simplify it with stuff churned out by EA.
Command and Conquer. Too complex for people? Obviously Hecker either was asleep or not paying attention during it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Snip

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Galueru — GMT

o.O This is kind of unrelated to Hecker.

But anyone ever noticed this? VVV

When will first explained his game, he seemed excited, thrilled, he enjoyed it, Even when Robin Williams crashed his game onstage, will seemed happy.

Later down the road at endless public appearances, he starts to seem... well... Just plain miserable, he talks about the game, but with less excitement, almost as if he's disappointed with it. At first I just figured that perhaps he was just tired of explaining it... Now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps if he was a little disappointed to what happened to his game... It got kind of ripped apart and regutted... o.O Granted I'm not sure if he put up a fight or not, but eh, I don't think he was nowhere near happy with it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

grobsmkII — GMT

so thats who made it so i cant be eaten thats who cut out my chance to be a fish thats who cut out the bloody explosive mess of droping a creture on a planet with no atmousphere thats who cut the blood from eating something thats who cut the ablity to combine verbs and thats who made my cretures desing not mater and made parts have stats that limit me i hate him so much now

will you are forgivin

*goes to think up a class action lawsuite for use on Hecker*

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ickabod — GMT

I wonder when Will Wright is going to say something about Spore and the reaction that it has received.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=Ickabod]I wonder when Will Wright is going to say something about Spore and the reaction that it has received.[/quote]

When he no longer is employed at EA/Maxis.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

RocketGirl — GMT

[quote=Ickabod]I wonder when Will Wright is going to say something about Spore and the reaction that it has received.[/quote]

Something that [i]ISN'T[/i] disingenuous? Probably never; not unless he quits Maxis and starts over with a new company or something.
I can pretty much promise you that we won't hear anything--[i]ANYTHING[/i]--from EA/Maxis that isn't relentlessly positive: "Look at how many millions of creations users have put on Sporepedia!" and variations on that theme...as if how many creations people make are the [i]POINT.[/i]
They'll gloss [i]RIGHT[/i] over how many users they've pissed off because they feel pissed [i]ON,[/i] they'll leave out the "We still want Science Spore!" argument going on here in the community, they'll harp about future expansions and parts packs and expanding the Spore franchise...all the while leaving a very, very large number of us going, "Wha...? Schadenwawa??? Are they [i]SERIOUS?[/i]" but giving the general public the impression that Spore is the Best Game [i]EVAR.[/i]

That's how these things work; we'll see nothing but spin out of EA/Maxis unless there's some sort of schism that sees Will Wright taking his ball and going home. Seriously; that's my prediction.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

RedLightning777 — GMT

[quote=Galueru]o.O This is kind of unrelated to Hecker.

But anyone ever noticed this? VVV

When will first explained his game, he seemed excited, thrilled, he enjoyed it, Even when Robin Williams crashed his game onstage, will seemed happy.

Later down the road at endless public appearances, he starts to seem... well... Just plain miserable, he talks about the game, but with less excitement, almost as if he's disappointed with it. At first I just figured that perhaps he was just tired of explaining it... Now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps if he was a little disappointed to what happened to his game... It got kind of ripped apart and regutted... o.O Granted I'm not sure if he put up a fight or not, but eh, I don't think he was nowhere near happy with it.

[/quote]

I've said the same thing. I feel really bad for him. I just wish that he would have stood of for what he believed in more than he did. Or maybe he tried, but failed. I would have hoped he would have fought at least.

I watched these videos and each newer one, he just seemed worn and depressed. That is a sad thing. I certainly hope that he finds a way to get out of the clutches of EA and that his future visions are realized correctly.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

You think maybe that's where the broken arm came from? Trying to defend Science-Spore™ from a bunch of monguering Cute-cultists... Nheee... Don't see that happening.

Dunno. Maybe he has something to say and he's trapped inside EA legal-base HQ... or fallen to the dark side. Who knows....

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ghadis — GMT

[quote=RocketGirl]"Wha...? Schadenwawa??? Are they SERIOUS?" [/quote]
I think the word you're looking for is "Schadenfreude."

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Cesar8002 — GMT

Man, I have no idea if Will Wright was part of the dumbing down of the the game.

But if this is not his fault and he had to watch over while the EA scum guttted his game, I am REALLY sorry for this man. It would be horribly depressing.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Galueru]But anyone ever noticed this? VVV

When will first explained his game, he seemed excited, thrilled, he enjoyed it, Even when Robin Williams crashed his game onstage, will seemed happy.

Later down the road at endless public appearances, he starts to seem... well... Just plain miserable, he talks about the game, but with less excitement, almost as if he's disappointed with it. At first I just figured that perhaps he was just tired of explaining it... Now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps if he was a little disappointed to what happened to his game... It got kind of ripped apart and regutted... o.O Granted I'm not sure if he put up a fight or not, but eh, I don't think he was nowhere near happy with it.[/quote]
It's true, sadly true. In the beginning he just oozed charm and excitement. Slowly but surely, the opinions of others chipped away at his idea, and "compromises" were made. Slowly but surely, genius was compromised with generic money-grubbing tactics. The result is a mixture of the two.

What annoys me the most is that the compromises had [i]already been made.[/i] If it were truly a 100% science game, they'd have you designing the central nervous system and vascular system right down to the shape and position of the heart. (That actually could be fun, but would be a little too much.) Will Wright had already simplified it to something which was both science [i]AND[/i] cute creativity. The initial target was a perfect compromise, I am furious with those who didn't trust Will's judgment.

[quote=RocketGirl]I can pretty much promise you that we won't hear anything--[i]ANYTHING[/i]--from EA/Maxis that isn't relentlessly positive: "Look at how many millions of creations users have put on Sporepedia!" and variations on that theme...as if how many creations people make are the [i]POINT.[/i]
They'll gloss [i]RIGHT[/i] over how many users they've pissed off because they feel pissed [i]ON,[/i] they'll leave out the "We still want Science Spore!" argument going on here in the community, they'll harp about future expansions and parts packs and expanding the Spore franchise...all the while leaving a very, very large number of us going, "Wha...? Schadenwawa??? Are they [i]SERIOUS?[/i]" but giving the general public the impression that Spore is the Best Game [i]EVAR.[/i]

That's how these things work; we'll see nothing but spin out of EA/Maxis unless there's some sort of schism that sees Will Wright taking his ball and going home. Seriously; that's my prediction.[/quote]
If EA and Maxis want to get things going, they need to admit their mistake. Any publicity is good publicity, and controversy attracts interest. EA and Maxis, come out and say this: [i]"We dumbed the game down a bit, people didn't like it. We underestimated the consumers. We're going to provide expansions to right what is wrong and try to give those who we disappointed the product they expected. We feel ashamed having to offer these for a price, but development isn't cheap. One day, we hope that the game and many of its expansions will be purchasable as a bundle for the price of one game; how it should have been in the first place. And when and if we make a sequel to Spore, we'll be sure not to make the same mistake."[/i]

People like honesty. They need to say to people that Spore is a good game, a quality game, but they dropped the ball a bit, and they'll fix it. That's all people want to hear. Anyone who's played Spore knows that the numbers of creatures on the Sporepedia is misleading; most of them are duplicates. Don't talk to us like a roving mob of hungry consumer children, talk to us like people. If we feel that you have our interest in mind, we'll be willing to forgive you.

(Similar problem with the DRM. DRM tells people that you don't trust them. People don't like that, plain and simple.)

[quote=Cesar8002]Man, I have no idea if Will Wright was part of the dumbing down of the the game.

But if this is not his fault and he had to watch over while the EA scum gutted his game, I am REALLY sorry for this man. It would be horribly depressing.[/quote]
EA can't take all the blame. Except for the DRM. But This problem came from both Maxis and EA. We need Maxis to come together to form a more cohesive whole. We need Maxis to focus on what they do best, sandbox simulators. The Sims 3 sounds like it's going to be less of a sandbox and more of a simulator, and I'm betting that won't sell well. Spore falls flat in both sandbox and simulator, and instead is "accessible". Maxis, you already made the best selling PC game of all time. Stop trying to be "accessible", it isn't helping.

Also, temporary setbacks in a game are good, permanent punishment is bad. This is another thing Spore misses on. Dying has no negative impact whatsoever, and can actually be an efficient way of getting back to your nest. On the other hand, you get punished with limited abilities if you don't play the game from Cell Stage to Space. The reward should be the game itself and the feeling of accomplishment, not important aspects of the game. Let people coming in at later stages choose their card colors for the earlier stages. The only thing they won't get is the satisfaction of the cool history graph.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

KWAiRT — GMT

I just hope I see more Science in Spore. Pulsars etc so much could be added that is just fascinating to see and learn about. Mind you I want my Sci Fiction in the space expansion also but cute is not what sold me on this game. It was the science...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=KWAiRT]I just hope I see more Science in Spore. Pulsars etc so much could be added that is just fascinating to see and learn about. Mind you I want my Sci Fiction in the space expansion also but cute is not what sold me on this game. It was the science...[/quote]

And we got Cube Planets.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

FluffyGryphon — GMT

[quote=mflux]Sporum, I think you're better than this. This community should be better than a lynch mob. I think the Spore community should support constructive criticism, not be assigning blame, and least of all, to single Maxis employees. It's ugly, and it shows no restraint. It's much better to allow the developers be on your side, rather than against you.[/quote]

There is nothing more terrifying than a mob of angry consumers. Any WalMart employee will tell you this. Companies would do well to try and calm the masses and please them, for the consumer keeps them alive.

This game could have been cute and still retained the sciency awesome it was meant to have. What was done to the game itself was much more than making it cute. It was dumbed down to levels for more simple than SimPark. (A game I still love to play.) Unless you consider the game's "Customer satisfaction vs. Sales" ratio to be scientific data, Spore has nothing science-oriented going for it now. The only thing you can learn from this game is that software development is hell.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

djn419 — GMT

while i still enjoy the game, what we have seen in Science-Spore is what i would have enjoyed more. hell, i may have even saved over $300 this month on Xbox 360 games if we got what was in the prototype versions.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MartianMan — GMT

After watching the HBO special on John Adams, I don't want anyone tarred and feathered. That was just painful to watch. XX?O

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Cinna — GMT

Chris Hecker reminds me of the religious zealot woman in the movie, [u]The Mist (2007)[/u]. If you didn't see the movie there are few things to tell you first. 1. Watch it, it's a great insight into mob mentality 2. This lady said the creatures were god's (no I don't capitalize god) way of punishing unbelievers. She convinced the otherwise faithless or lacking in faith to kill innocent people and made them all believe it was armageddon.

Here's the correlation. Chris Hecker's heckling of the science team with googly eyes and various other forms of prodding. He converted many other people with the IQ of a sponge to his cause and they multiplied until Will Wright gave in. The science people either were unbelievers that were cast into the mouths of the cute creatures or they were converted.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

DonZabu — GMT

Make no mistake, the Spore we saw at GDC would have been the greatest game ever made.
If I were running this country, everybody who saw Chris Hecker would have to throw rotten fruit at him, and I'd personally build a rotten fruit dispenser every square yard just to see it happen.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Pyrion — GMT

Pointing out the obvious here, at least to myself, but this thread is full of [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanDumb]"strawstuffers."[/url]

Just so you know.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

jamesmcm — GMT

Please please just take the 2005 source code - work on it for a year and release Spore 1.5 in a year or so (hoping the tech isn't too outdated by then - they've already wasted 3 years).

The released version was like a parody of the 2005 version - it was dumbed down beyond belief.

Well done Maxis you took a game that was definitely educational and probably fun and in 3 years turned it into a game that definitely wasn't educational and definitely wasn't fun.

EDIT: and it's about time the serious problems of dumbing down are taken more seriously than the DRM.
The Dumbing Down is much more permanent than the DRM.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

jam34 — GMT

[quote=mflux]I have misgivings about jumping this discussion, since the post I made caused quite a bit of misunderstanding, mis-quoting, and general confusion. Not even sure why I was quoted here... using me to prove some point!

I know the OP was not made here on Sporum, but rather on XSpore. However this general bashing of Chris has to stop. Despite the post being thoughtfully written, it mainly quotes the Seed article and that's really the only instance of Chris stating his opinion, which may or may not have changed over the intervening years. Also, whether or not he liked the Wii is completely irrelevant.

Chris himself doesn't need any defending, but since he has no voice here (Maxis or EA will not allow any of their employees to post in most general cases) you are not inciting a dialogue, but simply causing a riot. And since he's not here to defend himself, I feel free to state that Chris I've met is very professional, obsessed about video games (and as much of a Spore "fan" as you or I), a brilliant programmer, and much a harder working than you or I.

In fact, the first time I googled for "rigid body dynamics" to learn about physics in game programming, his name came up number one on the list. That's how big of an influence he has.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=91a&q=rigid+body+dynamics&btnG=Search

My point is, you simply cannot come to any sort of conclusion based on some measly snippets and quotes. Your perspective of the situation completely changes once you take into account the fact that the design team is a highly complex entity, and not one person could have force the game along a particular path. Throwing blame down on one person is entirely unfair.

Sporum, I think you're better than this. This community should be better than a lynch mob. I think the Spore community should support constructive criticism, not be assigning blame, and least of all, to single Maxis employees. It's ugly, and it shows no restraint. It's much better to allow the developers be on your side, rather than against you.
[/quote]

You know I get where your coming from with this post but the plan and simple truth is that in the absence of knowledge mobs will form and someone is going to burn at th stake. And since neither EA, Will Wright, Chris Hecker, or anyone else seems willing to come out and discuss what went HORRIBLY wrong with this game to any legitamate gaming press they all deserve everything they get. As a 38 year old gamer who played pong and most of what came between that and spore I can say this was one of the most anticpated games I can think of and probably one of the biggest letdowns.

The graphics are there.
The scale is there, the "powers of ten"
The gameplay is HORRIBLE.

Someone needs to come out and start talking, especially when you start getting ex-interns spilling their guts, they choose to remain silent they deserve what they get, and the fact that EA is some huge conglomerate is not an excuse, it maybe a reason but its a pretty bad one. Will needs to make some personal decisions and probably seperate himself from EA, he's the last unblemished guy in the business and he just got his first stain.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Esch_ — GMT

As interesting as this article is....

EA doesn't care.
The game won't change.
It needs to go down in flames to prove a point so that they do care.
Mmm fudge.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eyegore — GMT

Someone just posted this thread to the front page of digg.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

channelfound — GMT

This is silly jealous tripe. Will Wright should step up and defend his teammate!

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AntS26 — GMT

[quote=Finnical][size=9][i]This was originally a post to get people at xSpore up to date with the findings of the official forums, but it came out well enough I decided to post it here as well. My suggestions to Maxis are included near the bottom in a quote block.[/i][/size]

[U][B]Links[/B][/U]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5132.page]Seed article about devteam's debates over science vs cute[/url]
[URL="http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php"]Seed Magazine Article it Refers to[/URL]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page]Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern.[/url]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5293.page]Should Maxis make Science Spore?[/url]
[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/105/5293.page#92114]Particular post about Chris Hecker[/url]

So there's two sides of this debacle, the DRM issue and the dumbed-down gameplay. [I](The DRM issue has already been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, this topic is not about that.)[/I]

However, one man who is highly responsible for the dumbed down gameplay is Chris Hecker. [I](You may remember him as the Maxis employee who said the Wii is a "piece of ****" and merely "two gamecubes stuck together with duct tape".)[/I] While Will Wright headed the movement for science to take a primary role, Hecker apparently thought that would be too complex for the wider audience, and that instead cells should have eyes and creatures should wear sneakers. Excerpt from the Seed article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]This was Spore's central problem: Could the game be both scientifically accurate and fun? The prototyping teams were becoming lost in their scientific interests. Chaim Gingold, a team member who started as an intern and went on to help design the game's content creation tools, recalls a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata: "It was just about being engaged with the universe as a set of systems, and being able to build toys that manifested our fascination with these systems and our love for them." But from within this explosion of experimental enthusiasm came an unexpected warning voice. Spore's resident uber-geek and artificial intelligence expert [B]Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"[/B]

Soon rival camps had formed. New recruits were taken out to lunch and covertly probed to discover where their natural leanings were. [B]Quigley's microscopically accurate concept drawings were vandalized with stuck-on googly eyes; there were suggestions that it might be cool if the creatures wore sneakers.[/B] It might have been painful for the founding members of the science team, but Quigley acknowledges the need for compromise. "From a single-celled organism through the four-and-a-half-billion year history of life on Earth to a self-projected future where we are gallivanting around the stars? I mean, it is so absurdly vast, so radically outside of any scale that people can really empathize with, we knew we had to turn it into a toy."[/QUOTE]
Note that Chris Hecker states that Will Wright would be ecstatic about what he saw, things more like the earlier demos, while Hecker was opposed to this. There are numerous accounts on the official forums of people stating that they more enjoy the early prototypes than the actual gameplay. The hype was generated by the science-heavy early prototypes, and the actual reaction to the game has been mediocre, now that it lacks those science elements.

Further information posted by an ex-Maxis Intern on the game, now that the game is released and his [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement"]NDA[/URL] isn't a problem:
[QUOTE=mflux]First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=mflux][B]Creature creation seems over-simplified[/B]
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight. [/QUOTE]
And, [URL="http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page#48374"]a later post[/URL]:
[QUOTE=mflux]Oh boy here we go with the "prove it" post

I'm in the credits as Michael "Flux" Chang. Go check it in the credits section of the options menu.
And here's my old website from college (2005) users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux along with resume and all of that jazz. Anyway, take it or leave it. Those are my thoughts. [/QUOTE]

As said in the Seed article, apparently poor Hecker was having [I]"Strong misgivings about how all this hard science would appeal to the wider world."[/I] The poll on the official forums currently suggests that 75% of the forum users would have preferred a "Science-Spore" while only 6% dislike such an idea. [I](16 people, compared to the 192 wanting Science-Spore)[/I]

The Gamespot review gave it 8.0. IGN gave it an 8.8. Press average is 8.1. The consistent cons listed are generally a lack of complexity, and oversimplification.

Another Excerpt from the Seed Magazine article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]Steve Grand, who made the big sim-life hit of the 1990s, Creatures, also faced the task of reconciling the limited behavioral range of virtual life-forms with the advanced expectations of players. [B]"There are two ways to tackle this problem," Grand says. "Try to make the behavior look more real, or stop lying to people. As far as I can tell, Spore takes the former approach, to gently and quite openly fool the user into thinking she's engaging with real living things, while Creatures took the latter — I did my best not to fool anyone, even if that meant the results weren't so playable."[/B]

Spore's decision — to preserve the illusion of life at the expense of the actual facts of life — made for some substantial casualties. [B]First to go in the cute-versus-science war were the extreme ends of the scale — galaxy formation and originsof- life simulation — dismissed as being too abstract and dissipated. Next, small and then big laws were shattered and remade.[/B] Wright's determination to represent faster-than-light travel as impossible crumbled in the face of making the spacefaring section of the game enjoyable. [B]Evolution, despite his staunch Darwinism, became a massively telescoped process that depended on the external, deliberate interventions of the players.[/B] And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.

[B]The snag is that Spore didn't just jettison half its science — it replaced it with systems and ideas that run the risk of being actively misleading. Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed.[/B] Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways.[/QUOTE]

[I](This section is in a quote block as it is not as neutral as the rest of the post.)[/I]
[QUOTE=Omni][B]My Opinion:[/B]
It seems to me, the cute crowd led by Chris Hecker is responsible for a number of things. The ecosystem dynamics were removed. The Creature Game was replaced with a simple "Good or Evil" RPG where you either play Simon Says or grab your +5 Swo- uh I mean Hand and go grind on a few Generic Monster Nests. In addition, for the purpose of "creative freedom", a ten-foot tall SPORE can be as effective as a Lion in combat, as fast as a Cheetah, and as stealthy as a one foot tall chameleon. And because this is so, the Sporepedia is filled with such impractical creations.

Maxis moved away from Will Wright's original design choices and away from the theme of the original prototype. The resulting game is conceived as not meeting the expectation created by seeing the prototype. Why they chose to overturn the design decisions of their lead designer is beyond me. It seems to me the past few years were spent making the game less entertaining than the prototype, because the prototype was "too complex" for us dull consumers. We wouldn't be able to take that hard science. Ironically, I hear better reviews of the gameplay of the free released prototypes than the game itself.

I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs, including a complete overhaul of the Cell Stage and Creature Stage, at minimum. The forced linear progression of the game and forced evolution should also be removed from the Cell and Creature Stages, as it is not faithful to the freedom of the advertised product. (Evolution to a better brain should be optional, at least in the Creature Stage, as it was in the earlier videos.) I do not believe that we have a right to demand it be free, as the development costs of this game are already astronomical. This may have not been as much of a problem if they hadn't been spending the past few years removing content.[/QUOTE]
Discuss.

[SIZE="10"][i]tl;dr version (Too long; didn't read):[/i]
An employee named Chris Hecker decided that the game was too complex for "average folk" and managed to convince a bunch of people at Maxis, so that Will Wright was forced to give up on making the game scientific and they spent a year or two removing content from the E3 demo instead of adding new things. Apparently science limits creativity. This is why the gameplay feels like an undeveloped MMORPG and the animation went from "innovative" to "generic and boring". [i]This is a gross simplification of the situation and potentially biased. Reading the whole topic is suggested.[/i][/SIZE][/quote]

................................................................................................. [size=7]this is the longest post i have ever seen [/size]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=AntS26][quote=Finnical][size=9][i]This was originally a post to get people at xSpore up to date with the findings of the official forums, but it came out well enough I decided to post it here as well. My suggestions to Maxis are included near the bottom in a quote block.[/i][/size]

[U][B]Links[/B][/U]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5132.page]Seed article about devteam's debates over science vs cute[/url]
[URL="http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php"]Seed Magazine Article it Refers to[/URL]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page]Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern.[/url]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5293.page]Should Maxis make Science Spore?[/url]
[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/105/5293.page#92114]Particular post about Chris Hecker[/url]

So there's two sides of this debacle, the DRM issue and the dumbed-down gameplay. [I](The DRM issue has already been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, this topic is not about that.)[/I]

However, one man who is highly responsible for the dumbed down gameplay is Chris Hecker. [I](You may remember him as the Maxis employee who said the Wii is a "piece of ****" and merely "two gamecubes stuck together with duct tape".)[/I] While Will Wright headed the movement for science to take a primary role, Hecker apparently thought that would be too complex for the wider audience, and that instead cells should have eyes and creatures should wear sneakers. Excerpt from the Seed article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]This was Spore's central problem: Could the game be both scientifically accurate and fun? The prototyping teams were becoming lost in their scientific interests. Chaim Gingold, a team member who started as an intern and went on to help design the game's content creation tools, recalls a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata: "It was just about being engaged with the universe as a set of systems, and being able to build toys that manifested our fascination with these systems and our love for them." But from within this explosion of experimental enthusiasm came an unexpected warning voice. Spore's resident uber-geek and artificial intelligence expert [B]Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"[/B]

Soon rival camps had formed. New recruits were taken out to lunch and covertly probed to discover where their natural leanings were. [B]Quigley's microscopically accurate concept drawings were vandalized with stuck-on googly eyes; there were suggestions that it might be cool if the creatures wore sneakers.[/B] It might have been painful for the founding members of the science team, but Quigley acknowledges the need for compromise. "From a single-celled organism through the four-and-a-half-billion year history of life on Earth to a self-projected future where we are gallivanting around the stars? I mean, it is so absurdly vast, so radically outside of any scale that people can really empathize with, we knew we had to turn it into a toy."[/QUOTE]
Note that Chris Hecker states that Will Wright would be ecstatic about what he saw, things more like the earlier demos, while Hecker was opposed to this. There are numerous accounts on the official forums of people stating that they more enjoy the early prototypes than the actual gameplay. The hype was generated by the science-heavy early prototypes, and the actual reaction to the game has been mediocre, now that it lacks those science elements.

