Will Wright's Next Game: Spore 41
1up.com has a look at Will Wright's newest game, revealed today at the Game Developer's conference. Entitled Spore, the game promises to be (in a word) unique. From the article: "Wright's latest creation spans the rise of a space-faring civilization from its humble beginnings in the primordial soup. 'It's actually a lot like WarioWare...It features a wide variety of game types as a sort of homage to my favorite games.'" PC Magazine has details as well, as does Gamasutra.
Summary: (Score:5, Informative)
1) Freeform Pac-man (with E.V.O. and Cubivore leanings, with consuming other things to change the abilities of your own creature)
2) Diablo-like
3) RTS-like (think Populous)
4) City Phase (think Sim City)
5) Civilization Phase (think Civilization *)
6) Invasion Phase (go forth into the universe, colonizing, invading, and terraforming)
At that:
"The Invasion section of the game is enormous, potentially endless. After hunting for other populated worlds, players can venture into the universe in the manner they think best fits their personality: Whether using the diplomacy of Star Trek or the destructive fury of War of the Worlds. Some races will welcome players, while others will greet instellar visitors with hostility.
Ultimately, the goal is to help players' comfort with and understanding of the gameplay and tools scale up and evolve in tandem with their virtual progeny. "This is very much contrary to the usual game design," Wright says. "Usually you get the sandbox gameplay as training wheels for the goal-oriented content. Here, the goal-oriented game is training you for the open-ended sandbox." By the time players are ready to conquer the galaxy, they'll have mastered every element of the game interface and will be ready to tackle the rest of the universe on their own terms."
"The Future of Game Content" (Score:4, Informative)
With other EA divisions claiming 150 person teams, Wright showed their was another way, keeping teams smaller, and allowing user driven and procedural content to fill the gap.
This was a theme at the GDC this year. In his talk a couple of days ago, Tim Sweeny talked about how good tools can also keep team size down, to a max of 50 in his case. 50 is still large, but if it gets a 25 mil $ game down to 10, thats much more profit to the studio and developer.
Re:Sounds great, but can Wright deliver? (Score:2, Informative)
Amazing. Especially given that the procedural creatures will be serialized for sharing in about 1k of data, giving what Will described as a 5000:1 compression ration.
Amazing! (Score:3, Informative)
Notes from Will Wright's Spore demo (Score:3, Informative)
The Future of Content [donhopkins.com]:
...and why it's driven me to procedural methods.
...And what I now plan to do with them.
What I learned about content from the Sims.
Will Wright
Game Developers Conference
3/11/2005
Wired asked for an illustration to print in the magazine, anything he wanted. So he made a diagram of Spore [donhopkins.com] that Wired published, but he didn't tell them what it was. The design docs for Spore have been out in Wired Magazine for a year now. (It's in the Feb 2004 issue of Wired.)
Here's a link to the web site where you can find out What Kind of Care Bear Are You? [lavendersea.net]
-Don
Re:Sounds great, but can Wright deliver? (Score:3, Informative)
He had several slides about the demo scene in Europe, which he discussed to illustrate his point about algorithmic compression.
From my notes [donhopkins.com]:
Algorithmic compression.
Games consist of a mix of code and data. Computers use code to compress data. The ratio of code to data has changed over time.
Games used to be mostly code and very little content, so compression was important.
CDROM is the medium that was the death knell for the algorithm. Myst was a very elaborate and beautiful slide show, with a vast amount of data. It looked like they had a great time building this world. Building the world is a fun game in itself.
At the other end of the spectrum from CDROMs: The Demo Scene. Algorithmic compression of graphics and music.
-Don
Re:Dangerous Ground (Score:3, Informative)
The evolutionary ladder from bacteria to galactic god is not a bunch of "mini games", it's actually a goal-oriented TUTORIAL and SANDBOX that trains you to play the real game that you start once you achieve interstellar travel. The meta-game is a collection of science fiction story genras, a storytelling game, where the player can surf back down to the lower levels to achieve their higher level goals and act out the stories of the meta level game.
From my notes [donhopkins.com]:
Meta Games
Meta games around different genras of science fiction.
Invasion (war of the worlds). Adult supervision (Day the earth stood still. Uplift (2001). First contact (Close Encounters). Abduction cross breeding (X-Files). Diplomacy (Star Trek).
Most of the narritive will come into the game through the space game.
Broad variety of different worlds to visit.
Cross-pollination of content created by different players.
Going to another player's planet.
You can abduct creatures, and go back to populate zoo planet.
T shaped game.
The base of the T is a goal oriented gaming.
The player first goes through a tutorial and sandbox to learn editing tools and game play at each level.
Player can eventually surf down to the lower levels.
Goal oriented game trains you to use all the editors and teaches you the simulation dynamics at every level, from bottom to top.
Once you get to the top you can surf vertically down into the other games, that you've learned to use on the way up.
At the top of the T is a collection of science fiction story genras, that take place on top of all of the lower levels.
Once you make your way all the way up from unicellular life to intergalactic civilization, the storytelling begins.
-Don
My Detailed Impressions (Score:2, Informative)
It's almost an hour long and I go over each and every screen and action performed during the demo.
You can listen to my podcast at: http://www.gamingsteve.com/ [gamingsteve.com]