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Some interesting Spore news along with a tentative release period and a strange PR debacle with EA. Two links, both contain Will Wright interviews: http://spong.com/article/10541/SPOnG,+EA,+Will+Wright+and+IGN.+A+Debacle?cb=479  (http://spong.com/article/10541/SPOnG,+EA,+Will+Wright+and+IGN.+A+Debacle?cb=479)
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6155511.htm (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6155511.htm)

"When it's done." That's all it needs to be.

Probably EA realizing they'll get more sales than the previous tentative release date of April-May 07 if they just push it back to September-November 07 and ride the holiday wave.

Alright, I've read the things and seen the vids and presentations. What is it that's got the whole world enamored by this? Isn't this just Atriarch being done by one of the few guys in the universe capable of pulling it off (because of the EA backing?)

I don't really know. I'm terribly excited by the prospect of this game, and hope to god it's even 70% of what it's being sold as. But I'm not sure I could tell you why. The best I've come up with is: "This is the sort of shit I bought a computer FOR!". It's the first game in a long time that's felt new, unique, and awesome -- gives me a chance to recreate that "First time I played Starflight" or "First time I played Space Quest" sort of feel.

For my wife? She's a teacher, and has dubbed it "The most GT game EVER" and if it succeeds in not sucking, plans to integrate it into her school's GT program. (GT = Gifted/Talented).

What has me interested is the content creation. You get to design your own creatures, buildings, vehicles, etc. Why is this more appealing in the Spore videos than in other modding packages? Because Will Wright just used a click-n-drag interface to create whole new foozles right before your eyes, instead of making you master some fairly esoteric graphics and animation software packages, which aren't seamlessly integrated into the game.

The content sharing will no doubt be appealing to others. I myself don't look forward to sifting through the huge database of breasts and penises that the other users will be uploading, to get to some serious content, but that's how the internet rolls. Of course, if there's a rating system in place, then I can wait for others to do the heavy sifting before I go looking  :evil:

I don't know much about Atriarch. When I read your post, I hazily recalled a years-old memory, of some mmog with weird-looking alien species. Is that still around? Did it ever get published? Does it have the germ-to-city-to-ET progression, or the content creation, or some other feature shared with Spore?

Remember how when Quake came out people started making their own custom models, so you could play as Homer Simpson or a robot or whatever?  And how that was the coolest thing ever?  It's kind of like that.  Except you don't have to hack any game files, own any 3D modelling software, or be a talented digital artist.

(edit) i.e. what Hutch said.

What is it about these geniuses of a creative medium and their obsession with the concept of, "Layers upon layers", anyway?

Spore looks cool, it sounds cool, but the jury is still out on if it plays cool.  Thus, I'm not as excited as 95% of the gaming world about what Wright's got up his sleeves, yet.

My fear is that the scope is just too broad. Making your own animal and such sounds really cool, but then switching to a game where you fly around in ships and manage a whole civilization sounds like a bit much. I predict there will be a lot of people who really like JUST the animal parts or JUST the more rts parts.

It seems like once you unlock the flying saucer bit, you get to just do whatever you want.  You can just run around terraforming uninhabited planets and creating new creatures with the creature editor, OR you can just use the species you've been using all along and do the RTS thing, OR whatever.  Once you've finished evolving your creature (i.e. at the beginning of the tribe stage) you aren't required to touch the creature editor ever again, and once you've got the UFO you can colonize/conquer as many or as few worlds as you want.

At least, that's the impression I've gotten.  He mentioned during that first GDC talk that the game basically shifts from goal-oriented to freeform sandbox once you've got your souped-up UFO.

Sounds good.

So can your creatures fight other creatures? I know there is some multiplayer aspect or something like that. I've always been captivated even by stupid Pokemon-style things where you breed some creature then have them fight against other people's creations.

That's pretty much the "creature" phase of the game, ja.  After your critter moves past the single-celled phase, he has to compete with other creatures for survival (avoiding bigger predatory creatures, potentially hunting and eating smaller creatures, etc).  The other creatures will be pulled from the Interwebs automatically if possible, so once the game has been out for a little while, the odds are good that most of the creatures you're seeing in the game are ones that some other player has made.

There hasn't been a lot of detail put out on this, but it sounds like it's intended to all pretty much operate behing the scenes, with the game trying to automatically figure out what creatures will fill vacant niches in your ecosystem, rather than you yourself picking whose creatures you'll be getting or who your creatures will be sent to.  A similar sort of thing is done with building and vehicle designs, where when you're buying vehicles and buildings for the RTS portion the game lets you pick from stuff that other players have made if you don't want to build your own.

