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Spore Editor Available June 17th

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Apr 28, 2008 07:50 AM
from the get-yer-spore-on dept.
PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games
Dr. Eggman writes "Ars Technica heralds the coming of the creature editor for the highly anticipated Spore. A previously promised downloadable demo of the creature editor from the game, due on September 7th, will be available June 17th. Furthermore, a full version of the creature editor will appear as a standalone product at the same time for $10. According to EA: 'The demo lets players shape, paint and play with an unlimited number of creatures, using 25 percent of the creature-making parts from Spore. Gamers can then share these creations with their friends, including seamless uploads to YouTube.'"
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Submission: Spore Editor Available June 17th by Dr. Eggman (932300)
[+] EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM 249 comments
An anonymous reader writes "In response to recent criticism, EA has decided to eliminate the periodic validation of Mass Effect and Spore. 'Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.'"
[+] Spore System Specs Released, Creature Creator Coming Soon 125 comments
Will Wright's long-awaited game, Spore, seems to be nearing completion, with a release slated for September. In anticipation of this release, EA has outlined the system requirements and will still be releasing their Creature Creator demo for experimentation on June 17th.
[+] EA's (Limited) Creature Creator For Spore Released 116 comments
JimboFBX writes "The Spore creature creator has been released. It's a limited demo, but it lets you make a full creature and test drive it a little. It gives some insight on what you'll be able to do with your creatures. Personally, the novelty already wore off within 10 minutes. From what I can tell, the full creature creator is a separate purchase from the actual game. Gotta love EA." An anonymous reader points to a thread at More Awesome Than You alleging that this creature creator also contains some phone-home features which might be cause for concern.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
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  • money off the full game? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cliffski (65094) on Monday April 28 2008, @07:54AM (#23222526) Homepage
    No mention of it, so it sounds like you will be paying this as a premium just to try out the editor before the game is finished, which doesn't appeal.

    • Sounds like a great deal to me, personally (Score:5, Insightful)

      by patio11 (857072) on Monday April 28 2008, @08:21AM (#23222856)
      No offense to the starving college students in the audience, I was one once and I've been there, but: $10 is far, far below my care threshold these days. I'm a grown-up, I earn a salary, and $10 for an oodles-of-enjoyment toy is an absolute no-brainer for me even if it doesn't come with a discount for the actual game. Typically, nothing I buy for $10 is intended to last, anyhow. That doesn't even cover a sandwitch or movie ticket these days, and I can virtually guarantee that I will get more child-like glee out of that critter editor than I did out of seeing, e.g., Jumper.

      (Maybe I can mock up that Anakin Skywalker guy, just so I can feed him to hungry predators.)
      • And the kicker is that you can get the demo for free. You don't even have to spend the lowly $10.

      • I earn a salary too, and I'd be pissed off over the general principle of it if they only charged 50 damn cents. They're essentially asking the game playing public for $10 for the privilege of doing their jobs for them. I think I lost my faith in the future decency of the video game industry when Oblivion players started paying $5 (or whatever) to caparison their horses. Nevertheless, you seem to be confusing outrage over the practicality of the matter with outrage over the principle of it.

        tl;dr version

      • And really, it is like paying a measly $10 to completely pwn other Spore players who do not for the first 3 to 6 months of the game.

        I got to do this kind of thing (pre-release Beta- keep your characters) on a MMorgg. Even folks putting in 20 hours a day didn't catch up for months because I was always in empty areas with a few other experts to group with while they were in zones so packed you could barely move, got hideous lag, couldn't find any resources/mobs, and had to deal with a bunch of other clueless

      • Re:money off the full game? (Score:5, Informative)

        by CogDissident (951207) on Monday April 28 2008, @08:20AM (#23222844)
        Actually, they have said that the reason they're releasing the creature editor early, is to populate the game with creatures (that we make) before the game comes out. So non-networked players will have species to play against from the start.

        So they're actually being paid by us, to make content for their game. Which is actually kind of the premise of this game (for good or for ill, they count on people making their content for them).
        • It's nice that they're trying to populate the game for offline players...

          but is anyone else concerned that all the creatures will end up looking the same?

          In particular the tribe and city levels seem to not care about initial creature design, the cities look the same for every kind of creature.

          It looks like the only game components that reflect the creature editor are the first few stages. If only one or two stages rely heavily on the creature editor we might see a bunch of identical user created desig

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by OzRoy (602691)
          I hope they are moderating it then. Otherwise I'll probably load up the game and the first creature I meet will look like a mouse with a penis grafted onto its back.
          • The irony in your statement is astounding. Do you think the full game is just going to appear magically? If not then someone has to create it and you've just said that you expect to be paid if you create so I guess you're fine with your hypocrisy in wanting to download it from TPB instead of paying them?

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Creepy Crawler (680178)
              I guess you've never heard of sarcasm.

