Why Spore Is Special 77
The New York Times is running a long piece by Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." In 'The Long Zoom', Johnson describes just what is so special about Will Wright's Spore . From the article: "Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."
Please stop the Hype (Score:4, Insightful)
With such simple, easy to obtain, objective like that I'm sure they will have absolutely no problem living up to people's expectations. After all claiming a compeletly open gameplay experience was easily obtained by Diakatana, and Black and White certainly lived up to people's expectations of a trainable, inteligent agent.
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Better late than suck (Score:2)
Well... Better to be late than to suck. Or, as Miyamoto put it: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game is bad forever."
(Well, I'm not sure he said it, but the quote is generally attributed to him).
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I'm not sure which answer I should go with:
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Hell yeah. I was in the GDC keynote this year and I recall that by that time they had already created over 400 prototypes for the simulation models in the game. 400 for crying out loud! What I gathered is what they're trying to achieve is anything but simple. If they were just creating a simulation then sure, it'd be "easy" to create one. But making a game that's based on a
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Actually, the creature in Black and White far exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately the rest of the game stunk.
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You don't have to actively participate or subscribe to the philosophical implications of the game for them to be valid.
So much press for an Unreleased Game (Score:2)
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Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
So when does Spore Nukum Forever arrive? (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Means a couple millions easily.. And still no game out... That's a HUGE budget!
Get Real... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah.. sure.. Let's get real..
Spore looks really cool and I'll be more than happy to play it for a few hours (assuming it truly is as engaging as it looks), but the first thing going through my mind was now "Wow, this has taught me that I can shape the universe," but something more along the lines of "Whoa.. I wonder if I can make a creature that kills everything on sight."
Hrm.. maybe there is something to this video games promotes violence thing...
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World of Sporecraft?
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Epic hype (Score:1)
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I call bollocks (Score:4, Interesting)
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You'll actually be able to *see* how small choices can completely screw you over. It's a much different type of learning than just watching a documentary, hearing a speech, or reading a book.
Do I know if *Spore* can do that? No. I haven't seen the thing except as hypeware. But it has the potential to do it. That's where the advantage of video games as a medium lies. Which is why the flood of FPS/GTA games is getting tedious. We've got a marvellous medium on hand, but we just can
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Exactly. For instance, think about the tactics and strategies that you learn from RTSG's and other war simulations. Troop formations, ratios of artillery/infantry/support units in an assault, effective defensive positions, etc. Someone who is really good at C&C would certainly be able to carry some of their game experience into a job as a war planner. Similarly, urban combat tactics learned in countless hours of counterstrike are directly applicable in real world scenari
No other game has done this... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to be sappy, but I think there's a point to games that make people think about the real world. Hopefully Spore will make people think about Mother Earth, the Solar System and the Universe, the same way The Sims makes people think about their Mum, Family and Society.
Here is a message about The Sims titled "No other game has done this... [google.com]", posted in April 2000 (one month after The Sims was released) in the alt.family-names.sims newsgroup (the Sims fans took over the alt.family-names.sims, newsgroup
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What about SimEarth, also by Will Wright? (Score:2)
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But I have a hunch (based in my own experience) that SimEarth "worked," and I have a hunch that Spore will work, [wikia.com] as well.
I've been exploring a model of the "mass mind" called "Causal Layered Analysis." [communitywiki.org] It makes sense to me. Spore would rest somewhere between "Worldview / Discourse Analysis," and "Myth / Metaphore Analysis," since it largely works unconsciously.
Been waiting... (Score:1)
I played Star Wars Galaxies and i was a bioengineer for a while, creating critters such as a bearded jax (basically a housecat) that could spit acid and was immune to fire. I told myself I'd eventually go back to SWG and play my bioengineer again, but they went and DELETED the class.
Spore looks to be pretty fun though, and I can't wait to play around with the critter creator.
I'm impressed (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure this will be out next year, and will be one of those games that forevermore gets mentioned in the biannual "best games in history" articles that somehow get posted. And I'll probably agree.
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The one great failure of spore (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about it, how many (geeks) people talk about the great fight they had in Morrowind? Compare that to the number of people who boast about frags and kill:death ratios, complete with dramatic reinactment.
Spore will do well, I'm planning on buying
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So you won't be playing against others just against what others have made.
