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Spore Is EA's New Ace

Posted by Zonk on Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:48 PM
from the less-soul-sucking dept.
Entertainment Games
BusinessWeek reports on EA's Next Big Thing. From the article: "EA is stumbling, and a big part of its time-tested strategy is about to change. The company hopes that its next mega-franchise will revolve not around a football star, a boy wizard, or a dashing British spy, but...a microbe. The game is called Spore. Developed by Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, it lets players design an invertebrate in its primordial stages and then guide its evolution until the creature's offspring develop into a thriving civilization with cities, religion, and spaceships. EA's ambitious goal is to create more such innovative, internally developed games while lessening the company's dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises."
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[+] Spore Promo Video Leaked to YouTube 63 comments
Khamura writes "As E3 draws near, those of us who have been following Will Wright's newest brainchild, Spore, are abuzz with expectation. And lo! Someone posted to YouTube a video that shows 'unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 next week'. It includes a look at the overhauled creature editor, a first glimpse of the texturing tools, and various other exciting things that had not been shown this clearly in the early prototype seen at the 2005 GDC. One of them is the ambient music when the UFO visits different planets." It certainly looks like the game we saw last year, but take with a grain of salt just the same.
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  • Spore video (Score:5, Informative)

    by RonnyJ (651856) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:51PM (#14917383)
    Spore video on Google: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330 420559198&q=spore [google.com]
  • From what I've seen, Spore looks to be awesome [google.com]! Simply huge! I wonder, though, when it will be done - From what I've heard it's been developed on for a LONG time. From the video, it looks fairly complete, though!
    • They're just waiting for it to mutate into Duke Nukem Forever.

    • Re:Spore looks to be GREAT (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrEldarion (114072) * on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:06PM (#14917567) Homepage
      All along, they've been saying "winter 2006" as a release. I think everyone was hoping that would mean Q1, but Q4 2006 seems to be the target.

      Knowing Wright, though, he won't let it out the door until he feels it's done completely, so it may be later.

    • Re:Spore looks to be GREAT (Score:5, Interesting)

      by misleb (129952) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:07PM (#14917587)
      I'd be concerned about the game being too ambitious and not being a particularly good implementation of any of the other games it emulates. In the demo video, he talks about all the other games that it is like. Pac-Man in the beginning, then the Sims, then Sim-City, then Civilization, etc.

      It sorta reminds me of that "Sim-Sim" game found inside the old Space Quest series. Anyone remeber that? Those Sierra games were really fun.

      Anyway, Spore does look really cool.

      -matthew

  • Old links (Score:3, Informative)

    by moral kiosk (532671) * on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:51PM (#14917390)
    Video of Will Wright's Spore Demo (~35 min): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330 420559198&q=spore [google.com] PA's take: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27 [penny-arcade.com]

  • GTA model (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Douglas Simmons (628988) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:52PM (#14917392) Homepage
    I'm surprised to see people going in the opposite direction that GTA did insofar as raciness considering they had the most successful game. Perhaps it wasn't just GTA's R-ratedness that made it such a hit but the quality of the game itself, and it appears that EA and other companies agree if they're making games about microbes in lieu of cop/whore/pedestrian killer games.

    • Re:GTA model (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chrismcdirty (677039) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:56PM (#14917452) Homepage
      Of course it's the openness of the game that made it so popular, and not the fact that it's outright offensive to a multitude of people. Custer's Revenge had plenty of sex and violence, and a handful of people remember playing it. The Sims, on the other hand, managed to be one of the top selling games of all time by being an open-ended game with no real ending point.
    • What do you mean? It *is* racy. It is about evolution. Hot topic these days. It'll be banned in Churches around the country!

      Or is it Intelligent Design? I can't really tell. ;-)

      -matthew

      • Re:GTA model (Score:5, Funny)

        by sehryan (412731) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:39PM (#14917877)
        "Or is it Intelligent Design? I can't really tell."

        I guess it depends on who is playing it.

        • Re:Christian Backlash? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Manmademan (952354) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @02:38PM (#14918390)
          Speaking as a full-on, 100% bible-believing Christian, I very very much would like to play this game. It's a game. It's not the real world. In that way, I see no reason to ban it, or whatever. Now, if the game claimed (which it does not) to represent the exact same structure as creation on Earth, then that's something else.

          Why would that be "something else?" As you said this is just a game. Whether or not you agree with what it claims is no reason to ban it. The Bible Game claims that the biblical representation of Genesis is 100% truth and you don't see atheists storming the streets in protest. It's EA's right to make a game that claims whatever they wish, as long as that claim isn't outright slanderous.

    • Re:GTA model (Score:5, Funny)

      by yppiz (574466) <zippy.cs@brandeis@edu> on Tuesday March 14 2006, @05:54PM (#14920042) Homepage
      Just wait until someone discovers the Hot Chordate [wikipedia.org] mod.