              Take a look what I posted prior to this (article about anti-copyright getting removed from Canadian copyright discussion).

              I'm for fair compensation for creators. I dont necessarily think it needs copyright. However, Spore-creators want to charge people to create content, which they will turn around and sell back to the creators.

              I dont think what they are doing is right either.. unless they are paying people back for good content (heh heh hardly).
          • I would get whiplash if I expressed that strong of a self-contradiction so clearly and in so few words...
  • his is viral marketing at it's best: build up the excitement for years, finally announce another far-off release date and charge people for a preview of it.

    Also, pun intended.
      • I'm actually waiting for this game on Wii, although I'm sick of hearing about it. I hope it'll be a good game. I'm just saying I wont bite on their 10$ add.
          • The game was announced fore the Wii. Just not release date. For all intents and purposes, if a simpler version can dun on the DS, there's no reason a more decent version will on the Wii.
            • The Force Unleashed is also coming to the Wii, from another developer, with a different engine, and no impressive physics effects. The game has the same name, but is it the same game?

              That's like saying the GBA version of Madden 08 is the same is the PS3/360 version of Madden 08.

  • fisher-price creatures? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Speare (84249) on Monday April 28 2008, @08:14AM (#23222746) Homepage

    Like many here, I have been waiting and watching all of the endless demonstrations of this game, because it really caught my attention. However, my interest is waning with each new demo.

    Am I the only one who doesn't like the direction the artwork is going? Maybe it's partly the presentation format but there's more to it. The early demos had a nice art style, realistic colors used in a gentle way, subtler textures. The more recent demos have shown the same super-saturated colors that plastic toy manufacturers (and Redmond OS designers) prefer to use. Even the space shots and primordial ooze scenes seem less realistic and more schematic in nature lately. In short, What was M. C. Escher is now M. C. Hammer.

    Maybe they're spreading themselves too thin with an insanely aggressive multi-platform release (hello, Nintendo DS simultaneous release with 2D pixel art!?). Maybe there are some real technical challenges to making this "pervasively online yet not at risk from griefers" panacea they appear to promise. But honestly, don't make it suck on purpose.

    • Re:fisher-price creatures? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2008, @08:21AM (#23222868)
      In short, What was M. C. Escher is now M. C. Hammer.

      *has visions of parachute pants that appear to billow both outwards and inwards at the same time*

    • Maybe there are some real technical challenges to making this "pervasively online yet not at risk from griefers" panacea they appear to promise.

      I never thought about it before but what's to stop a proliferation of goatse-inspired artwork appearing in your game? Is the user-generated content going to be screened?
  • Editor is cool and all, but what is the current ETA of the game iteself and what platforms will it be released for? PC?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by kinoku (1259628)
      Xbox 360, PC, PS3 just like the Sims. And then maybe a retarded version for handhelds.
        • Art Direction has nothing to do with eye-candy; it's about how you do it, not how you overdue it. I bought a PSP due to Patapon, its originality and style got me right on the spot. It has a consistent style throughout the whole game. And , unlike for example what Frank Miller's Spirit seems to do, Patapon doesn't resort to oversaturated, contrasting colors; instead it appeals to subtle gradients. Flow is another example. The point here isn't realism or special effects, but rather the art style. While supers
    • Editor is cool and all, but what is the current ETA of the game iteself and what platforms will it be released for? PC?

      A previously promised downloadable demo of the creature editor from the September 7th due game..."

      Hmmm, wish I could help you out with the first part. As for platforms, I believe it's definitely PC/PS3/360, with a possible Wii version(?) at this point.
    • PC, Xbox, PS3 and DS

      DS version will be 2d vector based and far more....interesting looking(looks like those shaped felt cutouts you may have played with in Kindergarten)

      PC, Xbox and PS3 will be that 3D procedural thing you saw at those tech demos and talks.
  • this is the EA side of spore showing its (dark) colours. Some executive going "OMG! this has taken too long, can't we sell something right now?"

    Who wants to play with just the editor??? I'd have thought the first stage of spore would have been a much more interesting as a standalone, buy the first part (for DS, PC, Xbox, PS3, mac) download the full game for just XX.99 extra

    The timing is just right for a "omg it's just around the corner", but the completely wrong part of the game is being sold off as a sta

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Talderas (1212466)

      Conspiracy theory #2 is that they don't want to pay artists to create the models of things for the final launch, better to sell the useless editor and make people do the work for them.

      Am I right? Or am I right?

      I would assume that Maxis is going to pick and choose from the user-generated creatures to put in release. I suspect there will also be some sort of method to identify you to your submission so if they end up using it in the game your name gets plastered on the credits. Heck, if you're really good with submissions, Maxis might come out and ask you to work for them.