The first couple of weeks maybe a little boring while enough people make the civilzations to populate the galaxy. But maybe
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-Rick
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I think it's safe to mention that The Sims was far from being a failure, and it was a single-player only game. While eventually they took it online, I don't believe that they had nearly as many online subscribers as offline players. What does that tell you about multiplayer?
The Sims franchise still sells like crazy. Failure? I think not.
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-Rick
Note to mods, this post is Off Topic. (Score:2)
Because my post was not on the "I want to feltch Spore's crack while giving it a reach around with a happy ending" level of fanboyism it gets tagged as off topic? If you're going to mod, mod well. Overrated, Flamebait, something...
-Rick
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Don't be that guy Will.... (Score:2)
Don't be that jackass that hypes his game, Will Wright. We saw it with Romero, We see it with Molyneux, we see it over and over, but Will, you and Sid Meier are rocks, we can expect good games from you. It's true you falter a bit, Civ 3 wasn't great, Sims got too many expansions, though the final ones were good, but don't become the new industry asshole.
We already want your game, but trying to over sell it and falling short is the worse thing you can do. Just deliver us the best game you
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Nerdgasm (Score:2)
Firsthand? (Score:4, Informative)
Now if spore was built as an accurate simulation based on parameters measured out in nature, maybe one could argue that we were experiencing 'firsthand'. Otherwise this is just nonsense.
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Wow, you entirely missed the point, but decided to post your nescience anyway.
When he says that you will be able to experience global repercussions firsthand, he means that Spore will present an immediate representation of the kinds of crazy things that can happen globally as a result of local actions.
In other words, where it's kind of hard to see how an earthquake in North Korea can result (for instance) storms in Peru (I made this up). It is much easier to see these kinds of things in the enclosed
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Instead of telling you how a story plays out, you actually get to play in the role.
Now, granted, it is a story, and a fiction.
But fictions basically move the world and cause interesting things to happen.
That's my understanding, at least.
Why Steven Johnson, You Ask (Score:2, Informative)
You may be wondering why Steven Johnson is writing about Spore. The answer is that he wrote one of the best books ever written about swarm intelligence, Emergence [amazon.com].
For a para-scientific book, it is very deep. It goes over the entire history of swarm intelligence and really explains how local actions can have global consequences. It is also incredibly fluid and easy to read.
In short, you are not a true computer-geek until you have read it, so check it out.
Ugh. (Score:3, Funny)
Not Necessarily. (Score:1)
There's every possibility you could walk away from a session of Spore as a Fukuyama-quoting, Hegel-worshipping neocon. To quote the article:
So let me get this straight ... Hegel wrote space opera? Serves me right for never having had the stamina to read him through to the end.
I'm pretty sure Marx's Communist Manifesto doesn't end with any spaceship
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Absolutely. Because when you've become a tree-hugging hippy, you're that much closer to getting the freaky tree-hugging hippy chicks. And, there's gold in them thar hills. =)
Cheers
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Well, gold and lice.
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Ah, no. In your case, it's supposed to make the REST of us excited about the game.
If only there was a weapon of mass enlightenment... sigh.
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Seriously, give me a break. The only thing that seems to make the folks here feel better about themselves more than seeing socialists win an election is being able to shake their heads at us poor benighted dopes who think that maybe, just maybe the frigging global warming alarmists aren't necessarily right. Spare me the self-righteousness.
Some touchy-feely crap about how a video game might make me more in tune with Mother Ea
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But you see, your way of thought is to strike down all foes, ideological, political, or even just those who like one show more than another.
And whether you believe in planning for our grandchildren and their grandchildren or not, and whether you believe in civility and tolerance or not, history's greatest atrocities have always come from the way of thinking that *you* espouse, not the way of thinking that I embrace.
All th
No, the cat does not "got my tongue." (Score:1)
I wonder if the "civilization level" unit of Spore studies the immeasurably more immensly valuable theme of massive governmental intrusion into a freedom-based economy and how it leads to far more miserable lives for
Start with the conclusion, then build arguement... (Score:2)
Are people willing to say, unconditionally, that Spore is a simulatio
Hippies Go Home! (Score:2, Insightful)
All Sims games have had that. Who hasn't hit earth