Further information posted by an ex-Maxis Intern on the game, now that the game is released and his [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement"]NDA[/URL] isn't a problem:
[QUOTE=mflux]First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=mflux][B]Creature creation seems over-simplified[/B]
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight. [/QUOTE]
And, [URL="http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page#48374"]a later post[/URL]:
[QUOTE=mflux]Oh boy here we go with the "prove it" post

I'm in the credits as Michael "Flux" Chang. Go check it in the credits section of the options menu.
And here's my old website from college (2005) users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux along with resume and all of that jazz. Anyway, take it or leave it. Those are my thoughts. [/QUOTE]

As said in the Seed article, apparently poor Hecker was having [I]"Strong misgivings about how all this hard science would appeal to the wider world."[/I] The poll on the official forums currently suggests that 75% of the forum users would have preferred a "Science-Spore" while only 6% dislike such an idea. [I](16 people, compared to the 192 wanting Science-Spore)[/I]

The Gamespot review gave it 8.0. IGN gave it an 8.8. Press average is 8.1. The consistent cons listed are generally a lack of complexity, and oversimplification.

Another Excerpt from the Seed Magazine article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]Steve Grand, who made the big sim-life hit of the 1990s, Creatures, also faced the task of reconciling the limited behavioral range of virtual life-forms with the advanced expectations of players. [B]"There are two ways to tackle this problem," Grand says. "Try to make the behavior look more real, or stop lying to people. As far as I can tell, Spore takes the former approach, to gently and quite openly fool the user into thinking she's engaging with real living things, while Creatures took the latter — I did my best not to fool anyone, even if that meant the results weren't so playable."[/B]

Spore's decision — to preserve the illusion of life at the expense of the actual facts of life — made for some substantial casualties. [B]First to go in the cute-versus-science war were the extreme ends of the scale — galaxy formation and originsof- life simulation — dismissed as being too abstract and dissipated. Next, small and then big laws were shattered and remade.[/B] Wright's determination to represent faster-than-light travel as impossible crumbled in the face of making the spacefaring section of the game enjoyable. [B]Evolution, despite his staunch Darwinism, became a massively telescoped process that depended on the external, deliberate interventions of the players.[/B] And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.

[B]The snag is that Spore didn't just jettison half its science — it replaced it with systems and ideas that run the risk of being actively misleading. Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed.[/B] Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways.[/QUOTE]

[I](This section is in a quote block as it is not as neutral as the rest of the post.)[/I]
[QUOTE=Omni][B]My Opinion:[/B]
It seems to me, the cute crowd led by Chris Hecker is responsible for a number of things. The ecosystem dynamics were removed. The Creature Game was replaced with a simple "Good or Evil" RPG where you either play Simon Says or grab your +5 Swo- uh I mean Hand and go grind on a few Generic Monster Nests. In addition, for the purpose of "creative freedom", a ten-foot tall SPORE can be as effective as a Lion in combat, as fast as a Cheetah, and as stealthy as a one foot tall chameleon. And because this is so, the Sporepedia is filled with such impractical creations.

Maxis moved away from Will Wright's original design choices and away from the theme of the original prototype. The resulting game is conceived as not meeting the expectation created by seeing the prototype. Why they chose to overturn the design decisions of their lead designer is beyond me. It seems to me the past few years were spent making the game less entertaining than the prototype, because the prototype was "too complex" for us dull consumers. We wouldn't be able to take that hard science. Ironically, I hear better reviews of the gameplay of the free released prototypes than the game itself.

I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs, including a complete overhaul of the Cell Stage and Creature Stage, at minimum. The forced linear progression of the game and forced evolution should also be removed from the Cell and Creature Stages, as it is not faithful to the freedom of the advertised product. (Evolution to a better brain should be optional, at least in the Creature Stage, as it was in the earlier videos.) I do not believe that we have a right to demand it be free, as the development costs of this game are already astronomical. This may have not been as much of a problem if they hadn't been spending the past few years removing content.[/QUOTE]
Discuss.

[SIZE="10"][i]tl;dr version (Too long; didn't read):[/i]
An employee named Chris Hecker decided that the game was too complex for "average folk" and managed to convince a bunch of people at Maxis, so that Will Wright was forced to give up on making the game scientific and they spent a year or two removing content from the E3 demo instead of adding new things. Apparently science limits creativity. This is why the gameplay feels like an undeveloped MMORPG and the animation went from "innovative" to "generic and boring". [i]This is a gross simplification of the situation and potentially biased. Reading the whole topic is suggested.[/i][/SIZE][/quote]

................................................................................................. [size=7]this is the longest post i have ever seen [/size][/quote]

Then you should read some of the idea posts I and others have posted in the past.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

wopkins — GMT

So do something about it and tell EA how you feel. Enough 'contacts' could get their attention:

https://help.spore.com -> Contact Us

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=wopkins]So do something about it and tell EA how you feel. Enough 'contacts' could get their attention:

https://help.spore.com -> Contact Us[/quote]

You mean their black hole of customer service?

[img]http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast110_06/bhaq/Black_Hole_Milkyway.jpg[/img]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tanelorn — GMT

[b]Thank you for posting this, OP!!![/b]

Excellent researching, OP. A major contribution to the forum.

I am in the 75% that wish Spore had actual science substance. My opinions are in a thread I started here:

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/589.page

13 pages worth of Gr8 discussion.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Esrafael — GMT

[quote]"I was the founding member of the 'cute' team,"[/quote]

That's enough reason for me right there. Time for him to get the boot.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

lordofthunder — GMT

what i don't get is how they could possibly waste years (and a fortune) to make a working more sciencelike concept disney 'cute'. sounds to me like they completele ignored the feed-back from their presentations!

those teams should play more games instead of rationalising concepts to pieces. their ideas about playability are really not realistic. i won't say a bad word about good dos games, they prove it's possible to have a very good game without splashing highly detailed graphical screens yet it all seems to be about appearance nowadays with a gameplay which is often not worth it to look at those nice screens.

also if you want to make a cute kids game then just make a good new one, don't alter a more 'serious' game and have a bad 'cute' game and a bad 'science' game at the same time. the time they spend on Spore in total would have been enough for 2-3 decent other games.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Skekung — GMT

I bought the game because I thought it would be an excellent way to teach my young sons about nature and evolution. It was bitterly disappointed with the cell stage because in no way does it show what is advertised. Single Celled organisms don't have eyes, spikes and jets.

It's always sad when marketers etc mess with the purity of things just to get more off the shelves.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

booyeah — GMT

The problem is that we're really talking about two different games. What we have, is essentially legos, and what this group wants is evolution simulation. Things like the leg length defining walking speed would be cool for the simulation, but bad for the legos. These sorts of things are going to be difficult to reconcile. There would also be difficulties with the way the sporepedia seeds your various worlds, since it would go from random picking to having to build an ecosystem that fit into the model, when you discovered new worlds.

My vote is on simulation, but I also admit to having great fun with the legos too.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

Legos with a basis in science and a "hook" to get people into science would be my preferred method. Science at the expense of gameplay is a no no. Elite 2 (many yarns ago) failed partly as people couldn't fly around due to newtonian physics. To stand a chance of hitting something in space combat you normally had to "autopilot" towards it. There is an open source game called Babylon-5-Ive-Found-Her (couple of years old) which also uses newtonian physics and one of the normal complaints about that is people can't hit anything when flying in their star furies. Too much science can destroy gameplay and prevent sales. That is proven. Cute as it stands is not wrong as it can make people interested in the application. Having science "hooks" also would not be wrong as it would encourage them to learn more about the science in question but gameplay should come first.

But then in topics like this people don't always mean science, they mean the 2005 video or simply complex gameplay.

Edit: Typo

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Skekung — GMT

I absolutely agree with making a game fun to play rather than being pedantic about whether it is scientific enough or not.

I suppose it comes down to truth in advertising. The age-old gripe.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

[quote=Skekung]I suppose it comes down to truth in advertising. The age-old gripe.[/quote]

Advertising and truth go together as well as politicians and truth.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

lordofthunder — GMT

[quote=Eekwotsthat]...
But then in topics like this people don't always mean science, they mean the 2005 video or simply complex gameplay.[/quote]

exactly. a real hardcore science would limit the gameplay to much, the 2005 demo was a light playable science version, ok then there's the cute approach which changed that in appearance to start but the biggest mistake was to scratch some of the very basics of gameplay and make it a toy instead of a game. even if spore is supposed to be a sandbox with cute creations you can still do more with a real sandcastle.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

[quote]... a real hardcore science would limit the gameplay to much, the 2005 demo was a light playable science version, ok then there's the cute approach which changed that in appearance to start but the biggest mistake was to scratch some of the very basics of gameplay and make it a toy instead of a game. even if spore is supposed to be a sandbox with cute creations you can still do more with a real sandcastle. [/quote]

So then we need to ask, how much of those changes were

1) Implemented due to playability issues and the goal of the complete project (sharing creations, multiple unified stages)
2) Implemented due to Chris Heckler
3) Implemented due to time constraints
4) Implemented due to EA wanting things in expansions

And before I hear it's 4, Will has said in the latest interview that EA took nothing out. I would imagine that the majority were actually 1 and 3.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MaxisLucy — GMT

Hi all. I wanted to weigh in on this thread. I appreciate the comments and the open discussion about the game, the look and everyone’s expectations. I think that this type of dialog is a healthy exchange of ideas. We get a lot out of it and I’m not interested in shutting that down. However, I do think that the aspersions toward any individual member of the Spore team are unwarranted and are getting out of hand here. The concept of Spore that Will presented at GDC 2005 was the guidepost for the development and execution of the game. Will very much remained the visionary and design leader throughout the development of Spore. He worked collaboratively with the team when opinions differed but decisions were definitely in his domain.

The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay. Some of this was driven by the simple reality of a very unique and rather cutting edge approach to animation. Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game. It was a huge area of focused work and learning for us as the animation engineering team developed this system. One thing that we learned is that setting an expectation of very realistic looking animations that, for instance, captured the discrete differences of movement of a cat vs. the movement of a dog would be off target. Moving away from an aesthetic that set such expectations was a well considered decision on our part. I’m personally amazed at what the animation team was able to achieve. Will set a goal for the team that we be able to hit a mark, in terms of creative breadth, that reached from Pixar to Geiger. The aesthetic, physical and placement constraint decisions that we made regarding the Creature Creator were held to our tenets of unconstrained creativity and accessibility for the creators.

Chris contributed so much in the way of innovations for Spore and deserves to be recognized for his work. While we have no interest in stifling conversation on the Sporum about Spore from anyone, I request that people show respect for others and refrain from outright defamation and threats.

Thanks,

Lucy

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

Thank you, MaxisLucy. I'll have to digest what you've posted. There's some good things in there and some disappointing things in there.

Though, my initial knee-jerk response was: "MaxisLucy is GOIN' ROGUE!"

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Skekung — GMT

Thanks MaxisLucy. That does put things into perspective.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

[quote=MaxisLucy]Hi all. I wanted to weigh in on this thread. I appreciate the comments and the open discussion about the game, the look and everyone’s expectations. I think that this type of dialog is a healthy exchange of ideas. We get a lot out of it and I’m not interested in shutting that down. However, I do think that the aspersions toward any individual member of the Spore team are unwarranted and are getting out of hand here. The concept of Spore that Will presented at GDC 2005 was the guidepost for the development and execution of the game. Will very much remained the visionary and design leader throughout the development of Spore. He worked collaboratively with the team when opinions differed but decisions were definitely in his domain.

The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay. Some of this was driven by the simple reality of a very unique and rather cutting edge approach to animation. Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game. It was a huge area of focused work and learning for us as the animation engineering team developed this system. One thing that we learned is that setting an expectation of very realistic looking animations that, for instance, captured the discrete differences of movement of a cat vs. the movement of a dog would be off target. Moving away from an aesthetic that set such expectations was a well considered decision on our part. I’m personally amazed at what the animation team was able to achieve. Will set a goal for the team that we be able to hit a mark, in terms of creative breadth, that reached from Pixar to Geiger. The aesthetic, physical and placement constraint decisions that we made regarding the Creature Creator were held to our tenets of unconstrained creativity and accessibility for the creators.

Chris contributed so much in the way of innovations for Spore and deserves to be recognized for his work. While we have no interest in stifling conversation on the Sporum about Spore from anyone, I request that people show respect for others and refrain from outright defamation and threats.

Thanks,

Lucy
[/quote]

Chris Hecker is on record for saying "Yuck" to a science version of Spore. How are we to interpret that?

[quote]The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay[/quote]

So he is responsible for all the overly cute stuff, except for the lack of gameplay?

[quote]Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game.[/quote]

The current animation system is nothing more than selecting the closest animation from a set and using that. What part is procedural? Parts selection makes no difference. Sorry, its not procedural. Procedural would be if I put a weapon on the tail and it used that to attack a victim, sorta like the GDC2005 demo.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

tonaros — GMT

This is very upsetting, especially since I don't think now we will ever see Spore as it was meant to be... but it seems to me like ultimately, as a [i]business[/i] decision, this probably amounted to greater sales instead of a "cult classic" as I have to assume the true Spore would have been.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

igbee — GMT

[quote=MaxisLucy]Hi all. I wanted to weigh in on this thread. I appreciate the comments and the open discussion about the game, the look and everyone’s expectations. I think that this type of dialog is a healthy exchange of ideas. We get a lot out of it and I’m not interested in shutting that down. However, I do think that the aspersions toward any individual member of the Spore team are unwarranted and are getting out of hand here. The concept of Spore that Will presented at GDC 2005 was the guidepost for the development and execution of the game. Will very much remained the visionary and design leader throughout the development of Spore. He worked collaboratively with the team when opinions differed but decisions were definitely in his domain.

The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay. Some of this was driven by the simple reality of a very unique and rather cutting edge approach to animation. Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game. It was a huge area of focused work and learning for us as the animation engineering team developed this system. One thing that we learned is that setting an expectation of very realistic looking animations that, for instance, captured the discrete differences of movement of a cat vs. the movement of a dog would be off target. Moving away from an aesthetic that set such expectations was a well considered decision on our part. I’m personally amazed at what the animation team was able to achieve. Will set a goal for the team that we be able to hit a mark, in terms of creative breadth, that reached from Pixar to Geiger. The aesthetic, physical and placement constraint decisions that we made regarding the Creature Creator were held to our tenets of unconstrained creativity and accessibility for the creators.

Chris contributed so much in the way of innovations for Spore and deserves to be recognized for his work. While we have no interest in stifling conversation on the Sporum about Spore from anyone, I request that people show respect for others and refrain from outright defamation and threats.

Thanks,

Lucy
[/quote]

So the Disney game I purchased was Will's doing? Thank for clearing that up.

I guess some where along the line, the vision of the game changed. The person really to blame, tar, and feather is Will for giving me this trash. Clearly what I have installed on my computer is not what Spore was marketed as all along. I have blamed Will on these forums from the start, thanks for confirming to me that Will screwed the game up.

Igbe

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Guineh — GMT

[quote=AnotherPoster]
The current animation system is nothing more than selecting the closest animation from a set and using that. What part is procedural? Parts selection makes no difference. Sorry, its not procedural. Procedural would be if I put a weapon on the tail and it used that to attack a victim, sorta like the GDC2005 demo.
[/quote]

What part is procedural?

Look at how the legs/feet/arms move. It's all procedural. You can have any number of configurations and it just works. The thing is, it works so well that it's virtually transparent to the end user. You don't notice it.

Remember the 2005 demo, while a working version of Spore was cobbled together. Will had to be careful with what he created so he didn't expose the shortcomings of the system while showing the proof of concept to the audience. Yes, some stuff was inevitably dropped because they couldn't get it to work properly in all situations. Maybe as PC's get more parallel, and they have time to reexamine the problem we'll get the sort of thing you're discussing here in a later version of the engine. It is not an easy problem to say, "I have a tail here ... it has a spitting implement on it, lets see, if I just turn around, I can spray my opponent with poison" Instead, the program really has to look at all possibilities of path between the target and the weapon, to determine how best to animate it. In some cases, this would work flawlessly (the maceball on the end of Willosaur's tail) other times, no so due to the anatomy of the creature. More than likely it got dropped for technical reasons. So, they simplified how weapons would work.

Also remember one requirement was that this game work on as many PCs as possible, which meant that if something were to be too CPU heavy, it would need to be dropped to keep the game running reasonably on a lower-end system.

(edit) As an aside, I don't necessarily mind the "cute" motif as the game is. Though the cute side of the cute and creepy pack may be a bit teeth-rottingly cute for my taste.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

Yep, same goes for me... Never bought the Chris Hecker scapegoat.

You know MaxisLucky, this thing you've just posted, if not what we "ultimatly" would like to hear, is more or less a response on all the things we've been raging about. It's appreciated. What took you people so long? Many have left, already... You lost them as consummers, supporters and earnt lots of enemies just by your inaction.

The thing is... we would not like to hear what you had to say. As this goes.

Animation is fine... a great success of the editors, we all know that. But it was better on the CC, if you ignore the "wobbly" thing on many parts... not to talk about the Creature Creator demoed by Robin Williams!!

The game we bought was a FAKE. Now, we might eventually get to what was promissed... previous pay, but the stripping-down of programming, content and FEEDBACK, is selfevident.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SykoTavo — GMT

Lucy, I like you. Always have. And I agree that what you say has some truth to it but to be totally honest, you're full of it!

The game that was released is clearly NOT Will's vision. It is NOT the ground-breaking game Will wanted to make. And it is absolutely NOT the game that was hyped for over 5 years.

From the start Will advertised a game that would be a perfect marriage between learning and fun, in other words, a toy.

What's on the game store shelves now is merely a bad game with some great tools. There is no real learning experience. There is nothing to discover. Nothing random. And what you create and how you create it has absolutely no meaning save giving the creatures 3 or 4 generic traits. Nothing unique about that.

The argument inside the science vs. cute dilemma has nothing to do with how the game looks. Graphically the game looks amazing and I think we can all agree on that, even if it is a bit cutesy. What has bothered all of us is the fact that some people at your company, be it this Hecker guy and his team or not, decided to scrap everything that was luring us to continue to follow and raise hype and awareness for Spore - which was the educational and revolutionary procedural gameplay - and replace it with generic and very boring gameplay.

I am very dissapointed of the comment made by you as a representative of Maxis (or possibly EA). It is weak and lame and in no way does it express the intelligence, uniqueness and creativity that was behind the original and true concept of Spore.

This is why people are complaining. This is why others like me have stopped playing your dumbed down shadow of a game and will most probably not be buying your sad attempts at expansions (aka parts packs).

However I very much hope that the actual content expansion packs that do come out (if they come out) quickly get us closer to what this game was meant to be. Until then, or until Will abandons all of you and makes a proper Spore game with another, uncorrupted team, I say adieu and farewell. Do not expect me or many of us to continue promoting this disaster of a game.

Evolution instead of Barbielego

ColdFever — GMT

[b]Yes. [/b]

To me as a videogame veteran it extremely frustrating to see how some of the most revolutionary programming techniques in gaming history (editors, procedural concepts, internet creativity sharing) are wasted on extremely trivial gameplay. For example there is an incredible creature editor - made for a trivial memory game with the "Evolution" options [b]Sing, Dance, Charm, Pose[/b]. C'mon???

Soren Johnson, the game designer I admire most besides Sid Meier and Will Wright", left Firaxis to work with Maxis lately, so I still have hope. Soren's games "Civ3" and "Civ4" are masterpieces of thoughtful gameplay, and "Civilization" probably is the best example of an extremely entertaining, complex and still accessible game built on science - without being a scientific game. The idea there is just using science for making decisions easier to players. The best thing: once knowledge becomes power, it becomes fun learning something. For Civ I would dream about having the kind of procedural programming Spore brings for making dynamic terrain, units, leaderheads, music and so on. This game engine Maxis developed is just too good to be true. In contrast for Spore I can only dream about some real gameplay. And where a Sid Meier actually has been grilled over years about the faint possibility of a [i]"Spearman defeating a Tank"[/i], I wonder what Will Wright really thinks about [i]"Evolution as a four-option memory game of Singing, Dancing, Charming and Posing[/i]"?

[color=brown][u]Soren Johnson’s Game Design Journal[/u]
[b]"Seven Deadly Sins for Strategy Games"[/b]
1. Too much scripting
2. Too much stuff
3. Limited play variety
4. Black box mechanics
5. Locked code/data
6. Anti-piracy paranoia
7. Putting story in the wrong places
source: http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=106
So how much of that do we see in Spore?[/color]

To me Spore is incredibly rich in material - and poor in gameplay. This is where I would like to see improvements instead of addons like "Cute & Creepy Parts". I really wonder how designers can look into the mirror producing even more dute & dreepy parts while we are starving for the gameplay. With Will Wright, Soren Johnson and the other geniuses MAXIS/EA now have a team of best game designers in the world. Please give them their creative freedom. [b]Please do not waste your "Lennon/McCartney - The Beatles" creativity team for just creating ringtones.[/b]

Please give us some real songs instead. We know the designers can create gameplay from their former games - So when will they finally be allowed to do so? At least, while you produce a [i]"Cute and Creepy" [/i]expansion for customers willing to pay for such nonsense, please allow your best designers doing a [b][i]"Science and Evolution"[/i][/b] expansion for people who still believe in this game and expect more than Barbie stuff. Or release the gamecore code and open the gamecore DLL for modding, like Firaxis/Take2 did with Civ4, so that fans can develop games on top of the incredible game engine.