      --Pat "mod +1 Evolutionary Biology / GTA tie-in"
  • Seriously, the game has been in development for quite a while, and there has been no news of late of a potential release date. I'm excited about the game, sure, but until it comes out, I don't care if EA thinks it is going to save them or not.

  • Sim Earth / Sim Life sequel? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:52PM (#14917403)
    Or really something new?

    That would be something new for EA.

    • Re:Sim Earth / Sim Life sequel? (Score:5, Informative)

      by danpsmith (922127) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:22PM (#14917727)
      It's really something new. If you watch the demonstration, this game is basically many games in one. You start off as a microbe basically eating other micro-organisms in order to gain strength or points or whatever and trying not to get killed by other microbes. As you evolve you eventually go from bacteria->sea creature->land creature, then after you are finished that evolution, tribes form allowing you to have control over the tribe. After this cities form and a civ like game goes on. After you have populated the whole world you can leave your home planet and populate others. Magnificent. The most impressive bit had to have been when I saw him drop a creature from one planet onto a moon and the creature simply exploded because the moon had no atmosphere. Then there's the fact that this will use an online database to link up everyone's creatures and try to maintain an eco system. I mean, I honestly think this game is a little bit more than a "sim" something. It's more like a computer incarnation of the living breathing thing, maybe a little sillier looking, but very scaled and nice otherwise.

  • obl. gary larson (Score:5, Funny)

    by pimpimpim (811140) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:53PM (#14917411)
    Reminds me of a "far side" cartoon: Movie Concepts Walt Disney Never Brought to Cinema:
    "Bert the adventurous amoebe"
    "Andy the sandworm"
    etc :)

  • Spore's orginal name was: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:53PM (#14917416)
    Billy and the Intelligent Design workshop.

    They had to tone it down a little.

  • Good idea, misguided goal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the grace of R'hllor (530051) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:55PM (#14917438)
    "Innovative" and "franchise" are incompatible terms. A franchise, after all, is exploiting an existing idea, and is all about "same". A game like Spore, should it be succesful, will be succesful because it is unique, not because there are a zillion and one Spore-a-likes.

    On whether the game will be succesful; it's essentially a new gametype (or mix thereof) by an industry vet, it's being hyped to hell and back, and it's got the backing of EA. I hear echoes of Black and White, and the echoes do not sound good.
    • Spore is not black and white. Besides, given Will Wright's background, I don't think he will produce a failed game. Everything he has done in the past has been borderline amazing. He's one sharp cookie and although I don't think Spores will have the success of The Sims, it will still be at least as popular as his other Sim-type games.

    • Re:Good idea, misguided goal (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MobileTatsu-NJG (946591) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:34PM (#14917827)
      "Innovative" and "franchise" are incompatible terms. "

      Wrong. See Super Mario Brothers.

      • Re:Good idea, misguided goal (Score:5, Interesting)

        by the grace of R'hllor (530051) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @04:38PM (#14919356)
        In Black and White you have enemy gods, in Spore you have enemy cities, and in both cases your critters do battle. You have little direct control over your subjects, and the game is more or less open-ended. Designing orgamisms is a (fun!) gameplay gimmick, not in itself gameplay. I see parallels here, and it has me slightly worried, insofar as I worry about these things.

        Mind you, I think it *appears* great, and the video demo was fun (had me in stitches a few times; that diplomatic 'first contact' bit was great, as were the creature designs), but there has to be gameplay. We didn't see a whole lot of the gameplay mechanics in the video, probably because they weren't done yet. Talk of 'procedurally generated' and 'emergent behaviour' is all nice, but such claims were made earlier.

        I am also worried about the lack of (talk about) synchronous multiplayer. At some point I'd want to pop my civilization online, have colonial wars and biological exchanges with critters actually being watched by another player. Hell, leave the world available online for others, so that when I get back there might be a whole range of critters on my world I wasn't aware of. Just disable the planet-pounders.

        Black and White was a great toy, but not a particularly good game. I wonder if Spore will do better. This mindless optimism, however, is never a good idea for any game, by any developer.

  • Cheat codes? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_dank (472072) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:55PM (#14917439) Homepage Journal
    I wonder if Spore will have an Intelligent Design cheat code that would skip you right to homosapien and win the game.
    • Homosapien wins?

      Huh?

      What planet do you live on?

      Have you seen what current homosapiens are doing?

        • Re:Cheat codes? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Gulthek (12570) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:36PM (#14917849) Homepage Journal
          Dude. Bacteria. The planet belongs to the microscopic.

          They survived billions of years without us, yet we wouldn't last a minute without them. All macroscopic life is an evolutionary abberation.

