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.'"

Re:Underwhelmed!

[nschubach]

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:Urination (Not OT)

[garyok]

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.

Re:Delays are not always bad.

[Goldsmith]

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?

Re:The Coolest Thing

[montyzooooma]

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 like GOTY material.