Conclusion: Spore is plain revolutionary in the underlying mechanics. But many people feel sorry seeing this engine wasted on a Barbie game of "sing, dance, charm and pose". Game engine mechanics: 200%. Gameplay mechanics: 20% Evolution mechanics: 0%. The only evolution Spore tells about is in the movie "How to build a better being" included with the Galactic Edition. Wow, so many great thoughts there. Tons of ideas for building a game about [color=darkred]Evolution instead of Barbielego[/color].

[b]Maxis - we know you could do it.[/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

[quote=Guineh]

Look at how the legs/feet/arms move. It's all procedural. You can have any number of configurations and it just works. The thing is, it works so well that it's virtually transparent to the end user. You don't notice it.
[/quote]

Sorry, no. They created skeleton animations and mapped the creatures to that. That is not procedural, that is just an exercise in mapping. Just because an arbitrary creature is animated does not make it procedural.

Have a look at the slide set:

http://chrishecker.com/How_To_Animate_a_Character_You%27ve_Never_Seen_Before

[quote]Example based, not descriptive. Animate on one creature, the software applies it to the others...somehow"[/quote]

An example based algorithm is not procedural, a descriptive algorithm is.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

oboreruhito — GMT

http://www.spore.com/ftl
http://www.spore.com/ftl
http://www.spore.com/ftl
http://www.spore.com/ftl

Edit by SporeMasterNumerator:
Please don't post huge text like that and don't post profanities.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

econundrum — GMT

[quote=AnotherPoster]The current animation system is nothing more than selecting the closest animation from a set and using that. What part is procedural? Parts selection makes no difference. Sorry, its not procedural. Procedural would be if I put a weapon on the tail and it used that to attack a victim, sorta like the GDC2005 demo.

[/quote]

Wrong, to quote from the absract of Chris's pdf on the Spore procedural animation system;

"This paper introduces
a novel system for animating characters whose morphologies
are unknown at the time the animation is created. Our authoring
tool allows animators to describe motion using familiar
posing and key-framing methods. [b]The system records the data in
a morphology-independent form, preserving both the animation’s
structural relationships and its stylistic information. At runtime,
the generalized data are applied to specific characters to yield pose
goals that are supplied to a robust and efficient inverse kinematics
solver[/b]. This system allows us to animate characters with highly
varying skeleton morphologies that did not exist when the animation
was authored, and, indeed, may be radically different than anything
the original animator envisioned."

If you want to know in which way Spores state of the art procedural animation system actually works I suggest downloading and reading the PDF from Chris's web site.

The branching animations you mention are only used where a model lacks a characteristic part which the standard animation would use. e.g. if a creature has no hands it can't grasp with them so another animation using the mouth as a grasper is branched too.

Otherwise what happens is the animation tool is used to create a general animation and the game the procedurally binds this animation to specific parts of a creature model at runtime based on how the animation is setup and how the model is configured.

It's a very complex and interesting system. Chris also talks about the problems they could not solve, like detecting and preventing self-clipping. It's a very interesting read if your technically minded and we should show Chris some respect, because without this there would be no Spore.

"[b]An example based algorithm is not procedural, a descriptive algorithm is[/b]", as a programer I strongly disagree the authored animation provides key frame metadata (e.g. move a front left grasper through these key frames in relation to the ground), needs to be procedurally mapped to an arbitary topography to generate the actual animation data for that model. That is a non trivial procedure.

[b]The actual specific animation bound to the model by the procedure that does this is not the same as the metadata animation created by the animator and is procedurally generated from the generalised example the animator created.[/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyW7z1m-1cg[/youtube]

We know they did the thing... We saw it, some of us wonder why it was taken out. Also... notice the number of parts he had there. Quite some mouths to choose from... just take a look at the animation there.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

econundrum — GMT

Sorry I'm at work and can't view youtube. I'm sure they created many animations and and tweaked the animation system in many ways during development.

Some systems may have worked well for animating some models but been useless for others.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

Sure. And we even saw a lot more procedural animation on the CC, that is no more present on the full-Spore.

The whole issue with this game is that everything went DOWN... as the opposite of seeing a product getting better up to a finished product. From an unfinished demo, to a bugy, glitchy, unpolished game... stripping it out of content, features, ad nauseam...

Least I can say, a weird way to conduct a project. First time I see anything the like. But seems many people here are used to playable demos being better than final products... I might be a newbie.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Basista — GMT

My anger is rising. Bring on some farmer tools and sticky things.

Nah.

Well, i think that the game should be more complex.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Guineh — GMT

[quote=AnotherPoster][quote=Guineh]

Look at how the legs/feet/arms move. It's all procedural. You can have any number of configurations and it just works. The thing is, it works so well that it's virtually transparent to the end user. You don't notice it.
[/quote]

Sorry, no. They created skeleton animations and mapped the creatures to that. That is not procedural, that is just an exercise in mapping. Just because an arbitrary creature is animated does not make it procedural.

[/quote]

Fine. I'll give you that. They have targets for movement of feet and graspers. They move along preset splines, so the system only has to solve the kinematics of how the joints move, and figure out the timing of gaits. What he did was find a more efficient means of creating a plausible gait for any number of morphologies. Again, keep in mind the minimum target machine they wanted this game to run on. We're not talking a high-end multi-core machine. The calculations to handle such things must be done quickly. The system proposed also gives the animators some control over how the final animations of the parts will look. If you had to calculate the physics of the creature's motion as the creatures move you're going to need a high-end system that can deal with that or have a means of offloading the calculations to a secondary processor (such as a GPU)

To be honest, when looking at some of the prototypes, especially the physics based one (ParticleMan) I was a bit concerned my aging computer would be brought to its knees by the full game.

There will be little tricks like this going on behind the scenes in an effort to make the gameplay experience as smooth as possible. Its a compromise, sure, but it beats having a game that only the latest desktop systems can play, vs a game that can be played even on a mid-level notebook. And given the nature of the game, this is probably a good thing.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

But how come on 2008, my cuadruple-core workstation that has played last years Crysis on "full everything" needs to be forced to deliver me with the same 90's graphics and sloppy textures as your old labtop?

It all went to "down for everybody"... Were they aiming for people having super-computers by now, so they had to rearange everything? Maybe. But it's not just those devatable performance/graphical issues. The filosophy permeated to the hold plot, game-play, aesthetics... all. Dumbed down, simplyfied and absurd.

And let's not get started on the prototypes, because those were the most deceipful, treacherous, misleading marketing strategy I faced myself to this point. Politicians aside.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Emmande — GMT

I don't look at the graphics of a game to determine how good it is, I look at the gameplay. A game with "kiddy" graphics can still be as amazing as a game with realistic graphics, as long as it has amazing gameplay to back it up.
Look at spore, no one would have cared that it looked kiddy if the gameplay had been "science spore" because the gameplay would have been what was promised.
What really ruined Spore was the cutsie gameplay.

The crappy gameplay is what we should be tar and feathering hecker (or should I say PECKER! haha!) for, he dumbed it down big time grrr

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

Despite the title of the thread we still don't know exactly who to tar and feather, and since they asked, would be nice not to get personal, then... Apparently there is a guy by this name and his employees might be forced to defend the guy.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Guineh — GMT

[quote=Virakotxa]But how come on 2008, my cuadruple-core workstation that has played last years Crysis on "full everything" needs to be forced to deliver me with the same 90's graphics and sloppy textures as your old labtop?

It all went to "down for everybody"... Were they aiming for people having super-computers by now, so they had to rearange everything? Maybe. But it's not just those devatable performance/graphical issues. The filosophy permeated to the hold plot, game-play, aesthetics... all. Dumbed down, simplyfied and absurd.

And let's not get started on the prototypes, because those were the most deceipful, treacherous, misleading marketing strategy I faced myself to this point. Politicians aside. [/quote]

Yes... but can that old laptop even run Crysis with low settings on everything at an acceptable frame rate? Probably not. Spore's target audience was never meant to be the übergamer that has the latest and most advanced hardware out there. It was meant to be accessible for anyone and work on what can be considered the lowly family computer.

A lot has changed about the game for sure, a stage was dropped and a couple editors eliminated. The core of what Spore was is still pretty much there, although it is under a facade of "cute" Yes, some things were dropped, some things were changed to accommodate as wide a range of computers as possible. The biggest problem was the speculation machine making the game much bigger and much deeper than what was actually ever intended.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

[quote=econundrum]
Wrong, to quote from the absract of Chris's pdf on the Spore procedural animation system;

"This paper introduces
a novel system for animating characters whose morphologies
are unknown at the time the animation is created. Our authoring
tool allows animators to describe motion using familiar
posing and key-framing methods. [b]The system records the data in
a morphology-independent form, preserving both the animation’s
structural relationships and its stylistic information. At runtime,
the generalized data are applied to specific characters to yield pose
goals that are supplied to a robust and efficient inverse kinematics
solver[/b]. This system allows us to animate characters with highly
varying skeleton morphologies that did not exist when the animation
was authored, and, indeed, may be radically different than anything
the original animator envisioned."

If you want to know in which way Spores state of the art procedural animation system actually works I suggest downloading and reading the PDF from Chris's web site.

[/quote]

I did read the paper and all it amounts to is the the animation team could not ship an animation system that provides the functionality of the GDC demo no matter what they call it.

If I have an animation skeleton and map that to an aardvark or a giraffe, it not procedural animation. Because the target is unknown has no bearing.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

look at the end of the day I can conceed that something as far a looks and animaion had to be tossed for lower end machines that fine.

What gets me is how hollow the gameplay is . There is litterally nothing there. Super Mario # was more indepth then this 5 Mini game P.O.S.

Maxis employes can tell us all the time that they KNOW the game was not stripped down.However I doubt they would say any different since in these hard times looking for a new job isnt a goodidea.

Maxis/ EA s dealing with us like BAD parents . When the child starts complaining at first you ignore the child ( Done with the lack of contact or viable tech support.)
Then if the child is not willing to leave you alone you give it something to silence it like a soother . In the case of spore we are getting a PARTS PACK....

I dont know but that last thing I hear people saying is MAN I need more parts! there just doesnt seem to be enough parts .

I hear Game play is weak , hollow and boring.

Maxis Solution ..... OH no quick give them more parts? and charge them 20 for something worth 5

I continue the rant later

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

econundrum — GMT

[quote=AnotherPoster][quote=econundrum]
Wrong, to quote from the absract of Chris's pdf on the Spore procedural animation system;

"This paper introduces
a novel system for animating characters whose morphologies
are unknown at the time the animation is created. Our authoring
tool allows animators to describe motion using familiar
posing and key-framing methods. [b]The system records the data in
a morphology-independent form, preserving both the animation’s
structural relationships and its stylistic information. At runtime,
the generalized data are applied to specific characters to yield pose
goals that are supplied to a robust and efficient inverse kinematics
solver[/b]. This system allows us to animate characters with highly
varying skeleton morphologies that did not exist when the animation
was authored, and, indeed, may be radically different than anything
the original animator envisioned."

If you want to know in which way Spores state of the art procedural animation system actually works I suggest downloading and reading the PDF from Chris's web site.

[/quote]

I did read the paper and all it amounts to is the the animation team could not ship an animation system that provides the functionality of the GDC demo no matter what they call it.

If I have an animation skeleton and map that to an aardvark or a giraffe, it not procedural animation. Because the target is unknown has no bearing.

[/quote]

Read it yes, understood it clearly not.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jonandra — GMT

Oh, can we please let this thread die? I can see how some people might blame Chris Hecker... But there was a whole TEAM ... not just Hecker ...

Hate is bad for your health...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

[quote=econundrum]
Read it yes, understood it clearly not.

[/quote]

Nice try with an ad hominem.

No matter what computer science buzzwords are using to describe how the animation system was developed, it doesn't [i]function[/i] like a procedural animation system. Put a weapon on the tail or arm or head...no effect. Nothing affects the basic animation from the example. That is the issue.

Why Hecker?
Hecker was/is the lead on the animation system and the founder of the "cute" team and a vocal critic of science Spore.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Hecker also, according to MaxisLucy, developed the skinning methods and the procedural process behind it. In any case, the final say was Wright's alone.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Grogyan — GMT

Well now they have the chance to make an expansion for us.

Science Spore: The Big Fix

I bought the game for one reason and one reason only, and found that the one feature I was going to use was taken out, dynamic proceedual gaits

And would have been a perfect simulator for designing robots

IF they don't fire Chris and fix the game back to what its suppose to be, then it will be curtains for EA and Maxis

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=Grogyan]Well now they have the chance to make an expansion for us.

Science Spore: The Big Fix

I bought the game for one reason and one reason only, and found that the one feature I was going to use was taken out, dynamic proceedual gaits

And would have been a perfect simulator for designing robots

IF they don't fire Chris and fix the game back to what its suppose to be, then it will be curtains for EA and Maxis[/quote]

And what if I told you, again, that Will Wright had the final say in all matters? Still going to continue to blame a scapegoat?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

midian1369 — GMT

I blame them ALL!

No one escapes my wrath!!!

Except everyone who runs away...too lazy to catch them...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Grogyan — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=Grogyan]Well now they have the chance to make an expansion for us.

Science Spore: The Big Fix

I bought the game for one reason and one reason only, and found that the one feature I was going to use was taken out, dynamic proceedual gaits

And would have been a perfect simulator for designing robots

IF they don't fire Chris and fix the game back to what its suppose to be, then it will be curtains for EA and Maxis[/quote]

And what if I told you, again, that Will Wright had the final say in all matters? Still going to continue to blame a scapegoat?[/quote]

Maybe I should blame Will for letting a minor destroy what could have been a great game.
Its like "I don't have much experience in the game market but I know that players don't want realism in the games they play"
if I had said that in front of Will, he'd show me the front door. So how come one person undermined this entire project?

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Powermaniac7 — GMT

Thanks for the great post now I know who's fault it was that spore changed from great to boring. Will Wright always has brilliant ideas but he needs to stand up for himself and do it his way.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Are you people nuts? Do you not understand what MaxisLucy said? Reread it.

Chris Hecker contributed to the team, and in the end it was Wright's vision and game. It was his decision in the end, and that's the way the cake crumbles.

Don't dilute yourselves into thinking one man is responsible for bugs, cuteness, the faked moon landing, and Jimmy Hoffa.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

arcia — GMT

[quote=MaxisLucy]Hi all. I wanted to weigh in on this thread. I appreciate the comments and the open discussion about the game, the look and everyone’s expectations. I think that this type of dialog is a healthy exchange of ideas. We get a lot out of it and I’m not interested in shutting that down. However, I do think that the aspersions toward any individual member of the Spore team are unwarranted and are getting out of hand here. The concept of Spore that Will presented at GDC 2005 was the guidepost for the development and execution of the game. Will very much remained the visionary and design leader throughout the development of Spore. He worked collaboratively with the team when opinions differed but decisions were definitely in his domain.

The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay. Some of this was driven by the simple reality of a very unique and rather cutting edge approach to animation. Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game. It was a huge area of focused work and learning for us as the animation engineering team developed this system. One thing that we learned is that setting an expectation of very realistic looking animations that, for instance, captured the discrete differences of movement of a cat vs. the movement of a dog would be off target. Moving away from an aesthetic that set such expectations was a well considered decision on our part. I’m personally amazed at what the animation team was able to achieve. Will set a goal for the team that we be able to hit a mark, in terms of creative breadth, that reached from Pixar to Geiger. The aesthetic, physical and placement constraint decisions that we made regarding the Creature Creator were held to our tenets of unconstrained creativity and accessibility for the creators.

Chris contributed so much in the way of innovations for Spore and deserves to be recognized for his work. While we have no interest in stifling conversation on the Sporum about Spore from anyone, I request that people show respect for others and refrain from outright defamation and threats.

Thanks,

Lucy
[/quote]

Hi Lucy, hopefully you are still watching this thread, because I have a question for you that I think everyone wants answered:
[b]Is there any discussion going on there to add more of the "realistic" features into the game as a potential future expansion?[/b]
[i](For clarification, by the realistic features I refer to a mode that makes creature design for the spine and parts have an effect on gameplay, among many other things that have been mentioned when referring to the 2005 demonstration)[/i]

This is, of course, not asking you to verify something is currently being worked on or reveal anything unannounced, I just want to know if these ideas are even being discussed as a possibility, or if the team has decided to just move on to other things.

P.S. I understand the reasoning for why the game was released as it was, to draw more people in, and I maintain hope that eventually Spore is going to be filled out by just about everything we can imagine.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SykoTavo — GMT

@All of you agreeing with Lucy about how Will had the last word.

You're all blind and ignorant. Will did not have the last word, EA did. And in a world run by capitalism and an economic philosophy that is a contradiction of itself ("In an economy dependent on consumers, he who screws them over gets rich") I wouldn't be surprised that they (EA) told Will to go shove his awesome game where the sun don't shine and decide themselves to put this crap out.

So if there really is someone to blame it's EA as a whole because, seriously, they are the only one's that have the final word, they are the only ones who decide what goes on the market or not, and only they have the power to possibly have shunned Will's ideas.

Still, I keep hoping the game will evolve through quality expansions (not parts packs) to what Will wanted it to be. Even if it's a capitalist trick to get more money off of us I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price for good expansions if at the end I am gonna be able to play the game that was promised.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

[quote=SykoTavo]@All of you agreeing with Lucy about how Will had the last word.

You're all blind and ignorant. Will did not have the last word, EA did. And in a world run by capitalism and an economic philosophy that is a contradiction of itself ("In an economy dependent on consumers, he who screws them over gets rich") I wouldn't be surprised that they (EA) told Will to go shove his awesome game where the sun don't shine and decide themselves to put this crap out.

So if there really is someone to blame it's EA as a whole because, seriously, they are the only one's that have the final word, they are the only ones who decide what goes on the market or not, and only they have the power to possibly have shunned Will's ideas.

Still, I keep hoping the game will evolve through quality expansions (not parts packs) to what Will wanted it to be. Even if it's a capitalist trick to get more money off of us I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price for good expansions if at the end I am gonna be able to play the game that was promised.[/quote]

So other than supposition where do you get this information from ?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ian1732 — GMT

All I have to say is "Thank GOD he didn't manage to get the sneakers."

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Esch_ — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]From what I understand, EA was the publisher - nothing more, nothing less. [/quote]

Publishers do have say, because they are in it for the money. If they looked at the game and said "That won't sell because it's too complicated for your casual gamer who can't open a jar of pickles, dumb it down or we'll never release the game", you sure to bet the game will get dumbed down.

And yes, I agree more that EA is the one who is probably more to blame in this dumbed down product.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SykoTavo — GMT

[quote=Eekwotsthat][quote=SykoTavo]@All of you agreeing with Lucy about how Will had the last word.

You're all blind and ignorant. Will did not have the last word, EA did. And in a world run by capitalism and an economic philosophy that is a contradiction of itself ("In an economy dependent on consumers, he who screws them over gets rich") I wouldn't be surprised that they (EA) told Will to go shove his awesome game where the sun don't shine and decide themselves to put this crap out.

So if there really is someone to blame it's EA as a whole because, seriously, they are the only one's that have the final word, they are the only ones who decide what goes on the market or not, and only they have the power to possibly have shunned Will's ideas.

Still, I keep hoping the game will evolve through quality expansions (not parts packs) to what Will wanted it to be. Even if it's a capitalist trick to get more money off of us I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price for good expansions if at the end I am gonna be able to play the game that was promised.[/quote]

So other than supposition where do you get this information from ?[/quote]

Continue reading...

[quote=Jackuul][quote=Eekwotsthat][quote=SykoTavo]@All of you agreeing with Lucy about how Will had the last word.

You're all blind and ignorant. Will did not have the last word, EA did. And in a world run by capitalism and an economic philosophy that is a contradiction of itself ("In an economy dependent on consumers, he who screws them over gets rich") I wouldn't be surprised that they (EA) told Will to go shove his awesome game where the sun don't shine and decide themselves to put this crap out.

So if there really is someone to blame it's EA as a whole because, seriously, they are the only one's that have the final word, they are the only ones who decide what goes on the market or not, and only they have the power to possibly have shunned Will's ideas.

Still, I keep hoping the game will evolve through quality expansions (not parts packs) to what Will wanted it to be. Even if it's a capitalist trick to get more money off of us I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable price for good expansions if at the end I am gonna be able to play the game that was promised.[/quote]

So other than supposition where do you get this information from ?[/quote]

His A double S?

[b]From what I understand, EA was the publisher - nothing more, nothing less[/b]. [/quote]

Exactly...keep going...

[quote=Esch_][quote=Jackuul]From what I understand, EA was the publisher - nothing more, nothing less. [/quote]

Publishers do have say, because they are in it for the money. If they looked at the game and said "That won't sell because it's too complicated for your casual gamer who can't open a jar of pickles, dumb it down or we'll never release the game", you sure to bet the game will get dumbed down.

And yes, I agree more that EA is the one who is probably more to blame in this dumbed down product.[/quote]

Thank you.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Operative117 — GMT

Well, this explains a lot. I have to admit that, even though this is still a great game, it certainly didn't meet many of the expectations I'd been led to have by the earlier demos, videos, and even by the bonus DVDs that came with the Galactic Edition (the NatGeo Evolution one in particular). The NG one really shows that Wil Wright has a great interest in science and wanted to explore that with Spore... whereas the game feels like it falls short in this regard.

Personally, I would love to see the game tweaked to become more realistic; even if that meant through subsequent expansion packs. While still great, Spore just isn't quite the game I thought it would be.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tygamer15 — GMT

I got the idea somehow it was going to be a mmorpg were you could go conquer a friends empire and they would have to restart. Anyone have any idea how i got that idea.

I think the space stage could have been really cool. I wish it were more like Eve. I think instead of civilization stage i would rather play CNC3. I wish everything had more complexity in it. I liked Sim CIty, but when i heard about sim city societies i dont care about the series. I dont think this should just be a blame thing. I am a fan of more depth so i am dissapointed that it could of had more. The problem is that it tries to cover so much. It cant be great at everything. It is a good game because it has alot but it isnt great in any particular thing. Because the game is cute it sells well to children because it is soo simple. But the problem with selling to children is that they dont keep their interest in anything for vary long. They kids have more time to play it so more kids will want it. For older people they will stay interested in something, even if they dont like it (sometimes). Maxis is fond of making expansion packs so they need people to keep interest in their product. Older people dont like the cute as much as more in depth science-y stuff. If they want to keep coming out with expansion packs, like the sims, for a game like this, it needed to be more complex before. It will probably cost a lot of mony for Maxis to fix the game with expansion packs, maybe it wont, i dont know. People ask and ask but it is so hard. I think They should higher other teams to focus on making the individual expansion packs to add complexity and draw back the attention. My idea is- higher someone like the creators of Eve or something to create a space expansion pack. Higher someone like the creators of command and conquer to make an expansion pack for civilization stage. Thats my plan, i rather have that then new parts for my creatures and im sure a lot of people would agree. If this happens we can all forget about Chris because we will be having fun playing spore.
Does anyone agree?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

tyralpha — GMT

to think the game was going to be more fun than it is now is incredible, I'm sad to hear that they dumbed down the game the way they did, I hope they come out with an expansion pack the way you guys are saying...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

RedLightning777 — GMT

[quote=MaxisLucy]The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay.
[/quote]

Seems too much time went into this debate... because we have accessibility, character and aesthetic.. and NO game.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tygamer15 — GMT

why is this topic so popular. Does everyone think hating Hecker will solve anything. Sure it may have been bad but still, you all arent perfect, i think. If not please say so, so i can appologize. I dont think Maxis will even read this topic at all so people should just give it up and go give helpful suggestions or just go get a new game and not be abbsessed over something you hate.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Herculoids — GMT

[quote=MaxisLucy]Hi all. I wanted to weigh in on this thread. I appreciate the comments and the open discussion about the game, the look and everyone’s expectations. I think that this type of dialog is a healthy exchange of ideas. We get a lot out of it and I’m not interested in shutting that down. However, I do think that the aspersions toward any individual member of the Spore team are unwarranted and are getting out of hand here. The concept of Spore that Will presented at GDC 2005 was the guidepost for the development and execution of the game. Will very much remained the visionary and design leader throughout the development of Spore. He worked collaboratively with the team when opinions differed but decisions were definitely in his domain.