          • Re:Cheat codes? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Jerf (17166) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @02:21PM (#14918240) Journal
            All macroscopic life is an evolutionary abberation.

            If you get right down to it, "evolutionary abberation" is either an oxymoron, or redundant, depending on your definition of abberation, but at no point is that a useful statement.

            It's important to realize that humans aren't the absolute unparalled masters of the living world in every conceivable manner. It's equally important not to make the opposite error. Macroscopic life is Mother Earth's only significant hope of actually getting off the planet on a big scale, for instance, and "macroscopic life" is only a hair's breadth on the cosmic scale from effectively enslaving microscopic life. (Even if we humans muck it up, I'd bet somebody or something cracks the problem before the sun wipes life from the planet.)

            Macroscopic life exists because it works.

  • Article title pisses me off (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spiffness (941077) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:57PM (#14917466) Homepage
    Its not EA's new ace. I dont give any credit to a company that BUYS good ideas and claims them as their own.

    Will Wright is the mastermind of this one. Its Will Wright's next smash hit.

    Screw EA, if they had their way, we'd all be buying 6 sports games a year, every year, and thats it.

    EA is doing its part to provide slashdot with the weekly 'video games in a slump?' stories.

    Will Wright is like a recently eaten explorer trapped inside a monsters body.

  • for those that don't have flash: screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

    by pimpimpim (811140) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:57PM (#14917468)
    Google video is nice and all, but eats my cpu. So, here some screenshots for the people with underpowered pcs:

    http://www.thesporezone.co.uk/screens/index.php?ID =1 [thesporezone.co.uk]

    http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php [spore.com]

  • Outragous! I must protest! (Score:4, Funny)

    by jandrese (485) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:58PM (#14917475) Homepage Journal
    Hmm, this game sounds like Evolutionay propaganda to me. I demand that the game include a "truth" mode where your civilization simply appears as fully developed humans (minus one rib in the male model) and goes from there. :)

    Actually, that would be a clever little joke on the creator's part. Perhaps include a "-dogma" commandline switch that does just that. If they really wanted to get some reactionary types mad, they could even include various modes for all of the crazy creation myths from various world religions.

    • Re:Outragous! I must protest! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Carthag (643047) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:20PM (#14917705) Homepage
      If so it would be hilarious if they included the Norse mythology. Giant cosmic cows & people coming out of salt/armpits/etc & skulls being used to create the firmament!
    • Actually, that would be a clever little joke on the creator's part. Perhaps include a "-dogma" commandline switch that does just that. If they really wanted to get some reactionary types mad, they could even include various modes for all of the crazy creation myths from various world religions.

      I for one am looking forward to the -noodly version, where Pirate Fish roam the seas, preventing Global Warming, as our Great Noodly One, the Flying Spaghetti Monster [flyingspag...onster.org] invisibly floats overhead.

      My catma ate your dogma.

  • Videos are old (Score:5, Informative)

    by Guspaz (556486) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:02PM (#14917523) Homepage
    The video links people are posting are about a year old. So yeah, they're cool, but they're nothing new, and we haven't heard a peep about the game since then.

  • FUN TIME (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SandMonkey (926467) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:03PM (#14917535)
    I know it's a tenuous link at best... but this game really reminds me of "EVO Search for Eden" which was an old game on the SNES with a similar concept... You start out as a fish, and you eat smaller animals to gain points, you then use these points to evolve your character. The game went through several stages (Fish/Dinosaur/Bird etc) and was great fun! Hopefully SPORE will be just as - if not more -fun!

  • Thank the friggin' Lord (or maybe FSM) (Score:3, Funny)

    by coinreturn (617535) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:04PM (#14917548)
    I quit playing games awhile back because I was sick of the selection being limited to Hollywood Crap, Sports Crap, and tired FPS. Let's get back to the innovative games that are fun to play instead of just franchising the same old shit.

  • Can't wait for the expansion packs (Score:3, Funny)

    by dalleboy (539331) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:06PM (#14917563) Homepage
    Spore: Hot Date
    Spore: Bustin' Out
    Spore: Nightlife

  • it's about damn time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rayde (738949) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:12PM (#14917630) Homepage
    while i dutifully buy an EA football game once a year, i really think EA needs to move away from its dependency on existing franchises and follow Nintendo's lead by innovating into new gameplay ideas. Let's hope it's not just lip service.

    so here is my idea for EA. I think they should change madden releases to bi-yearly, with a $5 or so roster update/patch in the off-years. The huge pool of resources poured into madden every year could be directed into these smaller home-grown projects.

    Will they lose money? I dunno. They'll make money on their roster update, that's for sure. And if they create a few gems with those reallocated resources, they're opening up loads of future franchise possibilities.

    so the choices are to continue to cash-in now, or to plant these seeds for the future.

