Spore - New Will Wright Game

[HaemishM]

Will: This whole game is procedural! Procedural procedural procedural! Procedural? Procedural!

See, every time I hear the word "procedural," I have a mental orgasm. It might be a coder geek thing.

Eventually someone will write a shitty game that writes itself and eventually evolves the ability to write other shitty games that write themselves.

Then EA will finally be out of business.

What, are you kidding? EA would sequelize the shit out of that motherfucker, putting a year in the name of the title and incrementing by 1 every 12 months.

[Pococurante]

Will Right, Please pee on us!

He's just jumping on the bandwagon...

[Samwise]

Okay, I just now had the time to watch the video.  I was very impressed.  Everything from being able to configure your single-celled creature to being able to terraform a planet just looked dead sexy.  Those who like clearly defined goals in their gameplay rather than sandboxes will probably disagree - fortunately, McQuaid is working on something to scratch that itch, so we can all have something to look forward to.   

[Pococurante]

I'm extremely interested in it.  I love TB god games.  All of his games excepting The Sims have addicted me over the years.

But I'll pass on SimPee.   I'm not sure what really prompted PA's rip on Wright though they seem to be on an anti-adulation kick so maybe it's not anything actually about the man and his products.

[Samwise]

Read the accompanying newspost.  Tycho is actually very excited about Spore, because he likes open-ended gameplay and being able to create things and whatnot.  Gabe was the one with the "pee" reaction because he's more of a stereotypical console gamer, likes to have clearly defined goals, and doesn't really see the point of a game without them.

(edit) Newspost quoted for the lazy:

There must be someone else who feels this way, but I've never met them - to the best of my knowledge Gabriel is the only person who doesn't find Will Wright's games enthralling. Or, in any case, he's the only person who doesn't mind saying so, willing to put his gamer card at risk by taunting Olympus.

I've said in the past that what distinguishes me from him (and perhaps from you) is that I am willing to meet a game half-way. There may be more points of distinction, but this one is germane to the discussion. I can (as an archaeologist might) use a tiny broom to brush away particulates on an otherwise fascinating surface. Gabriel's issue with Will Wright's games (if I am paraphrasing him correctly, here) is that Will Wright doesn't do the opposite: they won't meet him. He's hesitant to even call them games, actually. They often don't define any kind of linear progression outside of those you determine yourself, which for him is the equivalent of handing someone a box of potentially intriguing but largely alien widgets and telling you to "knock yourself out" before running in the opposite direction.

Of course, systems based on interlocking parts I must generate a narrative framework to contain, well... Yes. I probably don't need to tell you that even the construction of an ordinary sentence, clearly stated, is my life's great pleasure. I have esoteric refrigerator magnets, I have an H. P. Lovecraft set and a Cooking set whose coitus has breached a terrifying, if perhaps overly specific, cavern of linguistic delights. So the management of towns, the ratios of their districts, yea, even unto the codified feng shui of their tiny living rooms bears a certain grammar that has been my constant fascination.

I don't know if this specifically is a console/PC gamer distinction, I'm open to a discussion on the topic, but I believe that is my associates' contention - that I've been trained as a PC gamer to find the sweet liqueur even in an otherwise revolting bonbon - isn't entirely without merit. Simultaneously, I find interacting with systems I have personally imbued with meaning to be an experience that transcends the raw mechanics of most games I play. So, yes. I am willing to put up with a lot, if the upshot is that I can author universes.

[Pococurante]

Ah gotcha - thanks.  I admit I don't follow the personalities at all so wasn't aware they're really more of Siskel & Ebert bouncing board than a lockstep team.

[Merusk]

I'm going to remain firmly skeptical about this game.  To date, anything that's  promised to combine genres as Spore promises to has never done all of it well.  Perhaps it'll be the first one to do 5 gametypes in the same game well, but it remains to be seen.  If it gets good reviews a month after it's release, fantastic, I'll pick up a copy.  But I'm definatly never picking up a game at release again.  Waiting in this manner has saved me ~$200 in dissapointment I can name off the top of my head. (GW, KoToR2, Evil Geinus)

[Pococurante]

You raise a good point.  I admit I feel my long-disregarded inner fanboy rising up.  As refreshing as it is I can still be naive skepticism is definitely called for.