The cute vs. science debate within the team had more to do with the concept of accessibility, character and aesthetic than it had to do with the underlying gameplay. Some of this was driven by the simple reality of a very unique and rather cutting edge approach to animation. Procedural animation is just one of the incredible contributions that Chris Hecker made to this game. It was a huge area of focused work and learning for us as the animation engineering team developed this system. One thing that we learned is that setting an expectation of very realistic looking animations that, for instance, captured the discrete differences of movement of a cat vs. the movement of a dog would be off target. Moving away from an aesthetic that set such expectations was a well considered decision on our part. I’m personally amazed at what the animation team was able to achieve. Will set a goal for the team that we be able to hit a mark, in terms of creative breadth, that reached from Pixar to Geiger. The aesthetic, physical and placement constraint decisions that we made regarding the Creature Creator were held to our tenets of unconstrained creativity and accessibility for the creators.

Chris contributed so much in the way of innovations for Spore and deserves to be recognized for his work. While we have no interest in stifling conversation on the Sporum about Spore from anyone, I request that people show respect for others and refrain from outright defamation and threats.

Thanks,

Lucy
[/quote]

So the utter lack of interesting gameplay is in fact Will's fault?

I agree that the threats and other symptoms of nerd rage go well over the top, but I'd really like my $50 dollars back.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=Herculoids][quote=MaxisLucy]-snip-
[/quote]

So the utter lack of interesting gameplay is in fact Will's fault?

I agree that the threats and other symptoms of nerd rage go well over the top, but I'd really like my $50 dollars back.[/quote]

Exactly. However folk don't want to believe that and thus latch on to a scapegoat.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SivCorp — GMT

[b]Epic fail, that's all.... Epic fail.[/b]
They tried to make a game to please everyone, and instead ---- EPIC FAIL!

You've got to chose your target audiance, and then deliver on your own built up expectations.

Maybe Will should have never shown off his 2005 model. Now there is an interesting point....

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MaxisWill — GMT

I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tutthoth — GMT

Will Wright hath spoken!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

deity — GMT

Thanks a lot for the feedback, its very, very, very aprecciated.

[quote=MaxisWill]
As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.
-Will Wright
[/quote]

This thread might be wrong, but it got you to speak. Also, now we really found who to tar and feather, and that would be Will Wright. Just kidding, how could anyone ever tar and feather Will? The guy invented the simulation genre!

[quote=MaxisWill]
Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.
[/quote]

I hope so, but how did you expect gamers to want the game to be this shallow? Also, how does the CC part pack reflect that? Anyways, I understand that mistakes happen and that you are trying to make the game what we want.

BTW, who did you vote for ?

Again, thanks ALOT for the feedback.

EDIT: edited for better quotation

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.[/quote]

Thank you, sir. I really cannot express just how much it means to me to see you come forward and say, "My bad. Leave my team alone." It is the most respectable thing I have seen on the Spore forum since I've arrived.

There are still many many unanswered questions about how and why Spore turned out the way it did, but I now trust that they will be addressed in good time.

Thank you again, take care, and good luck!

-JW

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Parvati — GMT

Look, now you made me feel bad for how I acted today.

While its a brave thing to come out and take the blame, the more sensible and logic oriented people knew already that it was your fault if anyone's.

I hope you can make good on your words.
Because that is what sold this game to the public.
[i]Your words.
[/i]
Some other mathers still press to be adressed.
But thank you for saying something.
Now there is just the mather of the Q&A thread....

edit: LOL why is that worth a 1 star. Enjoy it while you can, I'll be gone tomorow.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

draknfyr — GMT

I never really had that big a problem with spores look. I always thought that was a product of the png files limitations (overly complex or realistic looking things wouldn't fit or something). That being said, I would still prefer the ability to make things look more realistic.

As for the game play, it seemed to lose a bit of depth from the prototypes that were released. Primarily GonzagoGL and Space.

In GonzagoGL (prototype for the creature stage) most of the creatures seemed to interact with their surroundings with more depth than they do in the final game. The herbivores would wander about foraging for food and carnivores would actively hunt. I actually had to compete with other animals for food in the prototype.

In Space (prototype for the Space stage) there seemed to be more depth to the teraforming. Some plants and animals wouldn't survive in some spots but would thrive in others. And if they did thrive they would spread from the point of insertion. And they were also landlocked/waterlocked, ie land animals on an island could not populate other land masses on the planet. I was rather heartbroken when I got to the space stage in the final game and found that all I had to do was put down one tree and the whole planet would be covered in them...

The game itself is great if only for its Creators. The ability to make pretty much anything you can think of is truly groundbreaking. Now if only the interaction with those creations could be improved...

There are many other things I would have loved to see in the game play but I'm short on time. I do want to leave with one last thing. My biggest beef is with EA and their DRM. Thats the only thing that is preventing me from installing it on my new comp and playing. I've said nothing ill of what the Maxis team has created.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

It's probably better to move replies to will into the following thread:

[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page]Post from Will Wright Regarding the Cute vs. Science[/url] just to make things more readable

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Virakotxa — GMT

I knew it... It was only Will Right who thought the Fan-base of Spore were five year-old kids... who loved games but hated game-play. Good to know.
Good to have a response. Thanks...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tygamer15 — GMT

Will, you said almost exactly what i wanted to hear. I just want to know if expansion packs can add more depth to the stages, if so i would really like a civilization stage that takes strategy like command conquer games.

thanks for posting and clearing things up

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Webbstre — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

thefrostman2 — GMT

click and help them *points down*

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

yeebok — GMT

[quote=thefrostman2]click and help them *points down*[/quote]

NO, stop spamming.

Well anyway, based on what I've read I am even less happy with Spore. Funny but most of the time since I hit space stage I've spent my time in the forums instead of the game. I'd also be happy with refund. I don't think the blaming in here has helped, from what I've read, Chris H's contributions to Spore are good and bad - so tarring him isn't necessarily constructive. We're all too far out of the loop to even know what went on, so there's little point in us discussing or flaming further.

The fact remains though that much of the stuff we, as paying customers who're also evidently pirates (otherwise I would not need an unannounced, silently installed rootkit on my computer, would I?) are unhappy about appears to have come about as a result of his actions. There are of course good things he's added - but they were things we were expecting anyway. The stuff that's missing he has effectively put his hand up and almost gleefully said, like Jim Carrey in the lift in Liar Liar : "It was meeeeeeeeeeeee". Of course we're angry. We've been ripped off.

Then you go and read the Wii rant and you wonder well.. maybe his biggest problem is he just spouts whatever #### comes into his head.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Rappunen — GMT

[quote=draknfyr]In Space (prototype for the Space stage) there seemed to be more depth to the teraforming. Some plants and animals wouldn't survive in some spots but would thrive in others. And if they did thrive they would spread from the point of insertion. And they were also landlocked/waterlocked, ie land animals on an island could not populate other land masses on the planet. I was rather heartbroken when I got to the space stage in the final game and found that all I had to do was put down one tree and the whole planet would be covered in them...[/quote]
I can see why that feature isn't present in the game. It'd be a major pain to deal with - I for one don't want to waste even fifteen minutes looking for [i]that ideal spot[/i] for creatures and plants when I'm teethreeing a planet. No, seriously. I also wouldn't want to have to visit another planet for resource-gathering every five minutes because I've wasted all of my twenty Eyeballtrees trying to guess where to plant them.

No sir, there's scientific and then there's needlessly complicated, constipated and bloody SPORE annoying.

Besides, I like the simplicity and cuteness. Spore is more of a toy than a game in any case, and I personally find it way more enjoyable than GTA, any FPS or EA Sport game. But that's just me...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

It would end up as simply another checklist with simply more items on it to beam down. Whilst this may seem more complexity it isn't really. Just more repetitive clicking.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

draknfyr — GMT

Maybe my explanation of the space prototype made it sound more complicated that it actually is. You should give the prototype a try to see what I mean. The main thing I liked about it was how the plants and animals slowly spread over the planet and developed what felt like a true ecosystem.

[url=http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes/]Prototypes[/url]

As for the game vs toy issue. It is more of a toy than a game. The game play held my interest for about 2 weeks and honestly I did enjoy playing through from cell to space 3 or 4 times but by the end of the 2 weeks its newness wore off. And like most toys this one ended up at the bottom of my "toy chest" as newer and more engaging toys took my interest.

Of course the creators are still interesting but I've built a new comp since I last played and am afraid to install Spore on it due to EA's DRM. But once again, that's an issue with EA, not the game.

Edit: For the game play what I really wanted to see was the ability to zoom in and micromanage every little detail, or zoom out and manage everything at once with a few clicks. As it is there is not much to do with a planet once it is T3 and populated.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

[quote=draknfyr]Maybe my explanation of the space prototype made it sound more complicated that it actually is. You should give the prototype a try to see what I mean.[/quote]

I played with it when it first came out. Took longer but didn't do anything particularly special other than you spend more time waiting around and trying to figure out initially what was needed where. Once you knew that it was.. go to planet... terraform.. drop, drop, drop, drop... wait...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tygamer15 — GMT

i think a good combination of what is there and science would be two make latitudes make a difference. You place some plants wherever and some animals and the planet automatically adjust itself to fit the latitudes, tropical in middle, deserts out more and frozen caps.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Gritmonger — GMT

This logic, if you'll pardon me MaxisWill, is to quote the kids "Fail." The argument that long legs equals speed can be addressed, but the system adopted in replacement made it yet more restrictive on creativity: instead of long legs, it is "best feet." The restrictions are towards bipeds, period. "Best designs" are little variant from this: I'm sure you've got the resources to look at "play" creatures developed from Cell stage compared to free-creation creatures made in the separate Creature Creator. I suspect you'll find mostly bipeds with either attack or pose hands at high level. Sure, there'll be some variation, but not nearly as much as you'd think, based on the nobody-fails paradigm you adopted.

Seriously, I never thought I'd accuse you of a lack of imagination, but the arguments that you with a run of 4 could never catch a creature of run 5 is not an excuse for gutting any variation. There is, right now, only (marginal) variation in appearance. There is no appeal in going back through the stage. You [i]do[/i] know you can make it through without eating. Did you ever think to look to biology for some of the solutions to these problems? Creatures run faster than me. Then I'd better slow them down (webs) or catch them when they aren't running (stalking) or do some damage that will slow them down (venom) or catch them near a common resource (ambush) or corner them where they can't run (corral). That's just for starters. There are spiders that have modified poison glands to spit glue instead of venom. There are predators that stalk prey and remain upwind that can't outrun their prey, but can out-accelerate and out-corner them. Dolphins herd shoals of anchovy up to the surface of the water to deny them one route of escape.

An example of turning some of this to intuitive interfaces, think of movement ability as part of a tetrahedron of mutually exclusive abilities - like here:
[img]http://www.pmkelley.com/Monstergallery/movementallocation.jpg[/img]

This represents a duck, a creature that is not specialized, but is capable of all of these actions at a lower grade of ability. Throw out swim (since nobody can yet) and you'd have a triangle to drag on: climb means more flexible limbs, move is springier tendons and fewer degrees of freedom, and flight is controlled falling without wings (ability to splay and steer). Sure other factors affect it, but this is part of the "internals" - your limb length could be a total of ratio of limb length to torso instead, so that a lot of small legs equals a pair of large legs, but legs too large slow you down (not enough heart to pump into those limbs... but that's a hidden game effect).

Tradeoffs. That's what's missing. It's artificially attempted through the DNA system, but it doesn't work, it limits creativity more than anything, and it doesn't encourage experimentation or "play" with the design.

I doubt you'll read this, doubt you really care, and if anything are trying to take blame simply because you can. I'm not asking for an accurate five-places-of-precision science game, like I am absolutely certain some will accuse.

I wanted a toy,
I got a coloring book.

==============================
Now, to the folks who will flame, downrate, and accuse me of hubris and drub me off the forums for writing the above: I don't care. This game was over for me weeks ago, and downrate all you like. If Will truly wants to know any of this, he can read. To the rest: support the game if you like it. You don't have to care about my opinion either.

Enjoy your crayons.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Webbstre — GMT

[quote=Gritmonger]The argument that long legs equals speed can be addressed, but the system adopted in replacement made it yet more restrictive on creativity: instead of long legs, it is "best feet." The restrictions are towards bipeds, period. "Best designs" are little variant from this[/quote]

It really can't be put better than this. In an attempt to avoid the "everyone creates the same perfect variant" problem, it was just recreated in another way. I have seen many requests (and even some attempts at mods) for feet of each type being able to level up, rather than be forced to move up to the "perfect feet." Right now the only way to get around this is to wait for someone to make a decent mod that allows you to upgrade any feet, or wait for years and keep buying parts packs until you have some variety.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OptimusJ — GMT

The comment on the Wii may be the best starting point to refute that vision, Mr. Wright.

Everybody knows the wii is just 2 gamecubes glued with duct tape. The catch is that it's fun not because of its processing, but because of its interface. Chris, like most of people in the game industry do not see this, because they are charmed by the idea of their own vision.

So instead of criticism about themselves, and real self-improvement tries, reflecting in their work, they have an attitude of imposing the same thoughts they had for years, out of laziness to change.

THAT is what this situation seems like. The game is good enough, with a nice range of creativity allowed? YES. But the the vision that started this game is no more. It's gone, the revolution is done by the half, and although spore is in history of game programming, it was denied it's original place in game playing, as it as fairly quoted as "coloring book instead of a toy".

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Orihalco — GMT

[quote=SivCorp]You've got to chose your target audiance, and then deliver on your own built up expectations. [/quote]

QFT! Imagine if the developers of Fallout 3 had decided the game was too gory for the average player? The game would be absolutely atrocious. There would be fluffy bunnies running around, and other stupid things. Bethesda knew their targeted audience and delivered wonderfully.
I think SivCorp hits it right on the head here; Maxis and the developers just chose the wrong target audience. They tried to please everyone effectively SPORE most people off.
The game is good, but it could definitely be great. If you look that the threads pushing for a better Spore, you will find legitimate solutions to various problems.
All in all, don't try to please everyone- appeal to the masses or become a more science oriented game. That is the basic concept behind what will be your next success Maxis Team.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Draco18s — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.[/quote]

Instead it's all about the feet. So a monopod with a hoof runs just as fast as a horse four times its size with four times as many legs that are four times as long.

Also, as I noted over on the xSpore.com forums, most of my issues with the game have absolutely ziltch to do with the editors. In fact, it has everything to do with what [b]isn't[/i] in the editors: [i]NOTHING[/i]. Outside of one of the...7 editors I can't design intricate monstrosities that blow people's minds (in one way or another).

What's up with the inability to make a [i]fully terraformed[/i] iceball populated, by....say...ARCTIC CREATURES AND PLANTS?

Or a scorching wasteland planet populated with CACTUS and SMALL LIZARDS (aka the freaking desert)?

What happens when I heat up a planet or cool it down? The T3 organisms die first, regardless of their environmental traits (i.e. if I freeze a planet, but the "Polar Bear" is the T3 carnivore it dies first, but the cactus at T1 medium plant dies last--seriously, WTF).

There is no "what happens with global warming?" simulations here. In fact, there's no need to even heat the planet up to find out what will happen. You know what a hot planet's terrain looks like, and here you have a little readout of the planet's T1 organisms, voila, no exploration needed. Moving on: wait, there's nothing to move on [i]to[/i].

If the space expansion fixes this, you know I'm not going to buy it right? I'm going to torrent it because then I'll have paid $50 for the game I expected to play the FIRST time. Same goes for any other "phase fixer" pack.

And screw the parts expansions. That's just money grubbing right there. And wasn't that the kind of expansion we weren't going to see because it was "vertical expansion" and "horizontal expansion"? Where are my 3D printed creatures? Where are my t-shirts and mouse pads?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jaleho — GMT

I would like to know what Will's goals for Spore were.

If he wanted to make an open ended sandbox, then there needs to be a slew of changes to allow that -- the ability to add parts from any editor to any creation, a theme tool that actually works, customizing a planet BEFORE playing on it, naming other planets, whatever. If this is supposed to be our own custom toy world, why all the restrictions that modders are slowly "fixing"?

If he wanted to make a game fun to play that uses custom content, why is everything reduced to "beatdown, befriend, or buyout?" MMOs have less pointless grind than Spore.

We're supposed to be using Spore to tell "stories", yet we're restricted from including almost anything necessary for good stories -- individuals as heroes, relationships between individuals, scenes and settings. George Lucas NEEDS Luke Skywalker. Tolkein NEEDS Frodo. And Spore leaves out that key element that the Sims had - personal individuality. It's hard for me to care about a planet of citizens who look like ants from my UFO - whether my own people, or those of potential friends and enemies.

Will talks about "emergent gameplay", especially when defending the game to the lady from NASA, so I'd like to know what version of Spore he is playing, because there's barely any SCRIPTED gameplay in the Spore I have.

It seems to me Spore tried to be too many things, and as a result, failed at all of them. There's almost nothing enjoyable in the full game that the free Creature Creator didn't provide.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

PlasteredDragon — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]...As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call...[/quote]

You grotesquely underestimated your audience and spent years building a game that becomes boring inside of a week. Even my 11 year old isn't interested in Spore any more. I go back to games like Sims, SimCity, and Civ over and over even though I've played them for thousands of hours now. Your audience is at least 50% people who were playing SimCity in the 1990's (i.e. people who are close to 30 or over 30). Making SPORE a diversion for simpletons was to ignore the very people who have been buying your games for years. And to promote the game as you did was to encourage those very same people to buy it.

I'm a software developer, not a game designer, but I've been gaming for years and I feel like you tricked me, and I am not happy about it. You don't market tiddlywinks as if it was chess. There's absolutely NO WAY I will buy any expansion or parts packs for Spore at this point unless they radically alter the game (read: add SIGNIFICANT complexity)--I don't play with colorforms or Mr. Potato Head any more--I'm an adult. Next time you make a game like this please put "AGES 7-10" on the box.

I note on xfire that [url=http://www.xfire.com/games/spore/SPORE/]Spore is currently ranked at #53[/url] in popularity. Microsoft [url=http://www.xfire.com/games/winsol/Solitaire/]Solitaire ranks at #37[/url]. That's pretty sobering.

Thank you for coming forward and taking responsibility for this farce. I'm going to have to consider very carefully the next Will Wright game that hits the market--wait for (customer) reviews and such. But at least I will consider it. That's more than I was prepared to do before you spoke up. Good on you for defending your team.

Doubtless the fanboys will roast me alive at this point, but I don't care. I'm not coming back to this forum.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

[quote=PlasteredDragon]I note on xfire that [url=http://www.xfire.com/games/spore/SPORE/]Spore is currently ranked at #53[/url] in popularity. Microsoft [url=http://www.xfire.com/games/winsol/Solitaire/]Solitaire ranks at #37[/url][/quote]

I was just looking at that! Solitare has been solidly in the upper 30's since I've started checking. But Spore (full game PLUS creature creator) has been dropping like a stone. Though Spore does get a bit of increased gameplay on the weekends.

But yes, I was also one of those people playing SimCity in the 90's. In fact, I missed my Calc III final because I'd lost track of time while playing it. That sort of immersion simply did not happen with Spore.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jaleho — GMT

[quote=PlasteredDragon]
Thank you for coming forward and taking responsibility for this farce. I'm going to have to consider very carefully the next Will Wright game that hits the market--wait for (customer) reviews and such. But at least I will consider it.
[/quote]

Looks like he "Pulled a Molyneux", eh?

Actually, that's what I want more than an expansion pack -- Peter Molyneux did a "what went wrong with Fable" talk at GDC. I want Will to do a similar presentation at GDC. It would only show he's smart enough to realize just because a game sells 2 million that the customers aren't happy with it, and he recognizes that, and he is looking into what didn't work so it can be fixed in future games. He did that when he acknowledged the problems with Sims Online, same needs to be done with Spore.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OptimusJ — GMT

[quote=Jaleho]I want Will to do a similar presentation at GDC. It would only show he's smart enough to realize just because a game sells 2 million that the customers aren't happy with it, and he recognizes that, and he is looking into what didn't work so it can be fixed in future games. He did that when he acknowledged the problems with Sims Online, same needs to be done with Spore.[/quote]
I hope the people that have no real vision doesn't get in the way, and let him do that as well.
I hate those persons that think to admit to be wrong is a sign of weakness, and should be avoided if you want to look strong to be followed.
Come on, no one is looking for be a follower of a might leader.
And most of us thing the strength is not on to look flawless, but is in to have courage to admit your mistakes, and to show the stamina to work it out.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Falras — GMT

Woah, this thread STILL isn't dead?

That's actually pretty darn creepy.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

thefrostman2 — GMT

hhhmmmm

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

eltacobueno — GMT

i cant say much to this. I didnt like the earlier prototypes.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

KL0k23 — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Camosnake — GMT

If EA and Maxis are truley listen to us, and would like to "evolve" this game into the deep exiting game that they promised us that it would be, then you can help save spore by going to the forum link on my signature below. And EA and Maxis, a special note for you, read the forum as well, and give us the game that we crave!!!!!!!!!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Camosnake — GMT

i did make it to the center of the galaxy, but only after i was so bored with the space phase part of the game that i found the shortest route there and shot through as fast as i could

WARNING MINOR SPOILER ALERT:

after i got there, i thought the new tool you get was pretty cool, but after using it twice, i was bored again, with nothing else to shoot for. Thats our hope for spore, a time waster basically, it desperately needs the depth that we ask for in my signature below, join the forum, and give all your great ideas to EA and Maxis.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Evolution212 — GMT

Hey, I'm thirteen years old and I have been a Maxis fan since I first discovered who was making the games I loved so.

