SPORE

HazMask

Join Date 04/2008

SPORE

...from the mind of Will Wright.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else out there been waiting years for this title to release? If so... fear not, for September 7th 2008 is upon us. Finally. But, all we can do is hold our breath. Those who know, this game's release date has been pushed back year after year. Month after month. However this time, we have a specific day. Not just a quarterly prediction, or a general month.. a month, day, and a year.

http://www.spore.com

The best way to describe SPORE is to call it a "evolution simulation". You start off with a microscopic organism.. and you simply eat other smaller ones. And once you've earned enough points, you can evolve your creature via the "creature creator". Now.. how you evolve it is totally up to you. Defense? Offense? It's all very basic... or so we thought.

Eventually, your organism becomes a full fledged creature. Your creature emerges from the tidal pool, and sets foot/feet/paws/flippers/whatever-you-want on land. Boom, Hello World! But becareful... other creatures have evolved too. Some may have evolved into herbevorous dwellers.. or multi-toothed vicious carnivores. In any case... life must go on.

This leads you to the Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase (i.e, take over your planet), and furthermore... the Space Phase.

The following are direct quotes from Spore.com commenting on each phase of the game.

Tide Pool Phase
Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It's survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.

Creature Phase
Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!

Tribal Phase
Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you upgrade their state of existence.

Civilization Phase
Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.

Space Phase
The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A 'mission' structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.

Sound neat right? It is. Imagine the GC2 Ship Builder... but for creatures. And for ships. And buildings. And cities. Yes, that's right. Not only can you totally customize your creature...but you can customize their building style, vehicle style, etc. Awesome.

But.. how crazy can you get with the creature editor? I'll show you.

The following are different fan concepts submitted to the SPORE team. They put the crew to the test, just to see if the editor can actually give you as much control as you want. So let's take a look...

Fan Submitted Graphic

Creature created in the SPORE Creature Creator

Wow.

Fan Submitted Graphic (looks like maybe an attempted 3D render)

Creature Creator

Amazing... And.. just to be real crazy...

I'm sure this fan thought he stumped them...

And he was wrong.

(There are more at the official website for everything SPORE, http://www.spore.com )

But.... that's not all. The game not only lets you builder whatever you want, but it recognizes the creatures structure, and it customized how the character would move. Bipedal? Walks. Lots of little feet...they all work together, like a centipede.

It also recognized the offensive/defensive abilities of your creature. It will use what is on it's body to attack. For instance, if you have a claw hanging off of the top of your creatures head, it uses that to attack.

This has been displayed numerous times in videos of SPORE, whichare all displayed on the SPORE website.

Here is a quick glimpse of the creature creator...

Are your creative juices pumping out yet? Already itching to try your hand at this?

Well... coming on June 17th, 2008 you can download a 25% enabled demo of the creature creator, or..for $10 (yes, EA are a bunch of moneygrubbing ..ehrm.. yeah. ) you can purchase the full Creature Creator. It lets you do everything fully to create your creature, and offers you a small little area to see your creature in action. And of course, these are importable to the retail version coming in September.

Now... on one final note. They have categorized Spore as a Multi-Single Player experience. Or some kind of catch phrase like that. What this means that, if you have an internet connection, your game will actually pull down other peoples creatures and use them in YOUR game to populate the planets in your game. This is done via the Sporepedia. Basically, all of your creatures are uploaded to it, and will populate other people's games. And vice versa. This ensures you will never run into the same creatures over and over again. There will always be something new.

Anyhow... this is my little spill about the game. It's gonna be good. There are tons of screenshots, team created creatures, and videos all at the official website at http://www.spore.com

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By the way, EA has already tried to set-up a subscription based service "EA-Land", and failed. See http://www.gamespot.com/news/6190268.html?tag=latestnews;title;4.

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By the way, EA has already tried to setup a subscription based game ("EA land") and failed. See http://www.gamespot.com/news/6190268.html?tag=latestnews;title;4

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@redwingdw28: Yes, it seems EA is starting the milking process. People said they were changing but I don't see it happening. Also, screenshots show it getting simpler and simpler by the month... It's sinister.I'm not getting on release. EA has lost my confidence a long time ago. I'm going to wait as much as I can, because I'm sure an expansion pack with missing feature shows up...

you see what EA does to good games.