Samwise has it precisely right. In the game design talks WW has been giving, Spore's design is 'T-shaped', as opposed to 'inverted-T-shaped'. That is, in many games, you are expected to learn a bunch of stuff at the start, then apply it in a more and more precise manner until you get to some Ultimate Challenge and win. In Spore, you learn and master one thing at a time, then, once you've been shown all the stuff (interstellar mode) you can do whatever the hell you want.

There is an optional mission system in interstellar mode, but WW has stressed that it's optional. You can go around collecting cards, browsing content, playing with any of the editors, etc.

I don't know if you can actually drop down to the creature level of gameplay again from the saucer mode, but I think you can 'start up' the game in that mode at any time after unlocking it. I think. At least, that's the impression I got.

Edit: I'm excited because it's pretty much like the culmination of every other Wright game ever made, and there are few of those that I've not liked. All his seminal stuff I've played for months (SimCity/SC2k, SimAnt, Sims, SimEarth) and the others (SimFarm, SimTown, SimCopter, SimLife) were still enjoyable.

Also, I hear Spore will be playable on the show floor at GC/Leipzig, so we should get some firsthand reports about how much fun it is.

... why aren't we sending Der Helm to GC?

Are you trying to earn the capital J for jaded? :)

While it all depends on WW and co delivering the goods (unlike, say, Pete Molyfuckingneux), Spore stands to be one of the most groundbreaking games in a long time. It's definitely a game for the explorer mindset. Microbiology to space exploration? Sign me up.

Also: f13 planet trading.

I'm very interested to see what the CtC (Cock to Content) ratio will be in the online content library.  The first law of user-created content is that if there's a way to produce a likeness of a penis in game, somebody will do it.  Repeatedly.

It's certainly possible; look at the creature creator. Your base is a flexible vermiform object and you can control the thickness of the body at each vertebra. Stretch it out a bit, give it a thick head, slap on a mouth at the tip. Maybe add some spherical flippers or jets towards the rear and presto!: Dickfish.

I expect to make heavy use of the 'friend' functionality to weed out the overabudance of penile chordates. Or simply make my creatures prefer a meal of fresh cockbeast for breakfast.

Robin Williams certainly had fun with that sort of thing.

I wonder if Spore will different from other Will Wright games and not bore the shit out of me 15 minutes in.

Given my history with WW games... he could produce Sim Urinal Cake Factory and I'd be all over creating efficient floor layouts for a half-dozen different production lines of custom-colored urinal cakes stamped with custom-designed logos. Each with optimal pH ranges and fragrance release profiles optimized for different target markets.

YMMV.

To be honest outside of the Sim City series I haven't been able to play a Will Wright game for more than maybe an hour or two before getting profoundly bored and shelving it. Sim City gets dull even after you get a decent city going, and then it's disaster time.

What I've seen of Spore just doesn't look like it'll be all that fun. The creature design and evolution looks to be the funnest part of the game, and then it looks like you'll have to do a bunch of metagame stuff that I bet money won't be fleshed out enough to be really engaging, all just to get back to the fun part...which for most people will be making cock monsters.

I can't believe I'm openly admitting this on the Internet, but I did purchase and play The Sims for a good month or two solid after it came out, and then had sporadic Sims fits over the next handful of years.

It's just something about the free, open-endedness of the typical WW game that appeals to me. The editors, of course, apply for Spore. The space game even moreso due to the 'go anywhere, do anything, run multiple world-experiments in parallel if you so desire' nature of it.

And the terraforming game. Been a long time since someone made a game about terraforming. Last one I can think of would sort-of be Outpost, and SimEarth prior to that.

Also, planet-explody ray.

I'm pretty sure I'll spend a good hour at least just blowing up planets and cackling maniacally.

Startopia 2 plz.

Didn't we have a discussion about that when Oblivion was due out?  The bet was which will come out first.. a nude mod or some Star Wars related mod.  Did we ever find out which won?

 Also, Yoru, you're not the only one.  I even mucked around with Sims2 for a bit.  It's just a fun little free-form game with building elements.  I can certainly see how it appeals to your non-typical "i want x-ploshuns" gamer.  Spore doesn't attract me, however, becaue I think it's trying to do TOO much.  I don't expect any of the various 'game types' packaged in to be really developed or deep.. (You can do a few things well or a thousand pretty poorly) which will kind of limit the fun for me overall.  The building element, however, looks fantastic.

There was a topless mod within a day or two.  I'm pretty sure it beat out star wars by a good margin.

nude topless star wars boba fett oblivion

...I've been reading too many of those AOL search logs...

Oblivion's topless mod was really easy.  They had added the bra seperate in a later build, and all they had to do was remove it.  I think they were even able to do it through the editor as a simple plugin.

A pity the ESRB had a cow.  Topless Oblivion models != Hidden Sex Mini Game.

Someone on the mod forums posted the first demos of custom animations in game for Oblivion a couple days ago. The first video released was of a women bending over in a lewd position. I was shocked.