When I was 4, I first started using the computer and my father introduced me to SimCity 3000. I began playing it and I enjoyed it very much. At my age I was only just begin to develop a better understanding of how things work and playing with SimCity helped me with that. I can't remember much clearly but what I do know is that I had a [i]lot[/i] of fun making my own cities and trying to figure out how I could make it work, tinkering around with many things.

Later on, when I was much older, about 6 or 7, my father bought me The Sims. Again, after I played the game, it captured my interest. The things I could do! I enjoyed building houses for my Sims almost as much as I enjoyed playing with them. It was, to me, like a big storybook. I got every expansion pack that came out (except Makin' Magic).

Only two years ago I bought The Sims 2 out of faith in it's quality from the first game. It was exactly as before and I loved the game. Almost right after getting the game, I gained access to the internet, this was a big thing for me. Unfortunately, due to my faith in Maxis, when I heard about Spore on the internet I immediately said "I want this game". I didn't read much into the game but I knew enough to tell the game was going to be the best thing I'd ever played.

After 2 years of waiting, I finally heard of the release of Spore. I was so excited about the features I'd heard about I even told my teacher about how the game could possibly give a view on how ecosystems work. My father was also convinced that the game would be great by what I told him, so he bought the game for me.

When I got to play it I was trying to keep optimistic but Spore just kept proving itself dull. Now I'm too afraid to even tell my friends and family about how disappointing Spore was for me. My best friend was so persuaded by my hyping up of things that it's hard for me to direct him to another game when he comes over.

Not only did I get tricked, I tricked everyone else around me. Now I'm not saying Spore is particularly a bad game, but it just didn't reach the high expectations I and everyone else set for it.

Nevertheless, I remain faithful, though I see no point in actually posting this. But I will...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

SivCorp — GMT

[quote=Evolution212]
Nevertheless, I remain faithful, though I see no point in actually posting this. But I will...[/quote]

There are many more of you out there, thank you for sharing. Take note Maxis.... this is the disappointment we are all talking about.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

KaiRyen — GMT

Join the save spore thingy! click the link under my sig and read the forum! all the way down in the first post it says how to get the signature so more people can join!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Mowglia — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.[/quote]
Well, you succeeded in one sense as the science side certainly did not win. On the other hand you failed if the intention was to represent both sides of the debate, as there is now ZERO science in Spore

[quote=MaxisWill]... And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.[/quote]
When I removed the eyes from a cell in my version of Spore, vision was restricted. 'Going cute' was the wrong strategy if you sought emotional engagement from players. The best way to consolidate such engagement is to INVOLVE the player in meaningful development of their creature, rather than make all creatures 'mechanically' identical and merely allow the player to 'draw the picture'. In this particular instance, the creature should (obviously) be unable to see, but this provides fascinating opportunities. For example, a creature with no eyes may start to develop sonar to navigate and find food. It would not see (visually), but would still have information about the topology of the environment, and information about near-side surfaces (easy to implement graphically).

[quote=MaxisWill]I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.[/quote]
What is ironic is the term Voodoo Mathematics when applied to said procedural animation, as (like voodoo) the procedural animation has NO BEARING on what is actually happening. "Unpredictable" is hardly a description I would use. I prefer "Tediously predictable". In this context mathematics has to be applied (i.e. have in-game meaning) to be impressive.

[quote=MaxisWill]To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.[/quote]
1) If the intention was for a creature's design (should have been evolution, sigh) to impact its performance, then Spore is a spectacular failure. I really cannot see how the design of a creature affects its performance in any but the most juvenile way, and this is my main criticism regarding Spore.

2) The economics of the editor is indeed simple. Too simple. I think you might be amazed by the number of players out there with an IQ greater than 3. Never assume players are stupid. Instead just give them the option to simplify things if they so desire.

3) I agree there is a large amount of (visual) aesthetic diversity, although regarding the "ultimate design direction", again a spectacular failure. All my creatures ended up the same through necessity (big mouth, big claws, best wings for flying, and best feet for jumping). No exceptions.

Observation: A fundamental error was made in allowing the player to design and modify their creature through the game. Why even have a creature editor? A creature ought to be the product of its environment and the actions the player causes that creature to make. [In Black & White the avatar's appearance slowly reflected what the player did, and this behaviour (and more) is what I was expecting from Spore]. It would force the player to think very carefully about what they do with their creature, as their creature might change for the worse, or even lead to an evolutionary dead end (i.e., extinction). This is the key to unpredictability. Using an editor in this way serves only to make things predictable.

However, there is scope for a meaningful creature editor (whereby a player could design a creature). Say for example to determine whether or not a given design could survive in a particular environment. Except if the player spends a wad of points maxing an uber-creature then obviously environmental hostility should be radically increased. Once a creature is 'released' into an environment then further design ought to be impossible, and thereafter the creature should EVOLVE.

[quote=MaxisWill]As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.[/quote]
What? Are you suggesting that Spore was originally more sophisticated, and there were consequences for decisions made in the editor (rather than the editor merely being a paint-shop)? If so, and the game was simplified (read dumbed-down), then WHY BOTHER TO MAKE IT SOPHISTICATED IN THE FIRST PLACE? Also, WHY ADVERTISE THE PREVIOUS PRODUCT TO PLAYERS RATHER THAN THE CURRENT PRODUCT? The first point is a matter of competence, but the second point really does stray perilously close to the edge of what I consider decent behaviour. A company should always be honest with customers. Believe me, EA/Maxis really do not need a reputation such as that associated with the likes of Gameforge (or similar).

[quote=MaxisWill]Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.[/quote]
Agreed. I cannot testify to any talent Chris may or may not have (as I have seen no evidence whatsoever), but it is entirely pointless to blame an individual for presumably doing his best. Constructive criticism might help to solve the problem, whereas vilifying someone on the forums is hardly going to get the result the more sophisticated players are after.

[quote=MaxisWill]A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.[/quote]
Hm, I am afraid I will need to see this before I believe it. Ideally you would revert to the previous version of Spore and start building on that (but in the opposite direction), although I suspect this might now be impossible. Otherwise try to push it toward an unpredictable evolution-based mechanic rather than anything based on design. If you absolutely insist on (intelligent?) design over evolution, than at least balance the game properly. Examples;

1) If a creature is designed with longer legs then it might be able to move faster (depending on where joints are, angles of limb parts, etc). Ideally body shape would determine gait, although this kind of mechanism can get incredibly complex (which is I suspect, the real reason it was not implemented). The downside is that those long legs should snap easily

2) The bigger and more active a creature is, the more food it needs to eat. So you might find a lethal predator needs to sleep 90% of the time to conserve its energy, or start losing body mass. Alternatively, you might find a large herbivore is forced to stay awake all day in order to eat constantly, etc.

3) There ought to be a HARDCORE MODE where the player does not have access to cell/creature editors. Personally I design my creatures entirely for specific Space Stage bonuses, which is another reason they all end up the same. In Hardcore Mode the changes to a creature should be based on environment and behaviour alone. And it should be entirely possible for a creature to become extinct.

4) Space Stage is currently useless (although nowhere near as useless as Civ Stage). I can only describe the simplicity of the economy as VERY DISTURBING INDEED. The Grox were so annoying I had no choice but to ally with them to keep them off my back. Of the 70 or 80 remaining civilizations I encountered so far, I am afraid I had to eradicate every last one of them, primarily (but not always) for hassling me constantly. Easier to kill them all than suffer their constant purile radio messages. The Space Stage urgently requires variety and depth. What really bugs me about the Space Stage is when you have seen one planet, you have seen them all...worlds need to be fundamentally different (mechanically) to give the player reasons to explore and visit them.

[quote=MaxisWill]I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright[/quote]
Please do not thank me, as I had to stop playing Spore. The main reason was disappointment. To be fair, when I first reached Space Stage and realized the galaxy was not some aesthetic overlay, and that numerous stars all existed and could be travelled to, I had the biggest rush (regarding PC games) in as long as I can remember. All previous flaws I experienced were immediately forgiven. I was having severe problems getting my head around the scope and potential, and suffice to say seriously considered cancelling my appointments indefinitely. I was about as excited as I have ever been about any game (bar Defender, 1981 coin-op).

Then, when I realized the galaxy WAS essentially 100% cosmetic, I experienced something akin to the inverse of that rush; A profound disappointment I want to forget as fast as possible. Playing Spore now just reminds me of what the game could have been. So much potential squandered, and for what?

If I were Maxis controller I would wind down Spore now, and perhaps even junk development entirely. I reckon you are flogging a dead horse. By all means clean it up, but I advise wasting as little time on it now as possible. Get busy on Spore 2, and this time do the job properly.

Otherwise I guarantee you in several years time there will be a "Spore 2", and it will be everything Spore ought to have been, except the EA/Maxis logos will not be on the box...it will be some other well-financed games company that seize the opportunity you hereby present to them on silver platter. You have opened the door to this genre, but unfortunately failed to capitalize on it (at least in game terms). Now you have a limited time in order to get it together before the vultures start circling, and ultimately take full advantage.

Curiously, I found that over the last thirty years the big-budget companies produce games that are becoming progressively more banal. There are exceptions, but generally this is the case. I suspect commercial factors are to blame (i.e., appealing to the mass audience for financial gain, in a similar manner to the film and music industries). Where big business is concerned, it seems pap rules.

Two of the most fascinating and inventive games I have played in the last five years have actually been free, lol. I imagine the lack of a budget forces designers and programmers to use their intellect and get creative if they want to survive these days. Both games are browser-based. One shall remain nameless as it is rather complex and therefore irrelevant to this discussion. The other, Fantastic Contraption, you should take a look at. It is a fine example of how simple components and mechanisms CAN produce outrageously unpredictable results, which are often very amusing to watch (for all the wrong reasons). If you investigate this further you will learn much about game design, especially with regard to depth, and quality. It proves you do not need flashy graphics or complexity to hook players.

The key to any and all successful games is PLAYABILITY. After all, it is a game, and it exists to be played (not merely sold). If a game is unplayable and/or uninteresting, then the developers essentially fail in their task (assuming the objective is to make a decent game, and not just a whole stack of cash).

Finally, do not take the criticism of Spore out of context. So you made a mistake, it can happen to anyone. This is a good opportunity to go back and redesign things for Spore 2. Except this time if anyone infected with Cutesie Fluffy-Bunny Syndrome approaches you, just defenestrate them. It is more than they deserve. Hire a few scientists. Focus on playability above all else. If a single member of your team cannot give a sufficient definition of 'playability' then dispose of them too. What would impress me (and many others) is getting it right with Spore 2. People say you are one of the best game developers...so show us what you can do when faced with a tricky problem

Mowglia

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Spore 2? LOL I will buy spore 2 when they refund my money for spore 1.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

KnynonMike — GMT

very very very interesting

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

8Pack — GMT

nevermind

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

[URL=http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=heckerfailcopydg8.jpg][IMG]http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/5995/heckerfailcopydg8.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://g.imageshack.us/img48/heckerfailcopydg8.jpg/1/][IMG]http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/heckerfailcopydg8.jpg/1/w500.png[/IMG][/URL]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Luminar — GMT

Stop it. You're putting in herculanean effort to be very very mildly amusing. Humour Inefficiency.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

grobsmkII — GMT

about simplicity

YOU MADE IT SO SIMPLE THE OTHER NESTS HAVE ALMOST NO AI I WANTED ECO SYSTEMS LIKE WE SAW I WANTED TO BE HUNTED I WANTED TO HUNT I WANTED TO FEEL LIKE I WAS IN A FOREST

AND ON YOUR CREATIVITY STATEMENT ... NO AQUATIC CREATURES THATS THE ONE OF THE THINGS I LOOKED FOWARD TO MOST YOU JUST LOST ANOTHER CUSTUMER MAXIS

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

PenguinKid — GMT

[quote=ZsoSahaal]This quote kills me inside.

[quote=Chris Hecker]
Chris Trottier and I founded the "cute team" really early on, mostly as a joke and reaction against Will and art director Ocean Quigley, who we called the "science team" to tease them. They would show these prototypes that looked exactly like looking at a petri dish through a microscope, and some of us would look at it and say, "yuck". The final game we shipped split it right down the middle so the creative tension there turned out to be healthy; you can look at the Sporepedia and see really gross monsters, and silly cute unicorns, and everything in-between.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/spore/907887p3.html
[/quote]

It was all a joke to them at first, teasing Will and the others who knew what the spore they were doing. Spore you, Hecker. [/quote]

Chris was probably one of EA's spies/goons/monsters and was paid [b]INSANELY HUGE[/b] amounts of money to ruin spore because THERE IS NO SCIENCE EVER!!!! It isn't even cute. It's [b]RETARDED and STUPID and SPOREING SPORE SPORE SPOREING SPORE SPORE LAME!!!!!!![/b] Sorry, I just can't believe that EA would pull something like this. They see Spore and consider it the ultimate fully open-ended computer game, so they feel the need to send Chris Hecker in so he can kill the game for everyone. Now it's SPOREing [b]RETARDED!!![/b] [b][color=red][size=24]Thank you, Chris Hecker. Thank you, John Whatever-face-cello. We all hate you. Expect to be chased by an angry mob of people carrying torches and pitchforks in the very near future.[/size][/color][/b] Will, HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN???? Your best work turned into a SPOREing retarded [u][i][b][size=24]FARCE!!!!![/size][/b][/i][/u] Next time, don't let EA ruin any of your work. Just refuse to let them mess with programming, or any part of the game. SAY NO TO EA'S STUPIDITY!!!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Anach — GMT

It's a real shame that the science got taken out.

The Cell stage feels completely unfinished.

The other stages dont feel connected and fluid at all, but more like individual games that you spend all of 10 minutes playing before the space game.

Really, spore simply became a space strategy game with some very simple mini-games at the start.

I bought the game based on what I saw in the original tech demos, and was very disappointed to find it was nothing like that. Sure it's still fun, but it's life-span is very limited and the more you play it, the more you wish for those things taken out.

I would absolutely love to play that original tech demo, which looks like Spore 2 - The Advanced Spore.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]
As starter of this thread, I feel it is obligatory for me to respond to this. Sorry it's two weeks late. I've been jumping around dealing with real world issues as well as playing with/modding Fallout 3. I went into Fallout 3 with low expectations and Spore with high expectations. I suppose its no surprise that Fallout 3 surpassed my expectations and Spore did not meet them; I was setting myself up for that.

I would like to express specific apology to Chris Hecker for making him the poster boy of our disappointment. His earlier statement about the Wii put him in an already precarious position. (Though he did retract it elegantly at a later date.) It is clear to me from Will's statement that he earns his position on the team and takes his job seriously. To repeat what I have said in the past, the purpose of this thread and this movement was never to get Chris Hecker fired, or to truly vilify Chris; it was and remains with the intent of getting the Spore we expected. Chris Hecker simply served as a face to a problem, and once again, I apologize to him for making him an icon for what we disliked. (Especially since it sounds like some of the animation details we feel we're missing were made by him! Perhaps we should be asking for more Chris Hecker in the game, not less.)

I am very pleased to hear that the Maxis team was doing exactly as Will Wright designed; that is exactly as it should be. I am a little disappointed by Will's design choices in this particular case, but it seems they were warranted. Spore is exploring an entirely new scope for a video game, and the first step is always the most awkward. Like Freudian psychology; Freud explored new territory and developed a new field of possibilities, but his ideas themselves are hit or miss. (Much of his writing tells you more about him than it does about people in general.)

Likewise, Will's choices were difficult choices that had to be made with little precedent as to what would or would not work. It is only natural that mistakes were made. Though, looking at the depth and complexity of SimCity, I have to wonder if Will second guessed himself. Remember what made you famous, Will! As a loyal Maxis customer from SimCity to The Sims to Spore, I have faith in your design abilities, but remember; you gained your fame by making deep and free-form explorations, never by linear development or mission-based gameplay. Like the Wants in The Sims 2, the missions should be suggestions with ample rewards, not responsibilities that have to be taken care of before the game can be enjoyed. The missions, like the Wants, should be optional so that the player has control over his game.

Perhaps I felt additional disappointment in Spore as I had imagined a game with ecosystem dynamics and free-form creature designing before. I tried to prototype it a few times, but it was simply way out of my league. (I'm more of an artist or designer than a coder.) Likewise, EVO for the SNES is one of my favorite games of all time. (And Graffiti Kingdom for PS2; highly recommended.) Though Spore didn't quite meet the Darwinist simulation I had hoped for, it is still a quality game. Unfortunately, one with limited lastability. After playing one game from Cell to Space, I had basically seen it all. The sheer linearity kept me from exploring the world, and made all my editing feel for naught. It is very rare for me to actually [i]play[/i] the game now, though I do regularly stop in the make creatures or buildings. (And I love the outfitter. Wish it had more parts.)

I know that you have a wide audience and can't be sure of their reactions, and that compromises must be made. The game has to be easy enough for the casual player while hard enough for the hardcore gamer, and in an ideal world, real enough for a biologist. (Or at least a beautiful microcosm of the broad concept.) However, that's what difficulty settings were for in games. Now, as can be seen in complex civilization-type games like Galactic Civilizations II, the difficulty setting is only one setting of a plethora of options; like galaxy size, number of coexisting races, number of planets and how habitable they are, the speed of the gameplay, the organization of the galaxy, the methods of winning available and even options to disable parts of the game that a player might not like.

In that vein, instead of trying to design a one-size-fits-all game, perhaps it would be better to design a game which changes to fit what the player wants? Instead of simply a difficulty setting, perhaps players could choose the degree of linearity, the strictness of the environment, the complexity of the ecosystem simulation, how much shape and design of a creature controls its actual effectiveness, the size and variety of the world, the complexity of the AI or combat system, if they use a preset nest system or a more realistic dynamic one, and perhaps if the option of the "Social" mini-game is even present in the Creature Stage. (Because, although it works decently well as a gameplay mechanic, animals don't have dance-offs and then form posses. Can't I be a peaceful herbivore that simply distrusts other species?) Of course, that degree of change would take near complete redesign of the Creature Stage, so I can understand if that issue cannot be addressed, or at least not yet.

Personally, I'm a firm believer that: the more options, the better. Though I must admit, it's a bad idea to flood the player with options first thing, so these settings would theoretically be in an "Advanced Settings" tab or window, per game. A player who doesn't want to think about that could simply choose a Difficulty level and a Science level. But now I'm delving into specifics, and I'm sure you can figure out a way to balance these issues quite elegantly.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to respond to the community, and especially for your honesty and humility when doing so. I, as well as much of the community, had simply been waiting for a statement from Maxis on what happened. I could not have asked for a better statement. I shall edit the topic post to reflect this statement to avoid misleading anyone, and perhaps send a Private Message to you as well in the near future.

-Keaton Pursell

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

PenguinKid — GMT

[quote=Finnical][quote=MaxisWill]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]
As starter of this thread, I feel it is obligatory for me to respond to this. Sorry it's two weeks late. I've been jumping around dealing with real world issues as well as playing with/modding Fallout 3. I went into Fallout 3 with low expectations and Spore with high expectations. I suppose its no surprise that Fallout 3 surpassed my expectations and Spore did not meet them; I was setting myself up for that.

I would like to express specific apology to Chris Hecker for making him the poster boy of our disappointment. His earlier statement about the Wii put him in an already precarious position. (Though he did retract it elegantly at a later date.) It is clear to me from Will's statement that he earns his position on the team and takes his job seriously. To repeat what I have said in the past, the purpose of this thread and this movement was never to get Chris Hecker fired, or to truly vilify Chris; it was and remains with the intent of getting the Spore we expected. Chris Hecker simply served as a face to a problem, and once again, I apologize to him for making him an icon for what we disliked. (Especially since it sounds like some of the animation details we feel we're missing were made by him! Perhaps we should be asking for more Chris Hecker in the game, not less.)

I am very pleased to hear that the Maxis team was doing exactly as Will Wright designed; that is exactly as it should be. I am a little disappointed by Will's design choices in this particular case, but it seems they were warranted. Spore is exploring an entirely new scope for a video game, and the first step is always the most awkward. Like Freudian psychology; Freud explored new territory and developed a new field of possibilities, but his ideas themselves are hit or miss. (Much of his writing tells you more about him than it does about people in general.)

Likewise, Will's choices were difficult choices that had to be made with little precedent as to what would or would not work. It is only natural that mistakes were made. Though, looking at the depth and complexity of SimCity, I have to wonder if Will second guessed himself. Remember what made you famous, Will! As a loyal Maxis customer from SimCity to The Sims to Spore, I have faith in your design abilities, but remember; you gained your fame by making deep and free-form explorations, never by linear development or mission-based gameplay. Like the Wants in The Sims 2, the missions should be suggestions with ample rewards, not responsibilities that have to be taken care of before the game can be enjoyed. The missions, like the Wants, should be optional so that the player has control over his game.

Perhaps I felt additional disappointment in Spore as I had imagined a game with ecosystem dynamics and free-form creature designing before. I tried to prototype it a few times, but it was simply way out of my league. (I'm more of an artist or designer than a coder.) Likewise, EVO for the SNES is one of my favorite games of all time. (And Graffiti Kingdom for PS2; highly recommended.) Though Spore didn't quite meet the Darwinist simulation I had hoped for, it is still a quality game. Unfortunately, one with limited lastability. After playing one game from Cell to Space, I had basically seen it all. The sheer linearity kept me from exploring the world, and made all my editing feel for naught. It is very rare for me to actually [i]play[/i] the game now, though I do regularly stop in the make creatures or buildings. (And I love the outfitter. Wish it had more parts.)

I know that you have a wide audience and can't be sure of their reactions, and that compromises must be made. The game has to be easy enough for the casual player while hard enough for the hardcore gamer, and in an ideal world, real enough for a biologist. (Or at least a beautiful microcosm of the broad concept.) However, that's what difficulty settings were for in games. Now, as can be seen in complex civilization-type games like Galactic Civilizations II, the difficulty setting is only one setting of a plethora of options; like galaxy size, number of coexisting races, number of planets and how habitable they are, the speed of the gameplay, the organization of the galaxy, the methods of winning available and even options to disable parts of the game that a player might not like.

In that vein, instead of trying to design a one-size-fits-all game, perhaps it would be better to design a game which changes to fit what the player wants? Instead of simply a difficulty setting, perhaps players could choose the degree of linearity, the strictness of the environment, the complexity of the ecosystem simulation, how much shape and design of a creature controls its actual effectiveness, the size and variety of the world, the complexity of the AI or combat system, if they use a preset nest system or a more realistic dynamic one, and perhaps if the option of the "Social" mini-game is even present in the Creature Stage. (Because, although it works decently well as a gameplay mechanic, animals don't have dance-offs and then form posses. Can't I be a peaceful herbivore that simply distrusts other species?) Of course, that degree of change would take near complete redesign of the Creature Stage, so I can understand if that issue cannot be addressed, or at least not yet.