    • I think most of Slashdot would like to know this.

      Why the fuck do you buy a game series you're unhappy with? At what point in the sale do you think "This is identical to the game I already have 3 versions of. Why am I buying another version?"

      It's like buying Tetris over and over because they change the name of the blocks and add more eye candy for each line being removed.

  • Spore is going to be a monster (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Deep Fried Geekboy (807607) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:24PM (#14917748)
    Spore is going to be a monster hit. The video is from a year ago. Knowing Will Wright, it has probably evolved a long way since then.

    Anyone else play SimLife, which was a kind of very primitive precursor to this? I bought it, along with all of the other Maxis sim-titles way back when, and spent a long while playing it, but found it frustrating in the end because the complexity was not well handled and every scenario seemed to decompose into a monoculture or a mass extinction. If Spore can nail all that, it will be a massive winner. It will also prove WW's point that procedural content is better than created content.

    What I like about WW is that he seems to have thought more deeply about the concept of play than anyone else I can think of in the videogame realm. His are the games you don't feel bad giving to your kids (in fact I don't feel bad about giving most games to my kids).

  • Start the Procedural Revolution. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tukkayoot (528280) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @02:16PM (#14918192) Homepage
    I've said it many [slashdot.org] times [slashdot.org], but I'm going to say it again ... Spore looks like it will be a fun game, but what's most exciting to me about it is the heavy emphasis it puts on procedural generation ... the way the game is smart enough to figure out how to animate the virtually endless variety of creatures you're going to be able to create ... and also because of how easy Wil makes it look to create content using the tools included as a part of the game.

    Raph Koster outlines in his presentation titled Moore's Wall [raphkoster.com] how, right now, the growing power of computers is making games prohibitively expensive to produce. As the power of the machine grows, there is pressure to utitlize the new power to improve on the presentation (mainly, the graphics) of the game, which makes the game a lot more costly produce without adding much in terms of gameplay, and usually resulting in a reduction in the amount of actual game content.

    One way to break this trend is to utilize the increasing CPU power of PCs to procedurally generate content, or to assist the player in creating his their own content. Of course, our procedural algorithims and software have to improve a lot if it's going to be an important supplement (let alone replacement) to the traditional way of doing things, which is to have professional artists hand-craft everything.

    In this regard, Spore looks to be a huge step in the right direction. We need more projects like Spore to mature the technology. The fact that EA seems to be recognizing Wil's genious and throwing their support behind his project is a good thing, if the suits at top see the promise of this kind of approach, it can only mean good things for the industry. EA was not exactly in love with the idea of The Sims before it was proven an unmitigated success, despite the fact that Will was already an acclaimed game designer well before that game's release. So, even if EA isn't entirely turning over a new leaf, at least they're trusting their golden boy enough to say that they're pinning their hopes on his newest experimental idea.

    • Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:5, Funny)

      by withears (881576) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @12:54PM (#14917423)
      Conservatives feel that Spore will open the way to fully immersing our youth into the Intelligent Design movement.

      • Re:Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:4, Funny)

        by shelterpaw (959576) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:47PM (#14917941)
        Conservatives feel that Spore will open the way to fully immersing our youth into the Intelligent Design movement.

        Liberals hope that Spore will open the way to fully immersing our youth into bi-transsexual organisms with no morals or values. :P

      • Re:Intelligent Design Simulator (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Cy Sperling (960158) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @02:04PM (#14918099)
        Actually, I think it is quite the opposite. It makes a very compelling case for the mechanics of evolution. Granted, the player exerts a guiding hand over mutations, but the whole point of the game is to grow organisms from single cells all the way to intelligent extra-planetary species. This is achieved by progressive mutations that, hopefully, give the newer organsim an advantage in it's environment. Intelligent design proposes that fully-formed complex creatures simply sprang forth onto the earth from a 'designers' hand. The beauty of Spore is that you cannot create your creatures with the end result in mind. You start with a single cell and intervene with it's design at intervals based on it's ability to succeed in the environment. You would never get to simply sculpt an intelligent humanoid from clay, give it a soul and toss it out into the world. Instead your end-game form is dependant on a multidue of generational mutations which were each a reaction to a gradually changing environment. Add in the fact that the other creatures in your world can be comprised of the creations of other players and, if anything, you get polytheism- multiple creators whose 'children' compete for success in the universe.

    • Re:Deja vu for Black & White (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Edgewize (262271) on Tuesday March 14 2006, @01:09PM (#14917612)
      You could make the same argument against SimCity, The Sims, etc: "That looks like a lot of cool technology, and there is a huge degree of player freedom, but is it a compelling game?"

      Maybe Spore is just doomed to repeat the failures of SimCity and The Sims ;) Or maybe we have a very narrow-minded stereotype of what actually makes a game compelling.

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