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you see what EA does to good games.

Heh... have you guys seen this?

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52547

Essentially it says EA will place a required online activation with a phone-home every 10 days. If the game can't reach home within 10 days it will deactivate..

If true, I find this disgusting as I was planing to buy this. What do you guys think? I think they should look at Star Docks excellent philosophy of DRM free games heh.

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Essentially it says EA will place a required online activation with a phone-home every 10 days. If the game can't reach home within 10 days it will deactivate..

The problem with this line of thinking is that it only creates a never ending arms race between pirates and developers. Each side will run as fast as possible merely to stay in place.

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While Developers will eventually win (with enough time and money) pirates will have a upper hand in that. It takes alot of money to create a effective protection, but people crack it for free. Some would pay money to try to crack it.

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While Developers will eventually win (with enough time and money)

They will need more than that. They will need better legal protection. It has to be too dangerous to become a pirate, especially to be a distributor of pirated materials.

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Thrawn2787

Join Date 03/2007

+30

This really makes me feel like I should bump my "There is a search button" thread... no offense.

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I have just found out that EA is also going to create an activation system that needs reactivated every 10 days or the game deactivates, found it on a couple of sites , not sure if its true but it looks that way. If they implement this system I think I will be cancelling my pre order, its just a step to far as say Im not online? It feels like purchasing a game and not getting the full product, I dont know the ins and outs of it all but my patience is wearing thin. I pre-ordered this game years back but when a company starts behaving in this way it just tells me that the game isnt going to be as good as they have made out and they want to trap consumers, add to that as an avid collector of games I tire of being treated like a criminal and having to jump through hoops for silly shortsighted corporations. (Gamers are part of the problem as well because now that EA has got away with the extra $10 charge and it was largely accepted , they will continue to push their luck, a truely sad state of affairs. Im including myself as part of the problem by the way because it wont be the first time by my purchases I have supported companies that are out to screw the consumer for everything they can, the whole piracy argument doesnt wash with me either, they include stats that are based on assumption and companies that dont adopt any stupid overly zealous protection and activation systems do equally well and there will always be a portion of users who want buy so why treat the rest of us like crap?)

All I can finally say is the protection systems get hacked withing 3 weeks usually, sometimes 1 or 2 days and I can with some confidance speculate that the same will happen with spore which begs the question who is this system hurting? In my view its the company because of created bad will and the users who are legit.

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I'm interested in Spore, but also careful. There *is* a lot of hype around that game. It might live up to it - Wright and Johnson have definitely shown that they *can* live up to high expectations - but it also might not (nobody's perfect). The lengthened development time makes me a bit suspicious of design problems.

I certainly won't buy it on release day. I need more reliable information (and previews from the gaming press has unfortunately turned out to be not very reliable; think about MoO3 or the Oblivion hype). And after release, the gaming forums will be full of people who either repeat the hype, or slam the game because it didn't meet their high (and possibly inflated) expectations. About two or three months after release might be a good time to asess whether it's worth buying.

However, if EA actually implements forced repeated online activation as copy protection, then I won't buy it no matter what. *I* want to be in control of the products I purchase, I certainly do *not* want to be at the mercy of some ill-reputed company who could make my game unusable by failing (or consciously stopping) to transmit a certain signal that's continuously required.

I'm not convinced that this report is real. They can't actually be that dumb, can they? With such an aggressive invasion into the customer's machines, they'd just encourage potential customers to get cracked versions instead (which no doubt will be around, and will work without online activation).

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It is real. The BioWare devs have confirmed this is the copy protection scheme that will be used in Mass Effect, and have stated it will be used in Spore as well.

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Well, so much for Spore, then. I'll certainly survive without it.

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Hey Psyringe,

Really sensible comments. In regards to the report, yeah I know its a farse but I believe its real especially considering this is a company thats charging users for a demo which has traditionally been free and make no mistake this is nothing more than a demo and if they could do that I wouldnt put anything past them. I remember on spore communities you had users hyping the game so much and saying openly they would pay for this and that gimmick. The thing is its no surprise were being taken for mugs since many gamers are accepting of any old crap, it all boils down to people with more money than sense and this is whats causing this farse of gaming restrictions these days and it comes under the guise of piracy protection more often than not

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Ya, with the DRM they're putting in SPORE, I'll be very happy not buying it. I got burned by Mass Effect already (pre-paid pre-order the day before their "Revelation").

