TITLE: Spore, or who do you think we are! AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 3/16/2005 04:10:00 ip. ----- BODY:

Spore, another fancy trackback post from Portico. Fancy, isn't it? Technology is marvellous, but it's not marvellous enough for something huge and gigantic as Spore yet. Spore, spore, spore. The living legend, Will Wright, has set his eye on the new Sim* game... And no, it won't be about your Sims' pets. No, this time he plans to make the ultimate god game. When I first heard about it, I was all "Are we there already? What happened to the time?"-ish. But you dear reader, might be wondering what is Spore exactly. To sum it up, you're basically nursing full fledged species from the start of singular cells to the galaxy trekking civilization. Truly sounds neat, doesn't it? But well, I'm not really optimistic about this project. Think about it, think about the proportions this game's making needs. You're going to need more scientific knowledge than in SimEarth for effin sakes, you're gonna need so much data... And then you have to compute it according how your own species will evolve. Now, I admit that I don't really know much about this side of the issue, but I'm gonna amaze you with my thoughts about it. Unless someone invented working nano-computer when I was on cryogenic freezer, I doubt that the computers on this era have computer power to calculate stuff in accurate degree. As fraxyl, the scary peep from #colonpipe (EFNET) said, Will Wright is probably going to abstractise it. This removes some of the interest for me, but it's sounds like the only sane thing to do. When you're going galaxy wide, you have to abstractize some of it, right? Otherwise your poor computer would explode when computing the planets in our milky way. But man, I was looking forward to Gamma Ray Bursts. Of course, this issue is not the only one. How to keep the trigger-happy gaming crowd happy? (as doowopman said) SimEarth, while it probably did simulate evolution on our lonely rock, was mainly a statistics game. I've seen some screenshot of the game, and it seems that it could in theory attract people who bought The Sims games. More "educated" gamers probably buy it just to get more difference in their games, as everything is pretty much same these days. But, will it be enough? Will people even care about evolution at all? Grand Theft Auto's demonstrated that people want something different, or maybe not at all. Maybe they just wanted to pimp their rides. Or let off steam. Or will this die as many interesting experiments seem to do, and fade into oblivion? Not likely, when EA is controlling the money taps. Which means lots of advertising and imago raising. (HYPING COUGH COUGH) I'm still skeptic about it, even the interface is scaring me. I mean, how effectively can one control galaxy wide civilization? How much degree of control can you have before the game becomes completely unplayable? You can't certainly control single cells anymore, so I suppose Wright will just sort of advance through the interface as your species evolve. That would make sense, but... Who knows? All these issues are pretty much needed to faced with any game developer, in one point or another. In the end, you could go extremely experimental with this game's interface, and I have gut feeling that Wright will. You just can't have regular interface with game like this, after all. But, when you're dealing with a game that is trying to simulate LIFE itself, you're in big load of trouble. There are these big unknown variables that no one knows, there are questions left to be answered with the whole evolution... How did it all began? What lies beyond the existance? What about the other dimensions... This game will surely put us down to the big questions again, so I guess it can't be that bad. These are questions after all, that are good to ponder about. But then again, who is wanting to? We have full-time philosophers for that sort of thing, I just want to see my species mate. Well, I just wanted to write some of my questions about the game and doubts. Interesting idea anyway. "Will Wright be enough? Will he manage to pull this one off? Are we witnessing something great and unique, and as Porcius mentioned, is Will Wright the new god of games?!!?" For Similar Games Try: Unnatural Selection and SimEarth

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