New Spore Details, Possible Movie Deal 73
Eurogamer has a new hands-on analysis of Spore, as well as an interview with game designer Will Wright. He talks about the lengthy development cycle, the influence of religion (or lack thereof) on the game, and how movie-like stories are integrated into modern titles. Coincidentally, EA wants to license the television and movie rights for Spore as part of a new marketing campaign.
Anything new on the install limits? (Score:3, Interesting)
Has he said anything new about the securom DRM recently? Since it's supposedly going to have the same 3 install limit as mass effect, I cancelled my pre-order.
I simply won't accept a game that so heavily restricts how many times I'm allowed to reinstall windows or upgrade my PC in the lifetime of the game before having to make an expensive phone call to plead with EA tech support to be allowed to continue playing, with no guarantee they'll say yes. Even for a game that looks as tasty as spore.
Re:Anything new on the install limits? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is my plan.
I'm buying the game.
I'm downloading the pirate version, and putting it on my game PC. the one I buy, goes on my work PC.
Every 2 to 3 days, I'm going to call EA and complain about the game making my emulators not work, restricting me from testing hardware out. Changing bios settings, messing with my firewall, whatever I can do to make the DRM shut me down.
If they get enough phone calls, and it costs them enough money, they WILL kill the DRM with a Patch.
Will Wright still gets money, and EA might get the shaft.
Re:TV Show or Movie ? (Score:4, Interesting)
How could you make a TV show or a Movie about a simulation game that is supposed to be limitless ?
A movie with creatures made from the game ?
Actually... I just thought of an approach that would be kinda creative and fun.
Instead of making a game set in the "Spore universe," whatever that is (and you're quite accurate in saying such a thing is ridiculous), what about a movie about the ideas that go behind a game like Spore?
If Spore is ultimately about simulated evolution, perhaps you could make a movie about the simulation, rather than taking it at face value. A bunch of lab geeks playing god with their artificial world. Throw in some typical Hollywood business about the simulation becoming self-aware, and you've got an interesting idea. It'd be a movie about the relationship between a god and his/her creations, with the twist that the gods are just normal human beings.
Alternately, you could just do a sort of Matrix-style thing. Any of the Sim franchises is probably ripe for it, although I don't know how far you could push the novelty of that.
Of course, it could just be that EA's licensing the rights as a marketing move to sorta highlight that, "Hey, Spore is such a big franchise, we're even licensing the rights to it. Never mind that there's almost no chance we actually make a movie based on it, and even if we do, it'll probably be crap."