So... Bioware / EA gets no more money from me... those ass hats.

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Ya, with the DRM they're putting in SPORE, I'll be very happy not buying it. I got burned by Mass Effect already (pre-paid pre-order the day before their "Revelation").So... Bioware / EA gets no more money from me... those ass hats.

Pre-paid pre-order? Can you not cancel and get your money back? Or did you already do so?

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Apparently this game is going to have the same disgusting copy protection system Mass effect is getting.... sorry, but no thanks. I am hitting EA where it counts, their wallet. i wont be buying this game.

I have said it once and I will say it again. This is a major reason why PC gaming is supposedly dying.

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This saddens me greatly..I have been looking forward to this game for so long! Why? Why? Why must people be such douche bags? What kind of fucking shit is this! 10 day reactivation? Are you f'ing serious? Any EA games coming out with that DRM needs to be boycotted. I hate EA unbelievable. They will never have my business. If I were just a bit more stupid this entire post would just be the f word over and over. Along with me screaming Elections Arts like kirk did with khans name. I wish stardock would roundhouse kick EA in the face so hard. On the bright side, this kind of crap will cause EA's downfall in the PC gaming industry..Letting Stardock take much more business and hopefully correcting this horrible atrocity!

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There's only one problem with this game: it's made by EA. Stardock has, in my opinion, set the standard for how a company should interact with its customers and fans. EA is quite the opposite.

BF2 and BF2142 are my examples - abhorrent patch support, poor responsiveness to problems, terrible game performance, an out-of-the-box game that was buggy and obviously pushed out the door, pushing out sequels and content packs so close to each other in an obvious bid to milk money from players.

I'm quite sick of EA's business model and their ethics and how they support their games and I for one won't buy Spore simply out of a desire not to support a bloated and misguided publisher.

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Thrawn2787

Join Date 03/2007

+30

Why is that copy protection thing turning people away?

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I'm uncertain if anyone has heard this little bit about PC's Mass Effect, but apparently they're planning on using it with SPORE as well. This is by far what turns me off to buying the game completely.
WWW Link

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It is already my favorite game of all time. I guarantee it.

I know the quality of Will Wright games, and the scope of the game is PERFECT to me- I mean, you could play for 60 YEARS and never see your whole universe in the game! I do not fall prey to the "it's a sandbox game and gets boring" concept like so many other gamers do either.

My only concern is if it will run on my lower end system- if it doesn't, I swear to everything dark and evil I will murder someone and take their new computer. I will NOT be able to go a day without playing Spore once it is released.

That said, I can't imagine it would require a system more powerful than one that could run Bioshock, and I was able to run that fine.

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Probably because people want to be able to purchase the game, not rent it.

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Multianna

Join Date 10/2006

+10

Why is that copy protection thing turning people away?

To me its the way they do the "every 10 day check". I would like to play my legal game when ever i want, on what ever machine in what ever way i want to.
There is no guaranty that they wont take additional information which you dont know about.
When will this crazy "copy protection that dont work anyways (and they already know it)" stop? that is why i dont feel safe to buy the games, as my stuff on my PC is privat, and i dont want some company (especially EA) to lure in it.

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The short answers are:

- People don't like software that has to phone home to work. And you don't know exactly what info it's sending.

- People get really upset when they want to play a single player game and can't just because the Internet isn't available. Think about people traveling and not at home.

- People get ticked off when they upgrade their PC and have to reactivate the software because it thinks its on a new system.

- People don't like the idea that they may not be able to play the game at all if the company goes out of business or just decides to shut down the licensing server. See recent news stories about Microsoft and licensing music purchased on-line.

I think that form of copy protection is just a bad approach. It'd be a little better if the registration number was validated when you tried to download or upload creatures, and the download failed if you weren't authorized but allowed you to still play.

Given that a key feature of SPORE is sharing the creatures, I'd think the better approach would be the SD strategy of rewarding registered users.

I'd planned to get SPORE if it ever released (and the reviews were positive), but now I'm not too sure.

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What's with the "every 10 days thing," anyway! Does EA really think that I'm going to play my LEGAL game one day, and then go out and get a pirated one and play that the next day?!

@Multi

You could always incript your private files, if you really want to.

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