Will Wright's New Game: Spore

[Darkstar]

Urban Ranger... There's a market for Will's SimGames. As a rabid fanboy, I've watched every project Will's admitted to. I've bought every commercial product that Maxis has released. I will definately buy Spore.

Now that I've given that background... at this time, I expect Spore will sell slightly above the scale of SimLife or SimEarth. Not a huge hit, but it will probably cover its development costs with a small bit of cash left over. Unless EA has gone overboard and hopes it will be a Ultimate The Sims. But they should know better.

So, why are you so down on Will and his games? Were you disappointed with TheSims and couldn't return it to the store?

[Bkeela]

Some people just can't appreciate some genres. I wouldn't touch a sports game if it was the only thing that washed up with me on a desert island.

[Adagio]

Maybe this game wont become the greatest hit they've ever made... maybe it's just selling as much as SimEarth, but with an engine like this I believe they might be able to make it into some other game. If the engine is as good as they say it is then it would be a waste to just throw away the code after this project

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by vovan
I will say this though. The gameplay is very much open-ended, in the sense that there are no explicitly stated goals. So, if you didn't like SimCity, you might not like this thing either. It is worth noting, however, that by the same token Civ games also have no explicit goals.

Would you like to expand on that? Civ has an overall victory condition plus a score wen you complete the objective. The scenarios released for the game have defined scenario objectives. of course you can make your own personal goals within that framework, but the framework exists and can be used to make comparisons between different games and different players.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I see very strong parallels between Spore and MoO 3 right now. Lots of hype, a lot of hyped-up followers, good stuff at the beginning...

Remind me, who was the lead designer on Moo3 at this point in the process?

[vovan]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I see very strong parallels between Spore and MoO 3 right now. Lots of hype, a lot of hyped-up followers, good stuff at the beginning...

Maybe... That would suck though, and I am optimistic at this point. Yeah, yeah, you say I'm setting myself up for disappointment, whatever.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's still graphics...

Right, right, but the point is that it is graphics that artists don't have to make.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
With a corresponding demand on processing power.

Ah, that's actually a good point. When he was booting his computer, I saw it was a 3GHz Pentium IV, though I didn't catch how much RAM he had. The game ran really smooth except for a couple places, when there were noticable slowdowns. But I think it may have been something else the laptop was doing, because after his speech was done, there was another presenter, and he wanted to play a little video off a DVD, and he couldn't make it work on his laptop, so he used Wright's. Well, in the middle of the video there was an ugly slowdown, too, so I don't think the ones in the game were entirely related to the game only.

You'll probably say it's just wichful thinking though. But I do want to point out that the performance overhead is just a one-time deal. Once the textures and things are generated, it's not like there is any more processing drain after that.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Would you like to expand on that? Civ has an overall victory condition plus a score wen you complete the objective. The scenarios released for the game have defined scenario objectives. of course you can make your own personal goals within that framework, but the framework exists and can be used to make comparisons between different games and different players.

Right, you make a good point. I sort of maybe misphrased that somewhat. From the look of the game, it will be much like SimCity in the sense that there are no explicit goals and it doesn't look like there will be any framework for having any, at least none that was demoed.

Wright actually showed an interesting slide during his post-demo presentation, where he showed different icon-sized screenshots from the game (just to show which stage of the game you are on) in the shape of letter T. The t's leg (or whatever you call the vertical thingey) was made up of the different stages in the game - the cellular level first, then the marine creature level, etc, and then the horizontal bar was made up of the different ways you can play the galactic level.

So basically, as he explained, his goal is that all these initial stages are very goal-oriented - when you are a single-celled amoeba-looking thingey, your goal is to survive, and eventually lay an egg, so you can evolve, when you are already a creature that lives on land, your goal is to develop brain power to become sentient, when you are already sentient, your goal is to develop technology to ultimately build a UFO, etc. Then, ultimately, there comes the galactic stage, where you have pretty much developed all the tech and all the brain power you can get, and that's where he says the real game begins. Here, it is now completely free of goals, in the sense that hey, you are already a pretty advanced civilization, and so there's just nothing more to learn.

But there is plenty more to do. You can colonize planets, and terraform the ones that are not suitable for your creature, you can interact with other civilizations, at different stages of their development, etc. So, Wright said that all these goal-oriented stages in the beginning of the game in his vision will serve as something or a tutorial to the player, introducing him to the mechanics of the world, and having him learn the multitude of editors there are in the game - the creature editor, the building editor, the vehicle editor, the UFO editor. And then when the player has gone through all these stages and has been exposed to all the kind of hard-coded mechanics the game has to offer, he is let loose on this whole humongous world, which is populated by creatures created by other players through synchronization with their main server, and you can discover the real beauty of the game - all the different emergent gameplay rules that manifest themselves in the different dynamics created by the variety of creatures created by the players.

