Sep 18 2008
Spore - A Review and a Lesson to Developers
Spore is the recently released game from game design genius Will Wright. Reviews have been somewhat mixed, ranging from good to great, with a few occasional mediocre reviews. For the most part, I think this is due to excessive hype, and the impossible expectations caused by following The Sims. But make no mistake, Spore is an excellent game. I recently completed a review titled: Spore - A Detailed Review of the latest Will Wright creation. An exerpt:
The open ended gameplay, the enormous variety of options, the opportunities to express one’s creativity through creation or storytelling, and the sheer fun and joy you get from playing Spore are all major reasons this is such an excellent game. The potential for replayability is great, while the potential to keep playing a single game is equally great.
There is a lesson for all POW developers from Spore. Give your players a way to express their creativity and imagination, and you give them unlimited content. Probably the only thing still keeping City of Heroes alive is the amazing character and costume creator. It is a shortsighted shame when a POW fails to give its players tools to create their own content, customize their characters, and customize some part of the world (generally a house, but other options are good as well).
I’ll probably get it. I think we’ve all been looking forward to it for about three years now, so of course some will feel a little let down.
My friend has it and is loving it, although he has a few complaints about the lack of ability to automate things and the necessity of having to manually deal with every single pirate attack.
I’ve met some people who loved it, some who hated it, but none of them played it longer than a few hours. The gameplay is boring and repetitive. There should have been more emphasis on the first 2 phases, which are fun because of the creature creation, it’s just not as much fun to design city halls and tanks.
I have to agree with the spirit of this post, Cambios. If a modern graphical MUD were to build a game world that is as open as Spore, with fantasy elements, and abilities that you spent exp (or some similar advancement currency) on, then I am sure it would be a hit. I just picked up Spore, and after working through the second phase of the game, I immediately realized what great framework Spore is for the type of game that many jaded graphical MUD fans are hoping for. I love how the parts that you unlock are related to how you play the game. I had fun playing with herbivores and omnivores and carnivores. I’m still having fun exploring all of the different trait abilities that are unlocked pending upon your play style.
I sincerely hope that future developers are looking at Spore and seeing the potential. A nicely polished MUD, with that level of customization and PLAY based, not time based, rewards and advancement would be a great thing for gamers.
I could go on and on about the possibilities of MUDs.
-Witchkiller
Cndrmn: The tough thing about Spore is you really have to stick it out to the Space stage. I almost quit early on, but my wife kept playing and as soon as I saw her playing in space I fired the game back up again. I totally agree that is problematic game design, since you can easily lose people before they get to the “fun part.”
“I totally agree that is problematic game design, since you can easily lose people before they get to the “fun part.””
That’s always a problem. *glares at WoW’s design focus* A game should be fun to play throughout the life of the thing. There are few things worse than having to slog through the game’s obligatory content to get to the “fun stuff”.
Yeah Tesh. I am not quite sure why games keep doing this. This might have been slightly ok 20 years ago, when there weren’t many games to choose from.
But nowadays, you need to grab someone’s attention in the first hour, if not the first 10 minutes.
I wil get my Son to check it out. He is a real Gamer.
I want to play this game, but i have to wait a few more months.
You always get the extremes with games, either they are loved or loathed.
Spore is a step back in game design. It is a toy, a screen saver, but not a game. It is repetitive and does not offer challenges, incentives.
Just check the ratings at amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, … besides people complaining about Securom, too many people just find it boring.
You can take Spore as a design study, but releasing this as a game was a step back from Sim City, Sim Earth and similar games.
I don’t see how a game being a “toy” makes it a step back in game design. If a game is fun, it has accomplished its goal and is not a step back.
As for the amazon ratings, I prefer a better indicator of success: sales. Spore has already sold over 2 million copies, and it continues to sell well. It has its first mini-expansion available already, and it is selling well also.
What do you mean Spore does not offer challenges or incentives? It is a sand box game or a toy, as you say. The incentive is that you create your own goals and you make your own fun. That is the whole point of sand box or toy-like games.
Just because Spore has not been a big hit with the hard core gaming crowd does not mean it is a step back. My 6 year old daughter absolutely loves Spore, and all she has played so far are the cell, critter, and tribal stages. Once she masters a stage, I teach her the next one. Watching her play and hearing her talk about her adventures is really amazing. The opportunities for creative expression with Spore are enormous.
I cannot really imagine why your daughter or your wife love the game. I also could not understand why Black and White was praised by some people.
These supposed sandbox games are very restricted and limited, repetitive instead of offering replayability through the sandbox approach. But people call them sandbox games… With a very limited set of instructions at hand, it does not even matter how you play, carnivore or herbivore, this does not really make a difference. Even if you come to the space age, there are games like Galactic Civilizations or Civilization X,Y,Z that offer me more meaningful choices and consequences.
Spore picks up some parts of RT strategy games without ever getting to the complexity and challenge involved. Really, I guess some of you know SIM EARTH and previous Maxis games, they all do better in this regard.
I agree with you in boggling over Black and White. That didn’t even feel like a sandbox game to me because I couldn’t do anything. I felt like I still had to do specific tasks. But I digress:
A huge amount of the fun of Spore is creating your creatures, buildings, vehicles, etc. The creator is very robust and allows for a lot of creativity. The same can be said for City of Heroes. I firmly believe that without that amazing character designer CoX would have gone under years ago.
Also, stories evolve from the little silly things you can do in the game. Speaking for myself, I have had fun just transplanting various life forms around the galaxy and then trying to get specific ones raised to sentience. Then I often try to crush all the other races around them and see how far I can get my “pet” life form to evolve. I haven’t done it yet, but I have considered seeing how far I’d have to push them (without a direct attack) before they’d consider attacking me out of their own self interest.
While there is not a huge variety of things to do in Spore, as far as game systems, the game does not really force you to do specific things or follow a story line. As a result, you can make your own goals and come up with your own crazy ideas for things you’d like to try. Those types of things really engage players and make for memorable experiences. In every MMO I have played, I remember my own goals a lot more vividly than any developer created quest or storyline.
Oh, one more thing about Spore. If you connect with some friends it is really fun to see THEIR creations going nuts in your world. I have had numerous friends complain about my very aggressive “Obliterati” species. That adds a whole other element of fun to the game experience.
I think you pointed out my problem with Spore. You can do many playful things that are for sure fun. But not if you dissect game mechanics in cold blood while reviewing, not really playing, the game.
I love the combined arms approach in Medieval: Total War (I hope Medieval 2 is more like the old MTW1), the very first Panzer General for DOS/Win95 and the whole civilization series. Rome: Total War and the next Panzer General games toned down the need for that. Cavalry charging in a spear wall and winning was impossible in Medieval, but worked too well in Rome!
Actually I like the freedom of exploration that Spore provides. But I prefer it in a setting like the old Ultima Underworld or Ultima VII/VIII.
So well, then I got Spore. It is neither a strategy game, nor a MMORPG, nor a RPG… probably too innovative and too much for an old and biased gamer.
I always try to understand people, why they like or hate this or that. It is really frustrating that people love “Titanic” so much, and I always think I would rather watch Evil Dead: Army of Darkness again.
But at least now I have some idea why people like Spore and why I did not really get it. Maybe I should give it another chance and be a bit more open-minded, though I doubt it is my kind of game.