      People talk about how great OSS is, yet when the very same premise is put out there to develop content for game (albeit at $10 a participant), p

      • SimShow tool was released before The Sims (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SimHacker (180785) on Monday April 28 2008, @11:12AM (#23225644) Homepage Journal

        I wrote The Sims character animation for Maxis, and also a tool called "SimShow [ea.com]" that we released before the The Sims release date.

        SimShow enabled players to view and create their own character skins, so that when The Sims was finally released, there were already web sites publishing hundreds of characters for the game. (Many of them would have been impossible for EA to legally publish themselves, like Spiderman, Star Trek characters, etc.)

        The Sims was much to complex to release a demo version, because it required a critical mass of objects to work. We could not release a stripped down version with only a few objects or levels, like most other video games. Instead, by releasing a tool to create content instead of a hamstrung demo, it improved the game when it was eventually released, instead of delaying it.

        That approach worked quite well for The Sims, so it's no wonder that EA is repeating it with Spore.

        -Don

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by canajin56 (660655)

      Conspiracy theory #2 is that they don't want to pay artists to create the models of things for the final launch, better to sell the useless editor and make people do the work for them. Am I right? Or am I right?

      No, that's completely right. The game uses fancy clustering stuff, sort of like "recommendation" algorithms on netflix etc. So you start designing your first creature, and it populates the world with various other creatures from the database, that its distance algorithm measures as "similar" to

    • Re:Hmm, let me guess... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Snowmit (704081) on Monday April 28 2008, @08:57AM (#23223458) Homepage
      Well, you're something.

      From day 1 Will Wright has been saying that the content would be user generated, it's kind of the point of the whole 'procedural world' game play. Whenever people connect to the Internet with the game it will pull creatures that fit into your environment from a database of created creatures.

      So where you see a conspiracy theory, I see a chance to mess around with the editor before the game comes out and for my creations to be some of the early creatures that are populated across the network.

      Who wants to play with the editor? Me and people like me who really enjoy the creation half of video game play. We're the same people who spent hours customizing CJ in GTA:SA despite that fact that no one but us would ever see him.

      We're not all of the players, to be sure. But we're enough of the players that this is probably a really great business move. EA gets more cash and I get something I want.

      No arguments here!
  • That editor would be free and fully functional if there were some smart people within EA. Imagine all those people downloading it to kill a few hours. "Oh wow, this so cool! Haha, look at that!". They end up getting hooked and then get curious as to how their creations will behave within the game. And there you go, sales stats +1. Given that you pay 10 bucks for the editor and probably 60 bucks for the full game, it seems pretty straightforward: The sales potential of a creature editor for 10 bucks is limit
    • Three words. Bit. Tor. Rent. If they felt like it, the bandwidth cost would be nothing. Or, if it was free they could just toss it out there and it would be on download.com and tucows and all the other free download sites. And that is how it will work for the free crippled version, won't cost THEM any bandwidth at all. Why they are charging for the full version I don't know...don't they WANT people populating their database so it can make better choices when populating new players' worlds? Guess

  • Spore Wife (Score:5, Funny)

    by hansamurai (907719) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Monday April 28 2008, @08:57AM (#23223456) Homepage Journal
    All my wife wants to do in Spore is make creatures, heck, all she does in the Sims is make us and then produce 10 spawns from "us". She's got a real bun in the oven now though, so maybe she'll get over this faze, but the whole point of this is: if I can spend 10 dollars to make her happy until we have to take care of a real spore, I'll take it.
    • She's got a real bun in the oven now though, so maybe she'll get over this faze, but the whole point of this is: if I can spend 10 dollars to make her happy until we have to take care of a real spore, I'll take it.

      Yeah, I say go for it. She's probably going to be disappointed with the "real bun" when she finds out that it isn't very customizable -- you can dress it and style the hair, but things like skin color, sex, and number of limbs are all more or less fixed.

  • My big concern (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rAiNsT0rm (877553) on Monday April 28 2008, @09:21AM (#23223830) Homepage
    I have been awaiting Spore for quite a number of years, since I saw it demoed the first time in person, even though it really isn't a game I would normally enjoy. Since then I have had one massive concern which is already proving out... that I am going to be totally brought out of the experience with stupid/inappropriate user generated creatures.

    Sure they can be marked offensive and eventually removed, but I will still have to play against boob-shaped creatures, and flying butts. Leave it to nerds to instantly go for the juvenile garbage. Even national gaming mags have pieces where they state they can't wait to make crap like that.

    Ugh, I've lost my interest. Sorry EA this is going to be the downfall. Guaranteed.

    • Re:My big concern (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dr. Eggman (932300) on Monday April 28 2008, @10:16AM (#23224700)
      In demoing the Sporepedia, a card-like encyclopedia of user generated content, the creators have stated that creatures/veichles/buildings automatically added are based on a sort of dynamic filter created out of your own choices in creation/selection. So, if you do not want to see such things then you simply need not create/select them and they will end up at the bottom of the selection choices as more favorable selections are pushed up.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Liquidrage (640463)
      Oh noes! Flying butts. The horror.