EDIT: Heh, I feel like writing today. Here's more:

At least that's the idea. One thing that kinda bothers me is that it seems to me a lot of players will try to power-play so to speak, and to create a kind of "ultimate" creature, which would be fast, deadly, and damn near impossible to kill. And once they've got that, then what else is there left for them to do? I mean, one reason why some people don't like the Sims, for example, is that they lack creativity. Sims is really not about getting rich or getting the best job, or whatever. If that is your goal, then you get bored in a hurry. Sims, in my view, is about two other things: one is role-playing, and one is customization. And the latter, I think is where most appeal actually comes in, because you can create a Sim that looks like anybody, you can dress him in any dress you like, you can build him any home you like, and you can fill the home with any furniture you like. Many people don't even play the game itself. All they do is build houses, or make new stuff with the editor. That is a manifestation of creativity, and that is what builds the enormous community around the game.

I think it will be much the same with Spore. If you have this kind of non-expressive errr... non-creative? goal of making the biggest baddest creature, then you will probably get bored in a hurry, because when you try to replay the game, you will probably end up with the same thing all over again, because you will essentially be trying to go for all the same superior characteristics. The most appeal will come from using Spore as this medium of expression. Ultimately, I see the galactic level as more of a museum of players' creations. You can fly from planet to planet, take a look at the creatures or architecture, and maybe go, omg that looks soooo cool! And then you kinda get inspired and maybe create something of your own, so people could see it and also appreciate it. Or maybe you scoop up one of the cool-looking dudes and make it mate with one of your creatures to see what the result is.

[FrostyBoy]

I have a question; when I read these snippets of info, I keep getting the notion that you the player is creating just one creature, but in order to create a civilization, you need to have thousands and millions of the same creature.

So at some point at the very beginning, your "creature" should start to multiply. Do you see this multiplication happen? If so, how many of that one creature can there be? How do you control them all?

[vovan]

Originally posted by Sn00py
I have a question; when I read these snippets of info, I keep getting the notion that you the player is creating just one creature, but in order to create a civilization, you need to have thousands and millions of the same creature.

So at some point at the very beginning, your "creature" should start to multiply. Do you see this multiplication happen? If so, how many of that one creature can there be? How do you control them all?

Okay, so this depends on which "level" of development you are playing on. The first thing is the cellular level. Here, you don't multiply, but eventually lay an egg, which allows you to advance to the next level. Same thing with the next level, where you are this aquatic creature. Then, you become a errr, what's the word for a creature that lives on land? Well, you get the idea, when you get legs, the game puts you on land. Here now, the game populates the world automatically with not only creatures of other types, but also creatures of your type.

So when you are ready to move on to the next level again, you just give out a mating call, and hopefully there will be another creature of your type nearby. Then you kinda... mate... and produce another egg, and another move up to the next level. Now, see, up to now, you were only controlling this one creature, and you would sometimes meet another one of the same type, so you could mate, but really they don't play that big of a role. But now, you can move up to the next level by "upgrading the brain" of the creature, so it becomes sentient.

Now, when your species becomes sentient, you no longer control the one creature, but instead you have this village with a sort of a town-hall looking kind of thing, and now the game becomes some thing of a city builder. Now, at this point, I *think* you can still control creatures on the individual level, telling them to go gather food or perform some task and what not, but I haven't seen Will during the demo actually do that. Instead, what he did was he controlled the creatures by giving them things. For example, he built a drum and a fire, and so some creatures started playing the drum, and others were dancing around the fire with spears.

So yeah... I guess to answer your question on reproduction, it looks like the game populates the world with your creatures automatically. At a non-sentient level they are spread throughout the world, and at the sentient levels, they concentrate in the cities of your civilization.

[General Ludd]

I'm lookiung forward to this game. I've always wanted to roleplay an amoeba.

[Odin]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I'm lookiung forward to this game. I've always wanted to roleplay an amoeba.

I like the creature editor.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I'm lookiung forward to this game. I've always wanted to roleplay an amoeba.

I thought that was what you've been doing.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by DrSpike


I thought that was what you've been doing.

Just practicing.

[DrSpike]

You will be teh gosu when MP comes out.

Oh wait, there is probably nothing no basis for MP.

[Adagio]

So it seems


My 'evolution' game idea was much better aimed at MP