Personally, I'm a firm believer that: the more options, the better. Though I must admit, it's a bad idea to flood the player with options first thing, so these settings would theoretically be in an "Advanced Settings" tab or window, per game. A player who doesn't want to think about that could simply choose a Difficulty level and a Science level. But now I'm delving into specifics, and I'm sure you can figure out a way to balance these issues quite elegantly.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to respond to the community, and especially for your honesty and humility when doing so. I, as well as much of the community, had simply been waiting for a statement from Maxis on what happened. I could not have asked for a better statement. I shall edit the topic post to reflect this statement to avoid misleading anyone, and perhaps send a Private Message to you as well in the near future. [/quote]

How can you believe the [i][u][b][size=24][color=red]LIES!!!![/color][/size][/b][/u][/i] of Chris Hecker? He is just saying this stuff to deflect the angry mobs to Will Wright. Chris must be [b][size=24]DESTROYED!!!!![/size][/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=PenguinKid]How can you believe the [i][u][b][size=24][color=red]LIES!!!![/color][/size][/b][/u][/i] of Chris Hecker? He is just saying this stuff to deflect the angry mobs to Will Wright. Chris must be [b][size=24]DESTROYED!!!!![/size][/b][/quote]
[i][b][size=40]SLAP[/size][/b][/i]

You missed the whole point. Get back to your troll cage.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Gaffi1 — GMT

[quote]
How can you believe the [i][u][b][size=24][color=red]LIES!!!![/color][/size][/b][/u][/i] of Chris Hecker? He is just saying this stuff to deflect the angry mobs to Will Wright. Chris must be [b][size=24]DESTROYED!!!!![/size][/b][/quote]

Someone needs to take a chill pill...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Gaffi1][quote]
How can you believe the [i][u][b][color=red]LIES!!!![/color][/b][/u][/i] of Chris Hecker? He is just saying this stuff to deflect the angry mobs to Will Wright. Chris must be [b]DESTROYED!!!!![/b][/quote]

Someone needs to take a chill pill... [/quote]
Just trolls. Pay 'em no heed, if you don't feed 'em, they slip back under the bridge to wait for other targets.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=Galueru]o.O This is kind of unrelated to Hecker.

But anyone ever noticed this? VVV

When will first explained his game, he seemed excited, thrilled, he enjoyed it, Even when Robin Williams crashed his game onstage, will seemed happy.

Later down the road at endless public appearances, he starts to seem... well... Just plain miserable, he talks about the game, but with less excitement, almost as if he's disappointed with it. At first I just figured that perhaps he was just tired of explaining it... Now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps if he was a little disappointed to what happened to his game... It got kind of ripped apart and regutted... o.O Granted I'm not sure if he put up a fight or not, but eh, I don't think he was nowhere near happy with it.

[/quote]

I noticed that too. I thought i was imagining things or he was tired like you said but now it did seem like he was mad or upset

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

I lol at the troll.

Also, as for the statement above, I thought he had a cold during that presentation.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

I think for safety's sake this thread should be locked. We've had confirmation from Will Wright that Chris Hecker was not the one solely responsible for anything we consider flawed in the game and to continue letting this hate topic live, even through the simple medium of posting something related to Chris Hecker in it - positive or negative is ultimately irrelevant - is both pointless and worrysome.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

It's not worr[b]i[/b]some - in fact I think it serves as a great trap for people who are flaming lunatics. You can identify, and then tag them. Afterwards we get the chopper and release them out into the wild, where they will frolic and play, and flame uselessly as we know who they are, and can ignore them for as long as their presence graces this forum.

Remember, Trolls don't have arguments... they have foul mouths, stickers in their hair, and an odd fascination with people named John.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=ChaosHarbinger]I think for safety's sake this thread should be locked. We've had confirmation from Will Wright that Chris Hecker was not the one solely responsible for anything we consider flawed in the game and to continue letting this hate topic live, even through the simple medium of posting something related to Chris Hecker in it - positive or negative is ultimately irrelevant - is both pointless and worrysome.[/quote]Perhaps, but you may notice I changed the topic post quite a bit to reflect the response. Now it almost serves as a historic site. Would be a shame to lock that off.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Damnit I get called a troll for posting my opinion on Spore but I find it equally as Trollish to goto every thread you disagree with and state it needs to be closed like your a SPORING mod.

Unless your Username has SporeMaster or Moderator in front of it your request for locking the thread is nothing more then a weak attempt to stifle the voices of those who have legitimate issues with that game.

Report the thread if you want * thats your right* But get off the high horse and stop acting like you know what should or should not be locked.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

Hi,To be honest i did try to be a nice,but the more i play this game,and ive been to the space age like 6 times now,i have to say that this game is very much unfinished. I just dont even want to play it anymore. i mean once ya get to the space age it feels so empty,its hard to explain The creature age seem the most fun but it also seemed very short.

i don't blame Will for this mess i blame EA,they have always killed good games and good company's once they get there hands on them. Im sick of BIG company's taking over small company's and killing them.

i used to be a big fan of EA when i was younger i kinda grew up with them but in the last 5 or more years all they are to me now is greedy,good game company killing,good game killing,reputation killing Corporation. Oh and No respect for there customers/fans.

i have the same feelings for Sony and Atari.

This thing there trying to say that Will always had the last say in development of his game is pure BS if he really did have the last say this game would of never been published.

Dumbing down the game was a big mistake,like alot of people here said we arnt dumb we dont need our games dumbed down,we like challenges.

i didnt follow the game like most of the people here did but from what i saw the game that was advertised for like 5 years looked and felt alot more fun than what we have now.

ive been playing Console and PC games since i was 14 im 34 years old now and over the years ive seen games in general go from awsome to boreing money making machines,games dont feel like peoples hearts went in to them,they seemed rushed just so they can make a quick buck,no more making a game that is cool or enjoyable,all we have these days it seems is kill,kill,kill,nothing new. not sure about other people but im getting sick of games that contain kill this or that. There is nothing fresh or new its always kill,kill,kill or be killed. You dont see much of space games anymore (wich is my favorite genre).

Sorry for going off topic but ive been wanting to say this for a long time.

I may get banned or flamed for what i have said but if my english and grammar were alot better my feelings would be alot more clear.

P.S. Im not trying to be a troll please believe that

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

What in gods name is a Troll? I know its something that lives under a bridge or is in fantasy games and books.

Its a Style of fishing. How is it used in regards the internet. Sry for the noob question but I never really got into netchat much before now. Aside from L2 Forums which seemed to use lingo I understood.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Troll can be used in any one of those situations.

Trolling means trying to start an argument - much like trolling for fish. You put stuff out there and wait for feedback to spring into action and catch your prey.

A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=Ashloc]What in gods name is a Troll? I know its something that lives under a bridge or is in fantasy games and books.

Its a Style of fishing. How is it used in regards the internet. Sry for the noob question but I never really got into netchat much before now. Aside from L2 Forums which seemed to use lingo I understood.[/quote]

i think it means someone that goes around to start up trouble,im not 100% sure to be honest.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=Jackuul]A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.[/quote]

if your refering to me.

im sorry i wasnt trying to be

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Ashloc]What in gods name is a Troll? I know its something that lives under a bridge or is in fantasy games and books.

Its a Style of fishing. How is it used in regards the internet. Sry for the noob question but I never really got into netchat much before now. Aside from L2 Forums which seemed to use lingo I understood.[/quote]A person who says things they don't actually believe or care about just to make others angry. Essentially. Sometimes its quite well written, or even impossible to tell from the real thing.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

SPORE

I am a troll I guess! By that definition!

OH WELL!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Finnical in your Opinion am I a troll? I believe it if you say so.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

[quote=Ashloc]SPORE

I am a troll I guess! By that definition!

OH WELL!

[/quote]
Sometimes trolling those who deserve it can result in lulz en masse. But try to keep things civil.

[quote=Ashloc]Finnical in your Opinion am I a troll? I believe it if you say so.[/quote]
Depends. I generally consider true trolls to be the ones who are doing it for their own amusement as opposed to reaching a goal, but trolling can be done for noble reasons.

[b]EDIT:[/b]
Now PenguinKid, there's a troll. He's not actually accomplishing anything, he's just trying to grab attention.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=JamesJB][quote=Jackuul]A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.[/quote]

if your refering to me.

im sorry i wasnt trying to be [/quote]

As in doing the above, I was referring to the above portion of text I wrote. Look at it in context.

[quote=Jackuul]Troll can be used in any one of those situations.

Trolling means trying to start an argument - much like trolling for fish. You put stuff out there and wait for feedback to spring into action and catch your prey.

A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.[/quote]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=JamesJB][quote=Jackuul]A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.[/quote]

if your refering to me.

im sorry i wasnt trying to be [/quote]

As in doing the above, I was referring to the above portion of text I wrote. Look at it in context.

[quote=Jackuul]Troll can be used in any one of those situations.

Trolling means trying to start an argument - much like trolling for fish. You put stuff out there and wait for feedback to spring into action and catch your prey.

A troll means a person who does the above, but this connotation is more likely to mean the kind that lives under the bridge.

It's a very versatile word.[/quote][/quote]

oh ok sorry

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Well, trust me on this, you would know when I was addressing you as I would make it very clear.

However when I address the audience, I address everyone, and thus when I refer to 'the above' I am likely pointing to something I wrote, unless there is no paragraph before that.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Here fishy fishy fishy

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Luminar — GMT

Look up "The Flame Warriors". It pretty much covers everything.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

I will google it in the morning

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=Luminar]Look up "The Flame Warriors". It pretty much covers everything.[/quote]

It's my guide to classifying everyone.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

[quote=Ashloc]Damnit I get called a troll for posting my opinion on Spore but I find it equally as Trollish to goto every thread you disagree with and state it needs to be closed like your a SPORING mod.

Unless your Username has SporeMaster or Moderator in front of it your request for locking the thread is nothing more then a weak attempt to stifle the voices of those who have legitimate issues with that game.

Report the thread if you want * thats your right* But get off the high horse and stop acting like you know what should or should not be locked.[/quote]
I do hate getting into these arguments, but...

1) How many other threads have I shown up in and demanded closure? None.

2) I have no interest in stifling anyone's voice, legitimate issues notwithstanding. I do consider a thread devoted to haranguing somebody - regardless of whether or not they will even get to hear about it - bad taste, but given that I tend to have the same issues as most people concerning the game I would be worse than the most contemptible troll if I tried to keep them from speaking out on our mutual problems.

3) Neither have I ever had a high horse to get off nor have I ever acted as though I know what should or should not be locked. It was an opinion stated to prevent any further pointless heckling at Hecker, although I admit that the use of this thread in finding genuine trolls and haters had escaped me.

Now, if I said anything that offended you or was otherwise insensitive, I apologise unreservedly.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Finnical — GMT

Hopefully the changing of the topic post to include the update will prevent anyone from making assumptions based on the first post without reading the whole thread. (For good reason; it's a long thread.)

This thread can continue to serve as a place for people to express their opinions about Hecker, even if Will has spoken well of him.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

WHY TAR AND FEATHER HIM??? SURE, ID LIKE A MORE COMPLEX SYSTEM AT TIMES, BUT I COULD NEVER DO BETTER THAN WHAT THEY HAVE DONE, AND NEITHER COULD YOU, SO SHUT UP AND LEAVE THEM ALONE, THEY ALREADY SAID THIER LISTENING TO REQUESTS!!!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Eekwotsthat — GMT

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Lol. Should just paste that at the beginning of every post ever made, just to shut people up about Hecker, since it was not his decision or fault.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

I agree, although, I think that people should stop heckling alltogether. after all, does anyone who is insulting this know anything about doing these sorts of things? I have played a thing called RPGmaker, and even with pre-programed enemies and areas, it could take hours to make a short game. so imagine doing the CODING, then making the game from there, and drawing the pictures and animating them!

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Davianti — GMT

Here have a video of Chris Hecker talking about Spore.
http://www.sporeuniverse.net/index.php?start_from=&ucat=&subaction=showfull&id=1219012266&archive=1220241633&

He's the one in the second video.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Darkov — GMT

I like the cell stage the way it is. But its like a mini game to waste time. I can play these for free online. If they made it more scientific, then i would be happier. I relay hope, they re add everything whit expansion packs. Which don't cost more then 20$

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

yeah, if anything is annoying I'd have to pick that, because its just so borring. perhaps a move to the slightly more complex there, and a stop to forcing us to spend extra DNA to become an omnivore would help to.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

gigasquirrel7 — GMT

I'm leaning towards Science Spore too, but I'm not saying it must be devoid of humor or fun.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

phaolm — GMT

wow the invective is intense. i just thought i'd pop in to add my two cents.

i think its probably a good thing in general that they compromised. We don't know how things would have turned out with the pure science game it might have had much less appeal.

At the same time, its interesting to learn that all of this stuff at some time was modelled and existed,
because that means that we can ask for the game to evolve in those directions.

I for one am anti cute and anti fluff. I'd appreciate it much more if it was a whole lot more scientific. But getting worked up over it seems a bit silly when the solution is to guilt trip them into making it better. (spore staff, do not read the preceding sentence. )

Anyways, you guys have the wrong attitude. If you want the better spore, make efforts to get it. Attacking a team member of the spore design crew is not going to make spore any kewler, its just going to make you a jerk.

The important thing is for there to be a strong learning curve. Invective may feel good, but it does not do anything for the learning curve. If you see reality as a game and think about playing to win, what you want is a better game.
so find meaningful tactics to get a better game. Tarring and feathering chris whateva is not going to improve the game.

What will improve the game is hundreds of spore fans being very clear about what they would like to see and working with the design team to work on implementing it. If you have a great idea, but you don't flesh it out or
put details on it, its nobodoes fault but your own that it doesn't show up in one of the patches.

One might think of emotional energies as colors. You can emit hard red anger all you want, but in the end it just trashes you on the inside and it doesn't get what you want. You may not be able to find it in yourself to emit a solid yellow love light either, but these are not the only two choices. There is a middle called orange.
Orange is when you take that anger and angst and annoyance and you apply it creatively. Add a touch of love to your angst, and a bit of lucidity, and instead of being a loud angry voice, you can be part of the mega expanded design team.

We all make choices about tude in life and those choices have many consequences. The right tude in this situation can get you that better game. The wrong tude will only get you merely ignored.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

FINNALY!!! a real voice of reason!!!

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Davianti — GMT

An interchange of ideas bettween the comunity and the developers would be awesome. There are allready a few threads here that would warant exactly that.
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/4964.page
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/12582.page
These are great threads for the interaction you spoke of.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Herculoids — GMT

The one lesson to be learned from this post is that it took more than one person to turn Spore into Spoor.

It took a team of people.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

yoshii — GMT

Sorry just that I wanted to blow of steam. Nobody take that personaly......

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

0jkensler0 — GMT

Villans, tar and feather... vicious croud....

I would just like to see a few more patches come that fix problems as they are found and the reintroduction of the aquatic stage with movement mechanics similar to space.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

yeah, and the ability to be a water based race! I mean, you can't even leave the one continent in the creature stage, why not allow for greater change? why not let me play as an amphibian? you could give me a choice at the bigging of creature stage "aquatic, land, or amphibian?" also, how is this the hottest topic? noone ever posts, not realy...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

PhoenixCobra — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill]I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]

Don't you just kinda feel like your granddad just caught you looking at sporn?

No, but really... Spore has been an experience for me. Getting to be artistic and creative and then actually getting to play with my art is SO amazing. It seems like very few people on this thread feel that way. Looking at where the game was going in the early stages, I totally understand the anger and frustration of players and fans.

I WOULD like to pose a provactive question, though, that may get me flamed. I don't mind. I've never been popular on forums: What's hard about asking for this stuff, guys? You guys pulled Will Wright from his throne to defend some dude doing something we've all dreamed of - making money off of rabid video gamers by programming something you can easily update and adapt so you keep making money off of it. They're all quite ingenious if you ask me. I'm attempting to make an "indie" game just as Hecker did for however many years, and it's super hard, won't make me ANY money, and will take me forever. For what? Artistic bragging rights, I suppose. So I can look at it, slap my name on it, and roll around in the ooze when people praise me for it!

I guess to keep from talking about this all night, I'll say this. A game will never please anyone. Will has had the consumer's spirit since the beginning. Look at this forum. How many games have their own forum? Look at the Sporepedia! Closing in on 50,000,000 creations. 50,000,000? Yikes. Looks like SOME of us like it! Oops!

Will Wright HATH spoken. I'm not chastising. I'm just playing the devil's advocate here. As a late poster I have the right to that! lol

But being the god that Will Wright is to the simulation industry, it is our right and our DUTY to make our voices heard. Remember: we don't have to yell when there are many of us. I suggest that some of the more organized of us *steps back a few paces* create a petition for change and put down the guns. What's with all the hate? I refuse to believe that we didn't know what we were buying before we bought it. It would have been easy for us to research our purchases. But it doesn't change the fact that Best Buy and Amazon aren't takin your crappy unpackaged copies back onto their shelves! So suck it up, get organized, and let the Will know what we want! We obviously have a lot needs and a lot of energy (20-something pages, guys? Really? C'mon). I'm certain now that Will and the lot would like to make something better the next time around.

Personally, though, I love Spore, really. I certainly apologize to those who think it's terrible. I just don't feel that way. It's not a perfect game, but it's certainly not terrible. P'shame.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MaxGraphix — GMT

Wow, finally someone gets it. By looking at the small stuff that's wrong with the game, you guys are forgetting the AMAZING 99% still there. By complaining instead of enjoying, you're ruining the experience for yourself. Thank you PhoenixCobra for your great speach. I would say more myself, but i'm afraid i'll stumble across the words, when you have such a beautifully written post right there.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

nice2835 — GMT

i think that the aquatic stage should be reintroduced, but also i think that there should be an option for someone to have a bird creature that would have its own way of the game. Most importantly, they should have had a team especially for the sol galaxy to make it as life like as possible! it would be so cool!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Herculoids — GMT

[quote=MaxGraphix]Wow, finally someone gets it. By looking at the small stuff that's wrong with the game, you guys are forgetting the AMAZING 99% still there. By complaining instead of enjoying, you're ruining the experience for yourself. Thank you PhoenixCobra for your great speach. I would say more myself, but i'm afraid i'll stumble across the words, when you have such a beautifully written post right there.[/quote]

If by 'there is almost no game at all' is small stuff then you are correct.

If the creators is 99% of the game, then you are correct.

I think from your sig, you are a cute person, congrats on finding 'your' game.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

Teletubbies, Treehouse network,and goosebumpnovels ahve more to offer then spore as far as depth.

you want to be creative without limits --- Buy clay

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

plasmacid — GMT

HECKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you suck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! D:< D:< D:< D:< D:< D:< D:< D:< D:<

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

nice2835 — GMT

i still think we shuld tar n feather maxis a whole bunch

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tutthoth — GMT

I say we give Will Wright a temple and deify him! Hail Will Wright!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Falras — GMT

Who cares about who to tar 'n' feather, the real question is why this thread has lived for so long...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Tutthoth — GMT

All hail the almighty Will Wright!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JasmineMarie — GMT

Hello out there. I've just read some of the comments about the earlier demos of the game spore. Many of them indicate that the original plan was to create a more "scientific" game. I never saw any of these demos, but I would like to say that I would have liked to be able to make creatures which moved acording to how I designed them. Not all of them would be able to "flip" for example when taken for a "test-drive".

As for the person who said there are a lot of creatures in "Sporpedia" that would not be viable in reality, I ask this person to remember that this is a GAME not a study in science.

However, I know that I would enjoy the game much more if there were more true results from what I design. How can I ever know if I am a good designer or a poor one, if everything I create functions properly, no matter what.

At the same time, some of the things people have created are so astounding, that I concider " intelegent design " to be "True - Science" in every possible way. And I believe "Evolution" is one of the "Sciences" that the "intelegent Designer" created.

This game is fine.

NOW it's time to bring out the Original Vision, with a new name, new ecosystem, and new stages for the "real" game players.

You have a very sophisticated and intelegent set of gameplayers out here now.

No baby stuff.
JasmineMarie

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AnotherPoster — GMT

[quote=JasmineMarie]
You have a very sophisticated and intelegent set of gameplayers out here now.
[/quote]

Funny.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

delurkish — GMT

Can we please all stop viewing this thread? its pointless and I'm sick of being it shown at the top of the hottest topics list.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=delurkish]Can we please all stop viewing this thread? its pointless and I'm sick of being it shown at the top of the hottest topics list.
[/quote]

Then stop viewing it if your sick of it lol.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

The ignorance posted after Will's post is amazing, and a great study on the Archetype of Humans.

It proves three out of four.

