Anyone still playing Spore?

[Asher]

I wont be holding my breath.

He's lying, so don't worry. Google shows many interviews with John Riccitiello on gamasutra, and none of them talk about what he's talking about.

[DrSpike]

So if El Cid finds the article he mentioned you would apologise and admit you were wrong?

[Asher]

So if El Cid finds the article he mentioned you would apologise and admit you were wrong?

Wrong about what? I just found it curious and asked him to cite it.

It's not wrong to assume the Game Designer is responsible for Game Design when there's no evidence to the contrary.

I'm getting a bit tired of your cutesy bull****, DrSpike.

[DrSpike]

Wrong about what? I just found it curious and asked him to cite it.

It's not wrong to assume the Game Designer is responsible for Game Design when there's no evidence to the contrary.

No, you called him a liar for posting his recollection of an article you couldn't find. If he finds said article any reasonable human being would apologise. I am not sure this stretches to your good self.

I'm getting a bit tired of your cutesy bull****, DrSpike.

I'll make you a deal: you stop behaving like an ass and I'll stop the cutesy bull****.

[Asher]

No, you called him a liar for posting his recollection of an article you couldn't find. If he finds said article any reasonable human being would apologise. I am not sure this stretches to your good self.

If he finds an article that clearly says the CEO of EA is responsible for the specific game design change we're talking about, I'll apologize while also pointing out this makes Will Wright a crap game designer for compromising his vision and not doing what he's supposed to do.

I'll make you a deal: you stop behaving like an ass and I'll stop the cutesy bull****.

Your cutesy bull**** encourages me to be an ass.

[DrSpike]

If he finds an article that clearly says the CEO of EA is responsible for the specific game design change we're talking about, I'll apologize.

Great! Let's hope El Cid isn't full of it.

And in any case you should save your energy for the Wii game you are involved with now.

[Asher]

Great! Let's hope El Cid isn't full of it.

And in any case you should save your energy for the Wii game you are involved with now.

I've got the flu right now (probably caught it on the airplane over the weekend) so I'm saving my energy for that first.

[snoopy369]

Well, I can't find any evidence of said interview, but with such limited information you might as well ask me about that blue book you remembered being on some tv show last month...

I did find a mention of Grim Fandango, though, so all was not lost.

I also found an article somewhere on the site where J.R. required all of his employees to spend 15 minutes playing with the Creature Creator, but that seems irrelevant.

[Zoid]

As for Spore, Zoid you really should have read the Spore forums before buying. Before release it was full of people gushing about how brilliant it was going to be, with a small number of people like me who thought it was going to be lacking in actual gameplay and a shameless cash-in.

I don't need to say which group were proved correct.

I know. It was a spur of the moment buy...

[Dale]

So you think Will Wright is a good game designer?

He doesn't even design GAMES most of the time, let alone GOOD GAMES.

Will Wright made one GOOD GAME ever, the original SimCity. His history shows us he clearly just lucked out with that one.

If you're just going to say "but his 'games' sell lots so he must be good" I'm going to pre-emptively give you the finger and categorize you with Dale, Frosty, Ben Kenobi, and Agathon.

So Asher, you admit he made one good game, which qualifies him by YOUR OWN STATEMENT as a good game designer.

QED.

[FrostyBoy]

It rather depends on what you define 'good game designer'.

Sales? Certainly he qualifies there, and you could say that is the key definition in the current (capitalist) day. It is not unreasonable to equate successful with good, I'd say.

I disagree. Good marketing can lead to a lot of sales; we can look at Spore and Sims for an excellent example of games with high sale, but poor gameplay.

Artistic merit? I would assume you don't mean this, as designers are by nature better than programmers at the art part. Plenty of games that look pretty and play for ****, also.

Too vague, and I disagree with how you said it. Artistic merit does not exactly mean pretty graphics, you could, artistically, make an amazing game, for example, Starcraft I is a piece of art, because it is so well balanced, stable, graphically pleasing, good music, good story, etc. To be frank, I think designers, who are artistically challenged, do not make good games. To apply a good analogy, the designer is the architect, the builders are the programmers, the exterior and interior designers are the artists.

