Spore About Six Months Away

SimCity creator and all-around genius Will Wright recently publicly stated that Spore is about six months away. Whether that's six months from completion or release isn't said. CVG has his comments from a recent interview with Radio 5 Live: "Spore's an ambitious game - which he admits - that's essentially a life sim. Players start off as a single-cell organism and then create their species at every stage of its evolution - from its first steps on land through to tribes then a culture and then finally it's off to explore the galaxy. 'We've had to do a lot of testing to make sure that the game is accessible by a wide group of people', Wright went on to explain. 'I want the people who have played The Sims to be able to play Spore - I don't want it to be some thing just hardcore gamers play.'"

Summary = Article

[TheThiefMaster (992038)]

Just like there isn't anything more in this post than in the subject :)

6 Months

[Taimat (944976)]

Right After Duke Nukem Forever - which will be released in 5 Months....

Re:6 Months

[Jarjarthejedi (996957)]

And just before Nuclear Fusion, approximately 7 month away. Don't forget the flying cars coming in 8 months.

I hereby predict and welcome our '6 Month's later' Overlords will arrive in approximately 1 years time, if we're lucky, in Soviet Russia.

Re:

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

We need to get Jack Bauer involved (when he is not in prison).
Whenever he is around everything seems to get done "within the hour"

Re:6 Months

[IthnkImParanoid (410494)]

I look forward to playing Spore on my fusion-powered computer (running a secure Windows OS) in the passenger seat of my robot controlled fuel cell powered flying car while listening to the inaugural address of president Kucinich.

Everyone knows DNF will be exclusively released for the Phantom.

Re:

[jnaujok (804613)]

Don't be ridiculous. Kucinich will never win...

Re:6 Months

[IthnkImParanoid (410494)]

You can't just carry around a fusion reactor in your pocket, silly...at least not for the next few years. The fuel cell is for portable energy storage, not energy generation.

As far as the android girlfriend goes, I think I'll wait until the shapechanging gel models come out. One little software glitch and you're making out with the business end of an industrial can opener.

Re:6 Months

[C0rinthian (770164)]

Linux-powered android girlfriend...

So kinda like a virgin. You know she's safe and clean, but the experience is going to be clunky and uncomfortable.

(I kid, I kid)

Re:6 Months

[LingNoi (1066278)]

You can modify her to do anything you want. ;)

Sounds like EA, Will Wright

[fistfullast33l (819270)]

and the Iraq War proponents have both started converting time to Friedman Units [wikipedia.org].

Call Me Cynical

[Squiffy (242681)]

Call me cynical, but the wider the audience is, the dumber the game will be.

Delays are not always bad.

[Devir (671031)]

Now the time has come with Spore delays that people equate it to Duke Nukem Forever. For one, Will Wright is a perfectionist. He wont let trash get released. he wants the game acessible to more than the hardcore. The money spent developing would justify the need for a wider audience.

People dont make games simply because they want to, they need to take a serious financial look at cost versus estimated market. You cannot simply jump in, spend $20,000,000 dollars in development and expent the game to be a 5 million copy seller.

Remember Sims 1? That was a huge risk for EA to take. A risk that paid off beyond what anyone imagined. They game was simple, barren of serious content and low graphics. It was all done in a way that if the game didnt sell well, at least they didnt invest excessive cash into the game. By making it expandable, they had planned for it's potential success. Years later Sims is going strong.

Spore is in a similar category. It could flop, it could be the boulder that crushes the sims dominance. But if they release a game, that is buggy, and crash prone, that they plan to patch repeatedly for another year, the game will be quickly dropped and fail miserably. So in taking this risk, they must be 100% certain that Spore is complete, 99.9% bug free and acessable to a large ammount of people, both hardcore and non gamer alike. It's not easy to do this. It takes time, planning, implementation, testing and more planning and revision. Give it time, it will be worth the wait.

Now, Duke Forever. It's an FPS, no where near as complex as Spore. It should have been out after 2 years development. It was basically an empty promise that kept the company alive. Duke = Vapor, Spore = Real.

Re:

[Goldsmith (561202)]

I don't know, this all seems very Peter Molyneux-ish to me.

A developer is making an extremely complex game (like Black and White) after making a very sucessful simple game (like Populous). The complex game takes forever to finish, features are in limbo, there are lots of cool videos, but... is the game any fun?

Urination (Not OT)

[Anti_Climax (447121)]

Am I the only one that can't hear about spore without thinking of this Penny-Arcade comic? [penny-arcade.com]

Re:

[garyok (218493)]

Hmm, while water sports with Will Wright have a certain allure, I always think of this gem [vgcats.com]. And the Maxis guys liked is enough to do their own version [vgcats.com] of it with the Spore graphics.

Talk about not knowing your market

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

The Sims IS hardcore. So harcore that people buy expansions after expansion while it is THEM that create the real content, pay for sites hosting user made content and spend ages working around all the shortcomings of the original product.

First update for most people? To get rid of the cartoony look of the characters and get some realistic faces in there.

The Sims community is as hardcore as the flightsim crowd. This is NOT a casual game. Casual gaming is web-based. Games you can pick up and play AND finish in a few minutes. The Sims AIN'T.

In fact the only difference between The Sims, flightsims, trains sims and the "traditional" hardcore crowd of FPS lovers, is that the first group can speak proper english and has touched a member of the sex they find attractive.

But in time and money spend on the game, in many ways the former group is even more hardcore.

So what does he want Spore to be? A tetris type game OR a The Sims?

Re:Insert witty subject here

[njfuzzy (734116)]

Perfect for *my* Birthday. Which just goes to show that it all works out in the end.

you might still get it

[jimstapleton (999106)]

after all...

Spore About Six Months Away

Has been true for any given day of the past two years! Once a year, it will be ready in time for your birthday.

Re:you might still get it

[Bobartig (61456)]

No, there have been some tentative release dates, but it's only been "about six months away" in two distinct points in history, this being one of them.

Re:you might still get it

[Skevin (16048)]

Actually, they were able to cut the development time short by changing the final goal of the game.

Instead of trying to evolve single-celled life into a viable space-faring race to do battle with each other, your new goal is to evolve single-celled life into viable space-faring ravenous aliens to be the bad guys in Duke Nukem Forever.

Solomon

Re:Insert witty subject here

[steveo777 (183629)]

It's okay. If you live long enough, you'll probably have another birthday. For more information [wikipedia.org].

Re:Insert witty subject here

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Maybe he's a Cauliflower [wikipedia.org], you insensitive clod!

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Underwhelmed Indeed. I was totally stoked about playing Spore when I first saw it... Now there are so many other cool games that ACTUALLY came out like Portal that make me not care as much about Spore.

Re:Underwhelmed!

[nschubach (922175)]

You make an interesting point. Would we be better off not knowing about stuff (building up hype) until it's ready? Is this why open source isn't gaining more steam? People expect the instant gratification? Your more likely to pick something up if it comes out "production stable" within a specific period of time? So let's say there's an ambitious project to create a game with ___ feature, but this is going to take years of development and bug testing. Would you like to know it's on the horizon or about 1 month before it's released?

Re:

[montyzooooma (853414)]

No.... it's not an RPG. It's an alien doll house by the guy who popularised Sim Dollshouse. The fun in Spore comes from sticking arms and eyeballs on your virtual pet. The games are simplified fare which will be torn apart by those mythical hardcore gamers. I think some people have been reading too much into the videos, which are usually 50% focused on the design screen and 50% showing the actual game, except the design screen IS the game. Just you wait, the Spore backlash will make Black And White look lik