      Seriously, who taught you to be so offended by such trivial things? It's not something you're just born being offended by, it's a learned behavior. And one we'd be better off without.
  • A lot of people in the comments of the linked article are complaining/debating about the "cuteness" meter. I think it could be a rather fun feature. Have something that looks at-first-glance like a "cute, cuddly widdle kitten", but with an geiger/aliens-style secondary mouth or perhaps some freaky tentacles hidden away for unsuspecting victims.

    I wonder if creatures will be able to "mate" in the game. It would be rather fun to copy somebody's cutesy creature, but add a few surprises and then chomp on unsu
  • I can't find any details in the Ars Technica links about the creature editor regarding AI. Will this game involve people programming the creatures to do things and interact with each other autonomously? That would be really cool. I wouldn't even care about the graphics if it just had an accessible AI dev environment. Kind of like the old Apple ][+ game, "Robot Wars," but not programming in assembly.

    Seth

  • We have the technology... (Score:3, Funny)

    by imasu (1008081) on Monday April 28 2008, @10:23AM (#23224850)
    This editor will allow is to finally reanimate Duke Nukem to kick some mutant ass, in... Duke Nukem SPOREVER!
  • So, lemme get this straight. You have to pay for an editor for the world's first "Massively Single Player Game" that mines it's install base for interesting content?

    They should be paying us as developers!

    No offense, Spore is the ONLY game I am looking forward to, but I just think this is pushing the definition of "demo"... Even if they gave it away, it wouldn't be freeee....

  • For only $10, I'll probably buy it, and not care if I get a discount on the final game. If they want to generate even more community content, they could offer to pay $20 to the creator of any creatures they incorporate into their game universe.

    • I see this game as one that "could" bridge the gap between "The Sims" crowd and the rest of us.

      You mean bridge that previously impassable void between adolescent giggling girl & overwieght middle-aged grumpy fat bloke? Impossible!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Wiseman1024 (993899)
      Rule of thumb: if they talk about an incredibly amazing AI that pretty much takes over your computer, checks your bank accounts and calls you a moron for having not invested in XYZ which has risen by 200% last month, and you think it may be true, you're in for a disappointment. See Oblivion.

      On the other hand, if you expect an above-average AI with good gameplay dynamics giving an overall very pleasant experience, perhaps with a bit more of creativeness than the usual, you're in for an enjoyable experience.

    • Re:Vaporware? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Talderas (1212466) on Monday April 28 2008, @08:44AM (#23223254)

      Spore has generated a great deal of hype. But endless delays and brief glimpses of demos are starting to give this whole project the feel of vaporware.
      Far from it. Spore is finished, they are just in Beta-testing to work out all the kinks. The Spore we saw when Robin Williams created a creature, the Spore which Will Wright first demoed, is nothing like what it looks like now. September 7th is the release date, which is directly stated in the article. Call it Vaporware if you will, but in just over 4 months the world will suffer a slight productivity drop as many individuals start playing Spore.
      • Spore has a black and white feel to me. Hyped beyond belief. Very cool concept. Bored with it after 4 hours.

        IOW, I don't think productivity is going to suffer on a global scale. That's already here, and it's called WoW. People are just used to it by now.
        • I was bored with The Sims in just a few hours. Why play something so mundane? Yet, last time I checked, it was the best selling PC game of all time, and it wasn't even close.

          Spore seems like taking The Sims, and making both the gameplay and design process far less repetitive, and far more interesting. I'm not sure I'd ever have the same gameplay experience twice. Add-in internet play, and it does seem like a slam dunk.
      • Spore will not make the September 7th date.
        It'll be pushed to "Holiday 2008" with the excuse that they have to go through our millions of submissions to populate the world.
        It will then be pushed to "Q1 2009", with the excuse that they want to make sure the servers are ready ready for our massive influx.

        The game will release in April, 2009, with many features missing. These features will be available "soon after release", but will never fully materialize.

        The game itself will enjoy moderate initial sales, bu
      • One of these things is not like the others...

        Hint: Py3000 was _defined_ as purely a wishlist. Calling it vaporware is incorrect. And plus, it's coming out this year, with alphas already available. Hardly vaporous.
      • Prey was vaporware and shipped. Mark my words, Duke Nukem Forever will ship within the next 18 months and we'll have to start joking about the Phantom instead.

        The Linux Desktop is gaining in popularity, and is becoming mainstream. More and more countries are switching all schools and government desktops to Linux every day. Brazil is installing 52 million KDE desktops in their schools right now. WalMart and Dell will both sell you a Linux PC. If that isn't mainstream, I don't know what is. At best, Lin

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