Artists/Designers have a unique strength that allows them to visualize the end-product before they start work on it. By being able to do that, they can see what they should do and not do to make it good. I'm not saying programmers can't achieve this, but I do not think most programmers are known for their design skills.

[ColdWizard]

So Asher, you admit he made one good game, which qualifies him by YOUR OWN STATEMENT as a good game designer.

QED.

One hit wonder != good.

[Wiglaf]

I've got the flu right now (probably caught it on the airplane over the weekend) so I'm saving my energy for that first.

It could be HIV because HIV shares flu-like symptoms; I recommend going to www.webmd.com for more information about how to get rid of the HIV by transmitting it to a dog or cat (this will only work within 48 hours of infection or until you die, whichever is first). Also, Will Wright went to LA Tech, which is not a tech school, it is more of a place where people who cannot tie their shoes learn to add and subtract. He's also really fugly if that helps with this discussion.

[Nikolai]

Wiglaf, always there to help the common man.

[El_Cid]

He's lying, so don't worry. Google shows many interviews with John Riccitiello on gamasutra, and none of them talk about what he's talking about.

I'm happy to report i can make Asher feel a bit better(I expect)

I didnt realise this was going to be a big deal, then saw a few posts and thought to myself, "I suppose i better go dig it up, as it was an interesting article and well heck my credibilty seems to be at stake now etc etc"

As a few here have found it doesnt appear to be on gamasutra, so maybe i'd read it somewhere else.....then my god talk about needle in a haystack!!! you can find zillions of articles/links on google about Spore+DRM but damn if i can find that article.

So Yes asher i was lying and you must never trust anything i say....but you knew that all along right?
(see it will make him feel much better - which i'm kind of happy about as i havent really liked the ganging up/hazing(you say in the usa?) that has been going on - even if Asher treats other people with his bad karma, i still dont like someone being picked on,even Asher and even if he kind of started it by saying nasty stuff about people for no real reason.)

Anyway, for others with enquireing minds that might be willing to think I actualy really didnt make this whole thing up...for some reason(why would I?). Some details to narrow things down maybe:

It was an interview i'm 90%(yeah 90% now due to not finding it where i thought it might be) sure with John Riccitiello and the interviewer(so not a straight article, it had questions and answers format). 10% thinks maybe it could have been with one of the Spore devs, maybe even Will Wright?

Anyway it was about 3 pages(internet) long and covered a few topics. The most interesting bit, for me, was the bit i already talked about - how Spore release version was very heavily trimmned down, especialy the early ameba stage, because somebody outside the dev team, from publishing felt it was too complex to appeal to the wider market like that. My recolection of that part of the interview went like this:

"So yeah, we were quite far into the cycle, we'd all seen Will's presentations as the project developed and I roughly knew where we were at. And I went down to be taken through part of the game. They was an air of excited anticipation i could tell, they were very proud of what they had to show me. And i watched one guy take his spore and it swam through this soup and ate something else - kind cool looking. Then another guy showed me how you could upgrade your spore - it was huge this bit, lots of configurations and even as they were really into it I just felt it was too much for your average player - they had lost me in the complexity, so i had a meeting with Will and we got that bit changed, streamlined....yada yada yada"

I still think it was Mr Ricciiello because the Q+A section also covered 'in-game monetization' which is one of his things.

Still damned if i can find it - my google foo has never been very strong, heck i can't even find the Spore section on here(poly) anymore, where i might have posted a link in a thread to said article a month or so ago when i had read it. like i say i found it an interesting article, and even if i have in the past been accused of having a very active imagination(not here but in RL), i'm currently happy in myself to believe I did read this damn article and didn't just dream it...........lol yeah if i did dream it - that has to be the weirdest most useless(I've never been too bothered about Spore/Mr.Ricciello) dream I've ever had!!!!!

But well.........get better soon asher, i had a cold over xmas and colds suck, and if my failure to find this article helps you - then cool