[quote=Jackuul][img]http://opensporce.com/images/morons.png[/img][img]http://opensporce.com/images/idiots.png[/img][img]http://opensporce.com/images/withstupid.png[/img][img]http://opensporce.com/images/extinction.png[/img][/quote]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Dragon Lover — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

zeldafan99 — GMT

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewooooooooooooooooooooooooweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewoooooooooooooooo

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Inc0m — GMT

It doesn't bother me that people are capable of creating "cute" creatures with this game, in fact its a product of te robust design creation tools. The only thing that bothers me is the physics being nerfed and the morphology of your creature having little impact on the game "cuteness" isn't the problem its game play.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

delurkish — GMT

[quote=Inc0m]It doesn't bother me that people are capable of creating "cute" creatures with this game, in fact its a product of te robust design creation tools. The only thing that bothers me is the physics being nerfed and the morphology of your creature having little impact on the game "cuteness" isn't the problem its game play.[/quote]

You don't get it do you

THEIR TAKING OUT SCIENCE CONTENT!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

And from the depths of the forum I summon thee thread

RISE ! Live again!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Hobbitgoth — GMT

Wow. I love these controversies. There is amazing community interaction here.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

pigsfly — GMT

Okay, I dont get the title of the topic and the first post=introduction was too long for me. Can you explain it in a more simple way?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

delurkish — GMT

[quote=pigsfly]Okay, I dont get the title of the topic and the first post=introduction was too long for me. Can you explain it in a more simple way? [/quote] Okay to cut things short. There's a EA employee called Chris Hecker who think Spore should be anti-science. He wants to to be a game full of cuteness where you cant be an amphibian, cant create your own planet, cant put any weapons on your creature and so on. That's just stupid! He wants it to be plain Childs Play!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

pigsfly — GMT

[quote=delurkish][quote=pigsfly]Okay, I dont get the title of the topic and the first post=introduction was too long for me. Can you explain it in a more simple way? [/quote] Okay to cut things short. There's a EA employee called Chris Hecker who think Spore should be anti-science. He wants to to be a game full of cuteness where you cant be an amphibian, cant create your own planet, cant put any weapons on your creature and so on. That's just stupid! He wants it to be plain Childs Play! [/quote] What Spore is not D i s n e y! That is just going against what Spore was made for!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

e-dawg777 — GMT

[quote=pigsfly][quote=delurkish][quote=pigsfly]Okay, I dont get the title of the topic and the first post=introduction was too long for me. Can you explain it in a more simple way? [/quote] Okay to cut things short. There's a EA employee called Chris Hecker who think Spore should be anti-science. He wants to to be a game full of cuteness where you cant be an amphibian, cant create your own planet, cant put any weapons on your creature and so on. That's just stupid! He wants it to be plain Childs Play! [/quote] What Spore is not D i s n e y! That is just going against what Spore was made for! [/quote]
Agreed. Chris Hecker must have some serious mental issues if he wants to take away the most interesting part of the game. Balllz unto him.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=MaxisWill][size=18]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright[/size]
[/quote]

[size=24]What does it take to get this through your heads!? MUST WE HIT YOU WITH HAMMERS?! [/size]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

piePIEpie — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=MaxisWill][size=18]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright[/size]
[/quote]

[size=24]What does it take to get this through your heads!? MUST WE HIT YOU WITH HAMMERS?! [/size]
[/quote]
no pie

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

smash90 — GMT

I dont get it i didnt read it ether

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

pigsfly — GMT

[quote=piePIEpie][quote=Jackuul][quote=MaxisWill][size=18]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright[/size]
[/quote]

[size=24]What does it take to get this through your heads!? MUST WE HIT YOU WITH HAMMERS?! [/size]
[/quote]
no pie[/quote] Hammer pie sounds good. Back on topic, well, I think this topic has gone far enough.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sonicsecretrings — GMT

[quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [size=18][b]UPDATE:[/b][/size]
[size=9](Although perhaps a bit late on my part, heheh.)[/size]

Will Wright responded directly to the community and thread in this post:

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/210/8555.page#137577
[quote=MaxisWill]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]

This has been directed to in a sticky on the boards:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page

My response can be found here:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/255/8555.page#159779

Many thanks to Will Wright for responding to our questions and issues, and with both honesty and humility. Thanks to the Maxis employees and SporeMasters for allowing the community to speak our minds, even when our comments have gotten out of hand. In this topic post, I later state:[quote=Omni]I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs...[/quote]
Will has indeed said just that. It seems to me, this is just a case of "people make mistakes", especially when forging new ground. After this, I have regained a good part of my faith in Maxis, and look forward to what they have in store. (Can't necessarily say the same for EA, though. Freakin' EA.) I'm still a little disappointed with what we received in the base game, and will keep that in mind. But at least we can look forward to a Spore more like the Spore we dreamed of.

I'm not happy with having to pay more money for it, but I can understand why it must be done. These things don't pay for themselves. Or, not if given away freely at least. Perhaps they will surprise us with a happy mix of patches and expansions. Only time will tell.

Thanks again to both Will Wright and Maxis.

[i](The original post is available below for future reference.)[/i]
[b][size=9]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[/size][/b]
[size=9][i]This was originally a post to get people at xSpore up to date with the findings of the official forums, but it came out well enough I decided to post it here as well. My suggestions to Maxis are included near the bottom in a quote block.[/i][/size]

[U][B]Links[/B][/U]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5132.page]Seed article about devteam's debates over science vs cute[/url]
[URL="http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php"]Seed Magazine Article it Refers to[/URL]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page]Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern.[/url]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5293.page]Should Maxis make Science Spore?[/url]
[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/105/5293.page#92114]Particular post about Chris Hecker[/url]

So there's two sides of this debacle, the DRM issue and the dumbed-down gameplay. [I](The DRM issue has already been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, this topic is not about that.)[/I]

However, one man who is highly responsible for the dumbed down gameplay is Chris Hecker. [I](You may remember him as the Maxis employee who said the Wii is a "piece of ****" and merely "two gamecubes stuck together with duct tape".)[/I] While Will Wright headed the movement for science to take a primary role, Hecker apparently thought that would be too complex for the wider audience, and that instead cells should have eyes and creatures should wear sneakers. Excerpt from the Seed article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]This was Spore's central problem: Could the game be both scientifically accurate and fun? The prototyping teams were becoming lost in their scientific interests. Chaim Gingold, a team member who started as an intern and went on to help design the game's content creation tools, recalls a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata: "It was just about being engaged with the universe as a set of systems, and being able to build toys that manifested our fascination with these systems and our love for them." But from within this explosion of experimental enthusiasm came an unexpected warning voice. Spore's resident uber-geek and artificial intelligence expert [B]Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"[/B]

Soon rival camps had formed. New recruits were taken out to lunch and covertly probed to discover where their natural leanings were. [B]Quigley's microscopically accurate concept drawings were vandalized with stuck-on googly eyes; there were suggestions that it might be cool if the creatures wore sneakers.[/B] It might have been painful for the founding members of the science team, but Quigley acknowledges the need for compromise. "From a single-celled organism through the four-and-a-half-billion year history of life on Earth to a self-projected future where we are gallivanting around the stars? I mean, it is so absurdly vast, so radically outside of any scale that people can really empathize with, we knew we had to turn it into a toy."[/QUOTE]
Note that Chris Hecker states that Will Wright would be ecstatic about what he saw, things more like the earlier demos, while Hecker was opposed to this. There are numerous accounts on the official forums of people stating that they more enjoy the early prototypes than the actual gameplay. The hype was generated by the science-heavy early prototypes, and the actual reaction to the game has been mediocre, now that it lacks those science elements.

Further information posted by an ex-Maxis Intern on the game, now that the game is released and his [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement"]NDA[/URL] isn't a problem:
[QUOTE=mflux]First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=mflux][B]Creature creation seems over-simplified[/B]
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight. [/QUOTE]
And, [URL="http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page#48374"]a later post[/URL]:
[QUOTE=mflux]Oh boy here we go with the "prove it" post

I'm in the credits as Michael "Flux" Chang. Go check it in the credits section of the options menu.
And here's my old website from college (2005) users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux along with resume and all of that jazz. Anyway, take it or leave it. Those are my thoughts. [/QUOTE]

As said in the Seed article, apparently poor Hecker was having [I]"Strong misgivings about how all this hard science would appeal to the wider world."[/I] The poll on the official forums currently suggests that 75% of the forum users would have preferred a "Science-Spore" while only 6% dislike such an idea. [I](16 people, compared to the 192 wanting Science-Spore)[/I]

The Gamespot review gave it 8.0. IGN gave it an 8.8. Press average is 8.1. The consistent cons listed are generally a lack of complexity, and oversimplification.

Another Excerpt from the Seed Magazine article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]Steve Grand, who made the big sim-life hit of the 1990s, Creatures, also faced the task of reconciling the limited behavioral range of virtual life-forms with the advanced expectations of players. [B]"There are two ways to tackle this problem," Grand says. "Try to make the behavior look more real, or stop lying to people. As far as I can tell, Spore takes the former approach, to gently and quite openly fool the user into thinking she's engaging with real living things, while Creatures took the latter — I did my best not to fool anyone, even if that meant the results weren't so playable."[/B]

Spore's decision — to preserve the illusion of life at the expense of the actual facts of life — made for some substantial casualties. [B]First to go in the cute-versus-science war were the extreme ends of the scale — galaxy formation and originsof- life simulation — dismissed as being too abstract and dissipated. Next, small and then big laws were shattered and remade.[/B] Wright's determination to represent faster-than-light travel as impossible crumbled in the face of making the spacefaring section of the game enjoyable. [B]Evolution, despite his staunch Darwinism, became a massively telescoped process that depended on the external, deliberate interventions of the players.[/B] And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.

[B]The snag is that Spore didn't just jettison half its science — it replaced it with systems and ideas that run the risk of being actively misleading. Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed.[/B] Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways.[/QUOTE]

[I](This section is in a quote block as it is not as neutral as the rest of the post.)[/I]
[QUOTE=Omni][B]My Opinion:[/B]
It seems to me, the cute crowd led by Chris Hecker is responsible for a number of things. The ecosystem dynamics were removed. The Creature Game was replaced with a simple "Good or Evil" RPG where you either play Simon Says or grab your +5 Swo- uh I mean Hand and go grind on a few Generic Monster Nests. In addition, for the purpose of "creative freedom", a ten-foot tall SPORE can be as effective as a Lion in combat, as fast as a Cheetah, and as stealthy as a one foot tall chameleon. And because this is so, the Sporepedia is filled with such impractical creations.

Maxis moved away from Will Wright's original design choices and away from the theme of the original prototype. The resulting game is conceived as not meeting the expectation created by seeing the prototype. Why they chose to overturn the design decisions of their lead designer is beyond me. It seems to me the past few years were spent making the game less entertaining than the prototype, because the prototype was "too complex" for us dull consumers. We wouldn't be able to take that hard science. Ironically, I hear better reviews of the gameplay of the free released prototypes than the game itself.

I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs, including a complete overhaul of the Cell Stage and Creature Stage, at minimum. The forced linear progression of the game and forced evolution should also be removed from the Cell and Creature Stages, as it is not faithful to the freedom of the advertised product. (Evolution to a better brain should be optional, at least in the Creature Stage, as it was in the earlier videos.) I do not believe that we have a right to demand it be free, as the development costs of this game are already astronomical. This may have not been as much of a problem if they hadn't been spending the past few years removing content.[/QUOTE]
Discuss.

[SIZE="10"][i]tl;dr version (Too long; didn't read):[/i]
An employee named Chris Hecker decided that the game was too complex for "average folk" and managed to convince a bunch of people at Maxis, so that Will Wright was forced to give up on making the game scientific and they spent a year or two removing content from the E3 demo instead of adding new things. Apparently science limits creativity. This is why the gameplay feels like an undeveloped MMORPG and the animation went from "innovative" to "generic and boring". [i]This is a gross simplification of the situation and potentially biased. Reading the whole topic is suggested.[/i][/SIZE][/quote]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sonicsecretrings — GMT

[quote=sonicsecretrings] [quote=Finnical][quote=Finnical][quote=Finnical] [size=18][b]UPDATE:[/b][/size]
[size=9](Although perhaps a bit late on my part, heheh.)[/size] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical]
[quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical] [quote=Finnical]
Will Wright responded directly to the community and thread in this post:

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/210/8555.page#137577
[quote=MaxisWill]I’ve just recently tuned into this thread on the forums. I usually try to keep more up to date but I’ve been traveling way too much lately. Wow, there’s some rather intense discussion here I see about the design decisions we made in Spore. I think it’s really important for me to jump in and clarify a few things from my point of view.

First let me say a few things about the “Cute” vs. “Science” perspectives in Spore. It is true that during most of the design process we had team members on different sides of this debate. While I was officially on the science side at the same time I always saw this as a crucial tension that I wanted to foster, in other words I didn’t want the science side to win, I wanted to make sure both sides were represented in the game to some degree.

Two of the Chris’ on our team (Chris Trottier and Chris Hecker) were the most vocal representatives of what I started calling the cute team but they were by no means the only ones, they represented quite a large portion of the team. And their agenda in our design process was most certainly not to dumb-down the gameplay but rather to foster emotional engagement with the players in the game experience. An early example of this was the decision to add eyes to the cell game which in no way changed the gameplay, but we found for certain players made the cell experience more humorous and personal.

I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world.

To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.

As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the “cute” team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team.

Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions.

A genre-spanning game like Spore is almost by its very nature experimental. Not only do we not have an existing game to learn design lessons from, we also don’t initially know what the demographic of our players will be (and hence their expectations for complexity and depth). As we move forward with the franchise we plan to listen closely and learn. Our plans for the first Spore expansions are already revolving heavily around what we’re hearing from our players so far.

I want to personally thank everyone who’s playing Spore, especially for the countless, wonderful creations that have been posted to Sporepedia. And I also want to give thanks and encouragement for the discussions here on our forum that will help us make Spore a cooler experience for everyone.

-Will Wright
[/quote]

This has been directed to in a sticky on the boards:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page

My response can be found here:
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/255/8555.page#159779

Many thanks to Will Wright for responding to our questions and issues, and with both honesty and humility. Thanks to the Maxis employees and SporeMasters for allowing the community to speak our minds, even when our comments have gotten out of hand. In this topic post, I later state:[quote=Omni]I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs...[/quote]
Will has indeed said just that. It seems to me, this is just a case of "people make mistakes", especially when forging new ground. After this, I have regained a good part of my faith in Maxis, and look forward to what they have in store. (Can't necessarily say the same for EA, though. Freakin' EA.) I'm still a little disappointed with what we received in the base game, and will keep that in mind. But at least we can look forward to a Spore more like the Spore we dreamed of.

I'm not happy with having to pay more money for it, but I can understand why it must be done. These things don't pay for themselves. Or, not if given away freely at least. Perhaps they will surprise us with a happy mix of patches and expansions. Only time will tell.

Thanks again to both Will Wright and Maxis.

[i](The original post is available below for future reference.)[/i]
[b][size=9]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[/size][/b]
[size=9][i]This was originally a post to get people at xSpore up to date with the findings of the official forums, but it came out well enough I decided to post it here as well. My suggestions to Maxis are included near the bottom in a quote block.[/i][/size]

[U][B]Links[/B][/U]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5132.page]Seed article about devteam's debates over science vs cute[/url]
[URL="http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php"]Seed Magazine Article it Refers to[/URL]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page]Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern.[/url]
Official Forums: [url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5293.page]Should Maxis make Science Spore?[/url]
[url=http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/105/5293.page#92114]Particular post about Chris Hecker[/url]

So there's two sides of this debacle, the DRM issue and the dumbed-down gameplay. [I](The DRM issue has already been discussed thoroughly elsewhere, this topic is not about that.)[/I]

However, one man who is highly responsible for the dumbed down gameplay is Chris Hecker. [I](You may remember him as the Maxis employee who said the Wii is a "piece of ****" and merely "two gamecubes stuck together with duct tape".)[/I] While Will Wright headed the movement for science to take a primary role, Hecker apparently thought that would be too complex for the wider audience, and that instead cells should have eyes and creatures should wear sneakers. Excerpt from the Seed article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]This was Spore's central problem: Could the game be both scientifically accurate and fun? The prototyping teams were becoming lost in their scientific interests. Chaim Gingold, a team member who started as an intern and went on to help design the game's content creation tools, recalls a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata: "It was just about being engaged with the universe as a set of systems, and being able to build toys that manifested our fascination with these systems and our love for them." But from within this explosion of experimental enthusiasm came an unexpected warning voice. Spore's resident uber-geek and artificial intelligence expert [B]Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"[/B]

Soon rival camps had formed. New recruits were taken out to lunch and covertly probed to discover where their natural leanings were. [B]Quigley's microscopically accurate concept drawings were vandalized with stuck-on googly eyes; there were suggestions that it might be cool if the creatures wore sneakers.[/B] It might have been painful for the founding members of the science team, but Quigley acknowledges the need for compromise. "From a single-celled organism through the four-and-a-half-billion year history of life on Earth to a self-projected future where we are gallivanting around the stars? I mean, it is so absurdly vast, so radically outside of any scale that people can really empathize with, we knew we had to turn it into a toy."[/QUOTE]
Note that Chris Hecker states that Will Wright would be ecstatic about what he saw, things more like the earlier demos, while Hecker was opposed to this. There are numerous accounts on the official forums of people stating that they more enjoy the early prototypes than the actual gameplay. The hype was generated by the science-heavy early prototypes, and the actual reaction to the game has been mediocre, now that it lacks those science elements.

Further information posted by an ex-Maxis Intern on the game, now that the game is released and his [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement"]NDA[/URL] isn't a problem:
[QUOTE=mflux]First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=mflux][B]Creature creation seems over-simplified[/B]
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight. [/QUOTE]
And, [URL="http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page#48374"]a later post[/URL]:
[QUOTE=mflux]Oh boy here we go with the "prove it" post

I'm in the credits as Michael "Flux" Chang. Go check it in the credits section of the options menu.
And here's my old website from college (2005) users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux along with resume and all of that jazz. Anyway, take it or leave it. Those are my thoughts. [/QUOTE]

As said in the Seed article, apparently poor Hecker was having [I]"Strong misgivings about how all this hard science would appeal to the wider world."[/I] The poll on the official forums currently suggests that 75% of the forum users would have preferred a "Science-Spore" while only 6% dislike such an idea. [I](16 people, compared to the 192 wanting Science-Spore)[/I]

The Gamespot review gave it 8.0. IGN gave it an 8.8. Press average is 8.1. The consistent cons listed are generally a lack of complexity, and oversimplification.

Another Excerpt from the Seed Magazine article:
[QUOTE=Seed Magazine]Steve Grand, who made the big sim-life hit of the 1990s, Creatures, also faced the task of reconciling the limited behavioral range of virtual life-forms with the advanced expectations of players. [B]"There are two ways to tackle this problem," Grand says. "Try to make the behavior look more real, or stop lying to people. As far as I can tell, Spore takes the former approach, to gently and quite openly fool the user into thinking she's engaging with real living things, while Creatures took the latter — I did my best not to fool anyone, even if that meant the results weren't so playable."[/B]

Spore's decision — to preserve the illusion of life at the expense of the actual facts of life — made for some substantial casualties. [B]First to go in the cute-versus-science war were the extreme ends of the scale — galaxy formation and originsof- life simulation — dismissed as being too abstract and dissipated. Next, small and then big laws were shattered and remade.[/B] Wright's determination to represent faster-than-light travel as impossible crumbled in the face of making the spacefaring section of the game enjoyable. [B]Evolution, despite his staunch Darwinism, became a massively telescoped process that depended on the external, deliberate interventions of the players.[/B] And so, instead of becoming the ultimate science project, Spore gradually became the ultimate game.

[B]The snag is that Spore didn't just jettison half its science — it replaced it with systems and ideas that run the risk of being actively misleading. Scientists brought in to evaluate the game for potential education projects recoiled as it became increasingly evident that the game broke many more scientific laws than it obeyed.[/B] Those unwilling to comment publicly speak privately of grave concerns about a game which seems to further the idea of intelligent design under the badge of science, and they bristle at its willingness to use words like "evolution" and "mutation" in entirely misleading ways.[/QUOTE]

[I](This section is in a quote block as it is not as neutral as the rest of the post.)[/I]
[QUOTE=Omni][B]My Opinion:[/B]
It seems to me, the cute crowd led by Chris Hecker is responsible for a number of things. The ecosystem dynamics were removed. The Creature Game was replaced with a simple "Good or Evil" RPG where you either play Simon Says or grab your +5 Swo- uh I mean Hand and go grind on a few Generic Monster Nests. In addition, for the purpose of "creative freedom", a ten-foot tall SPORE can be as effective as a Lion in combat, as fast as a Cheetah, and as stealthy as a one foot tall chameleon. And because this is so, the Sporepedia is filled with such impractical creations.

Maxis moved away from Will Wright's original design choices and away from the theme of the original prototype. The resulting game is conceived as not meeting the expectation created by seeing the prototype. Why they chose to overturn the design decisions of their lead designer is beyond me. It seems to me the past few years were spent making the game less entertaining than the prototype, because the prototype was "too complex" for us dull consumers. We wouldn't be able to take that hard science. Ironically, I hear better reviews of the gameplay of the free released prototypes than the game itself.

I hope that Maxis announces that it intends to rectify this odd deviation from their plan through expansion packs, including a complete overhaul of the Cell Stage and Creature Stage, at minimum. The forced linear progression of the game and forced evolution should also be removed from the Cell and Creature Stages, as it is not faithful to the freedom of the advertised product. (Evolution to a better brain should be optional, at least in the Creature Stage, as it was in the earlier videos.) I do not believe that we have a right to demand it be free, as the development costs of this game are already astronomical. This may have not been as much of a problem if they hadn't been spending the past few years removing content.[/QUOTE]
Discuss.

[SIZE="10"][i]tl;dr version (Too long; didn't read):[/i]
An employee named Chris Hecker decided that the game was too complex for "average folk" and managed to convince a bunch of people at Maxis, so that Will Wright was forced to give up on making the game scientific and they spent a year or two removing content from the E3 demo instead of adding new things. Apparently science limits creativity. This is why the gameplay feels like an undeveloped MMORPG and the animation went from "innovative" to "generic and boring". [i]This is a gross simplification of the situation and potentially biased. Reading the whole topic is suggested.[/i][/SIZE][/quote][/quote]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OneBlackbird — GMT

sonicsecretrings, please stop quoting long passages like that without adding anything to this thread. If you continue, I will have to report your posts. It would be nice if you would also edit your previous posts to make them more easily readable and to stop scrollbar stretching.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

[quote=OneBlackbird]sonicsecretrings, please stop quoting long passages like that without adding anything to this thread. If you continue, I will have to report your posts. It would be nice if you would also edit your previous posts to make them more easily readable and to stop scrollbar stretching.[/quote]

He's a part of the 'Blame Hecker Regardless of what Will Wright (God of Spore) posted' crowd.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

StyleConformer — GMT

Lets spam him into submission!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OneBlackbird — GMT

[quote=StyleConformer]Lets spam him into submission![/quote]

If you engage in spamming, you will be reported. If you're going to post in this thread, please try to stay on-topic. You're already walking on the edge of a knife, StyleConformer.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

StyleConformer — GMT

...Fine. I ran out of things to say though...

Edit: [quote=OneBlackbird][quote=StyleConformer]Lets spam him into submission![/quote]

If you engage in spamming, you will be reported. If you're going to post in this thread, please try to stay on-topic. You're already walking on the edge of a knife, StyleConformer.[/quote] Ya but I have a trampoline under the knife!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OneBlackbird — GMT

That's when it's a good idea to let the thread die.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

pigsfly — GMT

[quote=Jackuul][quote=OneBlackbird]sonicsecretrings, please stop quoting long passages like that without adding anything to this thread. If you continue, I will have to report your posts. It would be nice if you would also edit your previous posts to make them more easily readable and to stop scrollbar stretching.[/quote]

He's a part of the 'Blame Hecker Regardless of what Will Wright (God of Spore) posted' crowd.[/quote] I think hes right. Lets blame EA!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

avmf8 — GMT

I blame more then Chris Hecker I blame MAxis and EA games as a whole for the disaster that spore has turned out to be. They said that they did not want an ultimate desighn to be seen but they did that by making you need certain parts jut to proceed in the game.

They made allot of terrible and just plain stupid decisions when it came to this game. I wanted a game where the desighn of a creature mattered. I wanted a game where extinction was a possibility. I wanted a game where creatures would try to steal my eggs for food and other such stuff. I wanted to be able to say hunt a heard of creatures just walking around.