[Samwise]

I was pretty skeptical when I first heard about the concept, but my skepticism was of the flavor "pfft, that sounds too hard for anyone to pull off, I smell vaporware."  Having actually seen the game being played, I find that skepticism hard to maintain.  What he was playing with in that demo looked like it would be lots of fun to play with in its current state, and they're still working on it, so it will very likely only get better.

Even if this game doesn't end up being Robot Jesus, I am 99% certain that it will entertain me for long enough to justify a $50 purchase price.  Hell, even though Evil Genius pissed me off beyond belief with its bugginess, building bases was fun enough in itself to make the game worth buying.

[HaemishM]

I'm going to remain firmly skeptical about this game.  To date, anything that's  promised to combine genres as Spore promises to has never done all of it well.

How dare you denegrate the genius that is the Battlecruiser series!

[Merusk]

I'm going to remain firmly skeptical about this game.  To date, anything that's  promised to combine genres as Spore promises to has never done all of it well.

How dare you denegrate the genius that is the Battlecruiser series!

You realize that by linking these two games even so ephemerally, that you've cursed Spore, right?

As to the demo.. well, with demos run by the designer are easy to show things in an 'ideal' state that may or may not exsist.  SWG combat looked pretty cool when it was the E3 demo guy showing it and the flight engine off.  Then reality hit us.  Unless it's someone else up there making the decisions and playing with it free-form you don't know how much is scripted for the demo and how much is actual gameplay.

[Samwise]

Unless he was lying outright about those models all being made and animated using in-game tools, the fact that he could make everything from a multi-beaked top-heavy chicken to a Care Bear is good enough for me.  Being able to play with a "creature editor" with that much flexibility (and with all the hard stuff magically automated) is worth the price of admission as far as I'm concerned.

[Sky]

[Samwise]

YES!

I'm so making a race of five-assed monkeys.

[Shockeye]

YES!

I'm so making a race of five-assed monkeys.

Why not push it and go for 6?

[Samwise]

Now you're just talking crazy.

[sidereal]

Regarding 'open-endedness' and getting sand from your box into your vagina, I've always thought Populous was the perfect balance.  You had a very specific goal (kill heathens.  win) and there was no confusion about what it was.  However, you had an enormous amount of flexibility in how you got there.  The Civs also come close to this, but even there I think there are too many ways to win.  I'd prefer if each scenario only had one victory condition.  I enjoy SimCity X for the first couple of hours, then it devolves into sending natural disasters all over the place and other forms of deity masturbation.  The Sims was the same. . fun to explore the interface and possibilities. . not compelling after that.  This new thing. . probably more of the same.

[Xanthippe]

Regarding 'open-endedness' and getting sand from your box into your vagina,

There was something I wanted to say about this redundancy but it's gone now.

I've always thought Populous was the perfect balance.  You had a very specific goal (kill heathens.  win) and there was no confusion about what it was.  However, you had an enormous amount of flexibility in how you got there.  The Civs also come close to this, but even there I think there are too many ways to win.  I'd prefer if each scenario only had one victory condition.  I enjoy SimCity X for the first couple of hours, then it devolves into sending natural disasters all over the place and other forms of deity masturbation.  The Sims was the same. . fun to explore the interface and possibilities. . not compelling after that.  This new thing. . probably more of the same.

Populous the original entertained me for hours.  The sequels might have, if I could have played them without crashing constantly.

Civ the original entertained me for years.  The sequels only did until an enemy phalanx destroyed my tank.  Shitty AI remained shitty AI.  I never cared about all the new bells and whistles I could design on better ways to destroy enemies, which seemed to become the new focus.

For The Sims to entertain me, I need some sort of conflict and/or goal.  I want to give them guns or explosives, a political system, and an economy.

If Spore can do half of what is being promised, I'll buy it.   I'm intrigued.

[schild]

You'll buy it because Will Wright says you will. This is seriously a game that will sell to pretty much EVERYONE. And 90% of the people buying it will have no fucking clue what it's about until they play it. On the front of the box will say "FROM THE MAKER OF THE SIMS, A NEW LIFE SIMULATOR BLAHBITTY BLAHBITTY BLAH BUY IT DIPSHIT" and on the back will be pictures of Sims created in the game or some shit. I bet the box for the game will be trapezoidal with like pop-up pictures on the inside. Maybe Waldo will be featured, who knows. But you can be goddamn sure EA won't be comfortable selling this game on it's own merits and will have it ride the coattails of The Sims.

