I now think even more strongly that Spore has great potential

[lord of the mark]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=165061

I mean this augurs pretty well that the middle, civish part of the game, is going to be, well, civish. Or at least that Wright understands that it needs to be, that the "game" cant be ONLY about designing funny little creatures.

Discuss.

[Metaliturtle]

I've been following Spore since 2005, and Wright's goal seems to be that the middle game of SPORE will be like Civ, albeit a simpler model.

Bringing Soren on board seems to indicate that this portion of the game will be even better than previewed.

It may even warrant it's own section here on Apolyton.

[DrSpike]

I would welcome any effort to create an actual game within Spore.

But unless you have another source it seems a stretch to suggest that any part of the game will be civvish just because Soren has been brought on board.

[Metaliturtle]

There is a dedicated Civilization-building aspect to SPORE, the goal being to develop technology to the space level.

[Nacht]

Isn't it a bit late in the development process to change anything major?

I suppose we wont see Sorens influence before xp 4 is released

[Metaliturtle]

Yeah but that portion of the game is always brushed-through during previews, which would indicate that they have lots of cool things they just need someone like Soren to organize it all into a playable portion of the game.

[Nostromo]

I still think Spore will suck. Despite of that, I'm sure Soren has a bright future in front of him.

About Spore, here's what Sid Meier learned from his game Covert Action: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Sid Meier was reportedly dissatisfied with the final product, because he believed that the disparate elements of the game, however good they were individually, detracted from game play. As a result, he developed what he called the Covert Action Rule: "It's better to have one good game than two great games." He described the origins of this rule in an interview with GameSpot:

The enduring memory I have from Covert Action is what I call the "Covert Action Rule," which is: It's better to have one good game than two great games. The mistake I think I made in Covert Action is actually having two games in there kind of competing with each other. There was kind of an action game where you break into a building and do all sorts of picking up clues and things like that, and then there was the story which involved a plot where you had to figure out who the mastermind was and the different roles and what cities they were in, and it was a kind of an involved mystery-type plot.

I think, individually, those each could have been good games. Together, they fought with each other. You would have this mystery that you were trying to solve, then you would be facing this action sequence, and you'd do this cool action thing, and you'd get on the building, and you'd say, "What was the mystery I was trying to solve?" Covert Action integrated a story and action poorly, because the action was actually too intense. In Pirates!, you would do a sword fight or a ship battle, and a minute or two later, you were kind of back on your way. In Covert Action, you'd spend ten minutes or so of real time in a mission, and by the time you got out of [the mission], you had no idea of what was going on in the world.

So I call it the Covert Action Rule. Don't try to do too many games in one package. And that's actually done me a lot of good. You can look at the games I've done since Civilization, and there's always opportunities to throw in more stuff. When two units get together in Civilization and have a battle, why don't we drop out to a war game and spend ten minutes or so in duking out this battle? Well, the Covert Action Rule. Focus on what the game is.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by nostromo
I still think Spore will suck. Despite of that, I'm sure Soren has a bright future in front of him.

About Spore, here's what Sid Meier learned from his game Covert Action: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Yeah, thats why the Total War series has flopped so badly.

Anyway, in Spore, you wont be dropping in and out of a larger game, the different games will go in sequence.

[Nostromo]

Sid is right about games like Civ. Introducing tactical combat in Civ would have been a bad idea. It works in Total War games because they focus one era. That and they try to integrate two types of gameplay. In Spore, they're trying to integrate three or four types of gameplay. I bet there's an RPG in there somewhere.

Anyway, I think that people are more excited by the concept than by anything else. I saw some gameplay footage, and it looks pretty boring, IMO.

[Kuciwalker]

I'd be happy with just a build-funny-creatures game, TBH.

[DrSpike]

Nostromo speaks sense.

[Apocalypse]

My roommates that play total war really hate the strategy part of it though, and wish they could just play the battles.

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
My roommates that play total war really hate the strategy part of it though, and wish they could just play the battles.

Whereas I have it the other way around. I always autoplay the battles

Asmodean

[Nostromo]

I enjoyed "Shogun: total war" a lot. I especially liked the fact that the strategy part was simple, almost Risk-like. I never really played the other games in the series, but they look bloated, IMO.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Nacht
Isn't it a bit late in the development process to change anything major?

With less than a year to release (release date is set to be somewhere between September 2007 and April 2008)

Originally posted by Nacht
I suppose we wont see Sorens influence before xp 4 is released

They have said several times that they are not planning any Xpacks to Spore