All the things that they just took out I wanted and I am very angry at Maxis for that. I feel lied to from watching all those videos that said all the stuff that was supposed to be in. Then maxis just takes it away to dumb it down for stupid people. Not cool Maxis not cool at all.

I can't believe I waited 3 years for this piece of trash.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

klawz — GMT

avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

klawz — GMT

[quote=OneBlackbird]sonicsecretrings, please stop quoting long passages like that without adding anything to this thread. If you continue, I will have to report your posts. It would be nice if you would also edit your previous posts to make them more easily readable and to stop scrollbar stretching.[/quote]
and thank you! those two posts were threatening to crash IE

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

avmf8 — GMT

[quote=klawz]avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.[/quote]

I don't I only use the editors for the bit of fun they provide and it is far from 50 dollars worth. I mean if it were not for the editors spore would be a total loss. I have not actually played it in a month. Not good when you think of this games release date. Spore is still a failure any way you look at it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!And on an unrelated note:

manictiger — GMT

[quote=avmf8][quote=klawz]avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.[/quote]

I don't I only use the editors for the bit of fun they provide and it is far from 50 dollars worth. I mean if it were not for the editors spore would be a total loss. I have not actually played it in a month. Not good when you think of this games release date. Spore is still a failure any way you look at it.[/quote]

After much research, I have found alternatives that everyone who felt disappointed, may turn to. I don't mean to bash Spore or Maxis anymore than they've been between September and November of 2008, I am merely offering other games to people who read this as a substitute to displaying disappointment on the Spore website.

Personally, I was disappointed by the game play, but enjoyed the editors and diversity of the creations. I can share with you, what I consider the best in game play depth and fun. Mind you, these are simply my tastes (and are mainly 4X and RPG) and you should read the reviews before purchasing anything.

In priority order from the greatest at the top.

1. Heroes of the Might and Magic 5: Tribes of the East
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, very deep, intuitive, super-replayable)

2. Fallout 3
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, very replayable)

3. Fable: The Lost Chapters
(Super-fun, great graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

4. Sins of a Solar Empire
(Very fun, excellent graphics, very deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

5. Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition
(Fun, great graphics, super-deep and customizable, unintuitive, very replayable)

6. Civilization 4: Gold Edition
(Fun, excellent graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

7. Spore (I know you already have it, it's in the list anyway )
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, mildly deep but customizable, super-intuitive, mildly replayable)

8. Mass Effect
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, mildly replayable)

Have not played, is not out for PC yet, but recommended from past experience:
Fable 2

Has not come out, but looks promising:
Diablo 3

PS: For all that is joyous and beautiful, please bring back the real Sim City Series, so that I may add it to my collection of favorite "modern" games.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!And on an unrelated note:

avmf8 — GMT

[quote=manictiger][quote=avmf8][quote=klawz]avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.[/quote]

I don't I only use the editors for the bit of fun they provide and it is far from 50 dollars worth. I mean if it were not for the editors spore would be a total loss. I have not actually played it in a month. Not good when you think of this games release date. Spore is still a failure any way you look at it.[/quote]

After much research, I have found alternatives that everyone who felt disappointed, may turn to. I don't mean to bash Spore or Maxis anymore than they've been between September and November of 2008, I am merely offering other games to people who read this as a substitute to displaying disappointment on the Spore website.

Personally, I was disappointed by the game play, but enjoyed the editors and diversity of the creations. I can share with you, what I consider the best in game play depth and fun. Mind you, these are simply my tastes (and are mainly 4X and RPG) and you should read the reviews before purchasing anything.

In priority order from the greatest at the top.

1. Heroes of the Might and Magic 5: Tribes of the East
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, very deep, intuitive, super-replayable)

2. Fallout 3
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, very replayable)

3. Fable: The Lost Chapters
(Super-fun, great graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

4. Sins of a Solar Empire
(Very fun, excellent graphics, very deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

5. Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition
(Fun, great graphics, super-deep and customizable, unintuitive, very replayable)

6. Civilization 4: Gold Edition
(Fun, excellent graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

7. Spore (I know you already have it, it's in the list anyway )
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, mildly deep but customizable, super-intuitive, mildly replayable)

8. Mass Effect
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, mildly replayable)

Have not played, is not out for PC yet, but recommended from past experience:
Fable 2

Has not come out, but looks promising:
Diablo 3

PS: For all that is joyous and beautiful, please bring back the real Sim City Series, so that I may add it to my collection of favorite "modern" games.[/quote]
You forgot to mention with galactic civilizations you can make you're own spaceships by putting different parts together for the ships to do certain tasks.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Foedawg — GMT

avmf8, if you think you've got it bad, in Australia we had to pay $100.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

avmf8 — GMT

[quote=Foedawg]avmf8, if you think you've got it bad, in Australia we had to pay $100.[/quote]

Yeah I admit it you were hosed more then me. Still any way you look at it being hosed for any amount still sucks. I use the editors for a game since I like 3D modeling. I do use the actual 3D modeler programs I have but I use this game if I want to try out an idea without spending hours on an idea that may not work.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!And on an unrelated note:

theultimateend — GMT

[quote=avmf8][quote=manictiger][quote=avmf8][quote=klawz]avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.[/quote]

I don't I only use the editors for the bit of fun they provide and it is far from 50 dollars worth. I mean if it were not for the editors spore would be a total loss. I have not actually played it in a month. Not good when you think of this games release date. Spore is still a failure any way you look at it.[/quote]

After much research, I have found alternatives that everyone who felt disappointed, may turn to. I don't mean to bash Spore or Maxis anymore than they've been between September and November of 2008, I am merely offering other games to people who read this as a substitute to displaying disappointment on the Spore website.

Personally, I was disappointed by the game play, but enjoyed the editors and diversity of the creations. I can share with you, what I consider the best in game play depth and fun. Mind you, these are simply my tastes (and are mainly 4X and RPG) and you should read the reviews before purchasing anything.

In priority order from the greatest at the top.

1. Heroes of the Might and Magic 5: Tribes of the East
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, very deep, intuitive, super-replayable)

2. Fallout 3
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, very replayable)

3. Fable: The Lost Chapters
(Super-fun, great graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

4. Sins of a Solar Empire
(Very fun, excellent graphics, very deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

5. Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition
(Fun, great graphics, super-deep and customizable, unintuitive, very replayable)

6. Civilization 4: Gold Edition
(Fun, excellent graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

7. Spore (I know you already have it, it's in the list anyway )
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, mildly deep but customizable, super-intuitive, mildly replayable)

8. Mass Effect
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, mildly replayable)

Have not played, is not out for PC yet, but recommended from past experience:
Fable 2

Has not come out, but looks promising:
Diablo 3

PS: For all that is joyous and beautiful, please bring back the real Sim City Series, so that I may add it to my collection of favorite "modern" games.[/quote]
You forgot to mention with galactic civilizations you can make you're own spaceships by putting different parts together for the ships to do certain tasks.[/quote]

Stardock has another epic game coming out soon that'll have a swanky building editor on it .

Check it out when it hits I'm certain it'll be as top quality as everything else they've ever made.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!And on an unrelated note:

pigsfly — GMT

[quote=manictiger][quote=avmf8][quote=klawz]avmf8, it seems that you like spore, because of what you have in your sig.[/quote]

I don't I only use the editors for the bit of fun they provide and it is far from 50 dollars worth. I mean if it were not for the editors spore would be a total loss. I have not actually played it in a month. Not good when you think of this games release date. Spore is still a failure any way you look at it.[/quote]

After much research, I have found alternatives that everyone who felt disappointed, may turn to. I don't mean to bash Spore or Maxis anymore than they've been between September and November of 2008, I am merely offering other games to people who read this as a substitute to displaying disappointment on the Spore website.

Personally, I was disappointed by the game play, but enjoyed the editors and diversity of the creations. I can share with you, what I consider the best in game play depth and fun. Mind you, these are simply my tastes (and are mainly 4X and RPG) and you should read the reviews before purchasing anything.

In priority order from the greatest at the top.

1. Heroes of the Might and Magic 5: Tribes of the East
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, very deep, intuitive, super-replayable)

2. Fallout 3
(Super-fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, very replayable)

3. Fable: The Lost Chapters
(Super-fun, great graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

4. Sins of a Solar Empire
(Very fun, excellent graphics, very deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

5. Galactic Civilizations 2: Ultimate Edition
(Fun, great graphics, super-deep and customizable, unintuitive, very replayable)

6. Civilization 4: Gold Edition
(Fun, excellent graphics, deep, super-intuitive, very replayable)

7. Spore (I know you already have it, it's in the list anyway )
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, mildly deep but customizable, super-intuitive, mildly replayable)

8. Mass Effect
(Fun, gorgeous graphics, deep, very intuitive, mildly replayable)

Have not played, is not out for PC yet, but recommended from past experience:
Fable 2

Has not come out, but looks promising:
Diablo 3

PS: For all that is joyous and beautiful, please bring back the real Sim City Series, so that I may add it to my collection of favorite "modern" games.[/quote] Is the number 1 on the list for the Xbox 360 or the Wii?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

NarutoAvatardDBZ — GMT

Hey Manic Tiger, why is CIV only number...6 is it.? Should be much higher....

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

FusionCoil — GMT

129538 veiws.....

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JamesJB — GMT

[quote=OneBlackbird]That's when it's a good idea to let the thread die. [/quote]

Na lets not,i enjoy it

Stop acting like a mod please.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

JPP05 — GMT

Listen why are we blaming maxis it is EA who did this!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

steak89 — GMT

Y'know, if you look at Spore for what it is and not what it isn't, your perception of the game will be much more positive. I mean, I'll admit it, the release of Spore was dumbed down tenfold since the showing a long time ago. But the game itself, no matter what it USED to be, is worth a look in itself. People spend so much time talking about what Spore is not, they forget to mention what Spore is.

Now, as an avid player and creator myself, I was never really tuned in to the showings and the early videos. So when I got the game, I was amazed at the creativity and complexity.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sara422 — GMT

nice thread

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

GalaticHero — GMT

mods have a chance of destroying your game or improving your game, so if you download a mod, make sure to get a mod that is worth the risk of losing all your stuff on spore...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Strgtscntst — GMT

[quote=steak89]Y'know, if you look at Spore for what it is and not what it isn't, your perception of the game will be much more positive. I mean, I'll admit it, the release of Spore was dumbed down tenfold since the showing a long time ago. But the game itself, no matter what it USED to be, is worth a look in itself. People spend so much time talking about what Spore is not, they forget to mention what Spore is.[/quote]

Good way to put it, man. Seriously, look at it this way though: most people out there have read a book, then seen a movie based on the book. They are seriously dissappointed in the movie, because they had certain expectations. One alternative is to watch the movie first, then read the book. You enjoy both, and don't feel ripped off. Another alternative is to simply view the movie as another story entirely. Granted, it'll have the same basic points as something you've read, but don't expect it to be the same.

I watched Eragon before I read the book, and enjoyed both.

I watched Prince Caspian as a different movie entirely, and enjoyed both.

I watched Holes after reading the book, and was dissappointed.

I'm seeing some correlation, folks.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

MinionJoe — GMT

[quote=Strgtscntst]I'm seeing some correlation, folks.[/quote]

I don't.

If Spore is the movie, then where is the book?

No, Spore is like typical, lame "great summer blockbuster" that's hyped up in the hopes that the opening weekend box office will make money before the REAL reviews hit the papers.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

alltonicon — GMT

how does this thing have so many views but so little comments O.o

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

UltimaCenturion — GMT

[quote=igbee]I am sure the tard Chris Hecker got a big promotion at ea/maxis as Chris fits the profile what ea is looking for. I am sure Chris is proud of his cute game.

How Will could allow this to happen or go on when he was in charge is just inexcusable.

So now Will went from sale out to having no balls.

[/quote]

Pride is the quickest way to die when you are lost in the wilderness. Will Wright is not acting cowardly. Humility is not cowardice. In fact, I'm sure he knew that there would be arrogant fools like you would be waiting to turn the executioner's axe towards him.

Surely the game did not turn out anything like what people wanted, but you should blame the moron whose creation was geared towards the Gay Pride crowd. Chris Hecker was in fact, in case you did NOT read beyond the first paragraph, one of the people who had no CHOICE, and probably did not want to see his hard work thrown out the window. So do some research on these peoples and be willing to admit you were wrong for once.

I personally think the only remedy is to come out with an expansion pack which expands the features of the game to be more along the lines everyone wants or for a Spore 2 to be made. And for the Cute Crowd to be fired (and for Chris Hecker to be given a promotion for being falsely accused.)

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

BennyHartless — GMT

Hey Will. You suck cawks. Hope you enjoyed your vacation with my hard earned money I paid for spore and your crappy parts pack that doesn't work. Maybe next time you can just come to my house and rape me while I hand you my wallet. We can cut out the middle man.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

AlexxM — GMT

How could you say that? Someone has a bad life...

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

crazy199292 — GMT

[quote=BennyHartless]Hey Will. You suck cawks. Hope you enjoyed your vacation with my hard earned money I paid for spore and your crappy parts pack that doesn't work. Maybe next time you can just come to my house and rape me while I hand you my wallet. We can cut out the middle man.[/quote]
A little rough don't you think??

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jackuul — GMT

Wow.

That was one of the more extreme responses I have seen.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

crazy199292 — GMT

He's right you know.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Groxrox101 — GMT

Just testing out my new signature...

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Vilageidiotx — GMT

[quote=Groxrox101]Just testing out my new signature...[/quote] Don't think it worked, unless you just recently created a little ripped piece of paper.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Bahmo — GMT

[quote=Finnical]
I am very pleased to hear that the Maxis team was doing exactly as Will Wright designed; that is exactly as it should be. I am a little disappointed by Will's design choices in this particular case, but it seems they were warranted. Spore is exploring an entirely new scope for a video game, and the first step is always the most awkward. Like Freudian psychology; Freud explored new territory and developed a new field of possibilities, but his ideas themselves are hit or miss. (Much of his writing tells you more about him than it does about people in general.)

Likewise, Will's choices were difficult choices that had to be made with little precedent as to what would or would not work. It is only natural that mistakes were made. Though, looking at the depth and complexity of SimCity, I have to wonder if Will second guessed himself.[/quote]

I hate to bring this up, but a tremendous amount of cold water can be thrown upon this defense of Will's, and now yours as well as it seems, thanks to official statements that may or may not have been from Will, but did liken the game eloquently to existing games depending on phase. As I can remember, Cell=[i]Pacman[/i], Creature=[i]Diablo[/i], Tribe=[i]Command & Conquer[/i], Civilization=well, [i]Civilization[/i]. Space wasn't likened to any one game because that's when the "sandbox" was supposed to be opened up, but that's besides the point.

The point is that the only radical things about [i]Spore[/i] were the abilities to design and build things, and the fact that it would evolve into newer, more complex styles of games as it progressed. Within the confines of each phase, adequate examples of what makes gameplay fun within their style of game are readily available in nearly every direction you look. Lifting gameplay styles from these sources would have been a fine idea, and contrary to what they seemed to think, it isn't forced in the grand scheme of their game. [i]Diablo[/i] is an RPG, so fits readily with games in which you design your character. [i]Command & Conquer[/i] games succeed at bringing seasoned veterans back time after time without changing much of the basic formula, because each game ships with new units, and new units = new strategies to learn, so naturally fans of that sort of game would be glad for the ability to gain constant replay by designing and testing their own units. [i]Civilization[/i] has you leading a people to effective world domination, so it's not contrary to that goal to let the leader design his people's culture with intention of designing their tactics.

Did all those things just get dumped because Will thought they'd be too difficult for most players, who don't have experience playing multiple styles of games? If so, I have a few things to say to him, or whoever is really responsible:
*Games that are difficult due to their complexity are [i]good[/i] games. Games that are artificially difficult due to excessive penalties are what's bad. So if you were that obsessed about avoiding difficulty, why is the game so filled with the worst sort of difficulty, artificially difficulty, because there's no opportunity to make multiple save-states, so a big enough mistake in any phase can ruin a creature's entire campaign? Once again, here, that's something there [i]is[/i] evidence to show it's possibe, as nearly [i]every other PC game allows multiple save states.[/i]
*Players improve. If people weren't able to adapt to learning new styles of gameplay, you'll have to explain how people who were born into a world where they played things like [i]Super Mario Bros.[/i] have learned to play [i]Command & Conquer[/i] or [i]The Sims[/i] since that time.
*[i]I[/i], like most people, have played [i]Pacman[/i]; I also play [i]Diablo, Command & Conquer[/i], and [i]Civilization[/i]. As many have said here, you really underestimated the mental abilities and flexibility of your players.

If you're making an ambitious game, [i]don't[/i] make it for casuals, period. Casuals are too dumb to discern what a good game is, and so aren't any more likely to by your ambitious brainchild than some random licensed game. Ambitious games appeal most to players who can appreciate them.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

klawz — GMT

offended by last part of above comment.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

kiwi_tea — GMT

Agree, most casual gamers enjoy good gameplay. I'ma Wii man myself, sit down to Wii Sports or Super Mario Galaxy. Usually very relaxed gameplay, but there is difficulty involved all the same. Galaxy takes work to play through, I work full-time, so it is taking me a looong time. Spore was a doddle. Spore, I played the game through several times, amazed at how bare-boned and starved it was. An six-year-old could clock everything up until the space phase on Hard in a relatively short period of time. The problem with Spore, is it's not even appealing to casual gamers. Spore has attracted a creator community - dabblers and designers. It appeals to blossoming architects, but only to them. They might as well have released the creators by themselves and forgot about the game.

GA is laying upon Spore much more complexity, and hopefully it will attract many back. I'm hoping and praying that the complexity metre caps out at a very high tier, otherwise I expect very little to come out of it.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

ChaosHarbinger — GMT

Testing a game that supposed to be very in-depth, realistic and complex on casual or non-gamers is just stupid though. Why? Casual gamers won't appreciate the depth if all they're after is a few hours of fun gameplay. Non-gamers won't be buying it anyway!

Somebody lock this, it's kinda pointless. Esspecially since it's from October and Will Wright responded.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

docpippo — GMT

locklocklocklocklocklocklocklock

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

crazy199292 — GMT

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

piePIEpie — GMT

[quote=crazy199292][quote=BennyHartless]Hey Will. You suck cawks. Hope you enjoyed your vacation with my hard earned money I paid for spore and your crappy parts pack that doesn't work. Maybe next time you can just come to my house and rape me while I hand you my wallet. We can cut out the middle man.[/quote]
Yes, please lock this if messages like this shows up, Agreed? [/quote]
over my dead body

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Vilageidiotx — GMT

[quote=piePIEpie][quote=crazy199292][quote=BennyHartless]Hey Will. You suck cawks. Hope you enjoyed your vacation with my hard earned money I paid for spore and your crappy parts pack that doesn't work. Maybe next time you can just come to my house and rape me while I hand you my wallet. We can cut out the middle man.[/quote]
Yes, please lock this if messages like this shows up, Agreed? [/quote]
over my dead body [/quote]

The Sporum: Promoting random acts of violence since 2008.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sfw12345 — GMT

Sad but true.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

crazy199292 — GMT

still its a little far right?

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

White2Volf — GMT

IS this topic still alive.Cool

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

bauer27 — GMT

[quote=Vilageidiotx][quote=piePIEpie][quote=crazy199292][quote=BennyHartless]Hey Will. You suck cawks. Hope you enjoyed your vacation with my hard earned money I paid for spore and your crappy parts pack that doesn't work. Maybe next time you can just come to my house and rape me while I hand you my wallet. We can cut out the middle man.[/quote]
Yes, please lock this if messages like this shows up, Agreed? [/quote]
over my dead body [/quote]

The Sporum: Promoting random acts of violence since 2008.[/quote]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

pizzaboy9109 — GMT

Even if Hecker was a "cute" supporter, he IS the one the Wii is a piece of SPORE, and it is basically taping to gamecubes together with duct tape. He later got the Duct Tape award....

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

deerslayer13 — GMT

click on them or they might die!!

[url=http://dragcave.net/user/deerslayer13][img]http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5662/incubatordeerslayer13.png[/img][/url]

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

deerslayer13 — GMT

[url=http://dragcave.net/user/deerslayer13][img]http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/5662/incubatordeerslayer13.png[/img][/url]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

6the6beast6 — GMT

Why IS this thread still alive? It's a waste of stuff.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

The_guard_bunny — GMT

[quote=6the6beast6]Why IS this thread still alive? It's a waste of stuff.[/quote]
deerslayer spamed

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

OneBlackbird — GMT

deerslayer has been reported by multiple people.

I would suggest not posting here unless you have something to contribute to this very old and very dead thread.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Ashloc — GMT

[quote=OneBlackbird]deerslayer has been reported by multiple people.

I would suggest not posting here unless you have something to contribute to this very old and very dead thread.[/quote]

Yeah!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sara422 — GMT

bump

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sporemasterblackbird — GMT

[quote=sara422]bump[/quote]

• Bump threads judiciously. If a thread has no new posts since the last bump, please don't bump it again.

We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Jzadek — GMT

[quote]
To take a quick tangent let me use the creature design vs. performance as an example. We had competing issues to face. First, we wanted the creature’s design to impact its in-game performance. Second, we wanted the economics of the editor to be simple and understandable and connected to performance. Third, we wanted a high amount of aesthetic diversity. We didn’t want there to be one ultimate design direction that the simulator was forcing all the creatures into. In other words if to be fast you had to have long legs that would have met the first goal, conflicted with the third goal and made the second much more complex.[/quote]

That makes no sense! If longerlegs made you faster, then shorter legs would have made it harder to be seen! So you go with either speed or comouflage! And its not hard to know about the kllonger legs, faster movement, seems perfectly simple to me!!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

DrD0ctor — GMT

If Maxis released a modding SDK for Spore the community would be able to fix Spore and make it what it was meant to be, and it wouldn't have to be a universal change; whoever wanted to have Spore modded would simply download the mods to make their game better, whoever likes it as is, keeps it! Everyone is happy. Simple.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

joural — GMT

you know, I might actualy talk here at length if it weren't for the title... it's sort of like "dur, I'm a moron saying stupid stuff because I'm irritated with ONE thing in the game, so I want to paint the wole thing with one brush!"

you know?

Well, now that that's done... yes, I do agree that there are several thingsthat should be changed, but in any case you should realy not get mad about it. I think that we should be happier with them expanding on the longest section of the game, so that the section we will spend the longest on is more enjoyable. I would rather they upgrade the space stage than creature, the second shortest section.

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

nuvalord222 — GMT

i thought this was dead!!!

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

Didzo — GMT

[quote=nuvalord222]i thought this was dead!!! [/quote]

[b]And now it will be.[/b]

Re:We Found Who to Tar and Feather!

sporemasterblackbird — GMT

Locking.

This thread's topic of discussion was exhausted long ago and the frequent resurrections for little or no reason are not helping anyone.