That said, I'm sorta excited about it, but given every game Wright has made since SimCity 2000 (the last game of his i played for multiple years), I don't expect to be amused for more than say 2-4 weeks. Hell, I want to get back into The Sims, but really, it's just not focused enough. Derby Time for the PSP or Nintendogs for the DS seem more fun. And that's simply *not my sort of shit.*

Let me walk you over here and show you Harvest Moon again. A simulator with goals, challenges and requirements to meet. That's how this shit should be made. Games without that sort of stuff give me the creeps.

Where was I going with this? Oh, right, you'll buy it and like it.

[WayAbvPar]

"FROM THE MAKER OF THE SIMS, A NEW LIFE SIMULATOR BLAHBITTY BLAHBITTY BLAH BUY IT DIPSHIT"

How could you possibly know that??? There must be a leak at EA.

[Soln]

any news on this?  The silence is deafening over at http://spore.ea.com/

[Samwise]

From what I've heard (and it should be taken with a grain of salt because it came from someone with only peripheral involvement) it's still about a year off.  My guess is that they're going to lay low until next E3, stir up some buzz there, and then do a Christmas 2006 release.

[Triforcer]

And you people criticize intelligent design 0_o

[Daeven]

I was pretty skeptical when I first heard about the concept, but my skepticism was of the flavor "pfft, that sounds too hard for anyone to pull off, I smell vaporware." 

'To hard'? Pah. How 'bout we come up with Genetic Algorithm software that operates on a feedback loop to cause epileptic seizures and or catatonia? The code base rewrites itself over successive generations to adapt itself to what causes you to lock up at the keyboard for longer and longer periods of time based on the blinking lights.

Then, we'll charge a monthly fee.

EA's a bunch of pikers if you ask me.

[OcellotJenkins]

Any recent rumors about this one?

[Krakrok]

I found this site which has a couple sketch drawings from the devs, gamedev events where Wright will be speaking, and it also speculates on a release in fall 2006. The official Spore site has maybe 4 screenshots which don't really show anything new. Other then that, nothing.

[OcellotJenkins]

Very cool.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore

[Sairon]

watched the first 20 min or so of the video, it was a little to slow to bare to watch it all. My prognosis is that it will be very cool but boring. During those 20 minutes I watched I saw nothing which seemed to be really fun.

[WindupAtheist]

Did you get to the part where he flies down to an alien planet and tries to contact the inhabitants musically, ala Close Encounters?  But then they start shooting SAMs at him, so he pulls back and blows the entire planet to shit Death Star style? 

"Spore appears to be made of god and win." he said, as he placed his coffee mug upon a coaster named Black & White.  "I'm sure nothing could go wrong."

[Yegolev]

Am I confusing Wright with Molyneux?

[Samwise]

Am I confusing Wright with Molyneux?

Will Wright did the Sim games and this (Spore).  Molyneux did Populous and Black & White.  (I get the feeling those were both strong influences on Spore, though.)

BTW, couple of neat interviews with WW here and here.  Lots of stuff in there that wasn't covered in the demo.

[WindupAtheist]

No, Will Wright had nothing to do with Black and White.  As excited as I was by that Spore video, I'm just trying to avert a case of fanboyism by remembering another high-concept God Game by a celebrity developer that turned out to be shit.

[HaemishM]

watched the first 20 min or so of the video, it was a little to slow to bare to watch it all. My prognosis is that it will be very cool but boring. During those 20 minutes I watched I saw nothing which seemed to be really fun.

Yeah, that was unfortunately my reaction too. It seemed very much in that vein of his Sim games where everything is a tool and you make your own fun. I don't do most of those time of games that well. It seems more interesting for HOW it's done than for doing.

[schild]

You know what made that really hard to watch? Will Wright's second grade public speaking level. What a, uhm, uhhhh, goo....goober.

[Samwise]

No, Will Wright had nothing to do with Black and White.  As excited as I was by that Spore video, I'm just trying to avert a case of fanboyism by remembering another high-concept God Game by a celebrity developer that turned out to be shit.

IMO B&W was a very decent sandbox game that was buried under an avalanche of horrible bugs.  B&W without the bugs would have been a great game for me.  And I don't remember any of the Sim games being buggy, so I have high hopes for Spore in that regard.