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Spore may not be complete, but work on the game has reached the home stretch. Now, instead of needing to explain what his game is about, legendary game designer Will Wright can demonstrate the levels of evolution in his game; he has creature-design tools to show.
One cool thing about Spore?
Quote:
Well, actually we are going to go on all platforms, but we will come out on PC first. We will even come out on cell phones and stuff. One of the things in the game is that as you go around and encounter things… creatures and plants, or whatever, you make trading cards of each thing. That is the metaphor for the database -- trading cards. So you can collect your cards. You can print them out. You can now play your own card game. That might be like the cell phone part. That stuff is so light. It's more about collectability as opposed to interaction. Every creature in the PC game is three or four megabytes. But the cards, that is the database that the player is building.
Look what he says about the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii
Quote:
Six hundred bucks; that is a lot of money. I'm rooting for Nintendo. What I don't like is that the way the Wii controller works depends a lot on how close you are to your TV. If you are five feet away it feels one way. If you are 10 feet away, it feels completely different.
I have almost got all of the Maxis games from Sim City (Classic) onwards!
Quote:
Breakfast ends, and Wright starts towards the Convention Center. He will spend the next nine hours in a small room giving demo after demo of Spore. As he leaves, two people recognize him and ask about Spore or simply think him for all of the great games he has created.
Spore is a computer and video game designed by Will Wright that simulates the complete history and future of life. Its concept, scope, and development philosophy (broad use of procedural generation) have drawn wide attention.
Spore is, at first glance, a 'teleological evolution' game: the player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex animal, until the species becomes intelligent. At this point the player begins molding and guiding this species' society, progressing towards a spacefaring civilization. Spore's main innovation portends to be Wright's use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness. Wright said "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."
The game was first revealed and demonstrated to the public during a speech on procedural generation at the 2005 Game Developers Conference. It is currently being developed by Maxis and is expected to be published by Electronic Arts in the first quarter of 2007.
Developer(s) Maxis
Publisher(s) EA Games
Designer(s) Will Wright
Release date(s) TBA 2007
Genre(s) Simulation
Mode(s) Massively Single-Player
Rating(s) ESRB: Rating Pending
Platform(s) Windows, PSP, DS, mobile phones, 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 confirmed
I thin its going to be a big thing, hopefull not as boring as the Sims, the only Maxis game I dont like.
The Most Exciting Part?
Spore will be a simulation that "ranges from the cellular level to the galactic level". In his GDC speech, Will Wright likened the style of game-play of each phase to an existing game:
Tide pool phase, similar to Pac-Man
Creature phase, Diablo
Tribal phase, Populous
City phase, SimCity
Civilization phase, Risk and Civilization
Space phase (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), with some elements reminiscent of Destroy All Humans!, and later sandbox gameplay.
Each phase of the game determines the starting point of the next phase. In the GDC presentation, the creature that Will Wright was presented with upon the transition to that phase, was based on his earlier cell creature (in having two legs, a tail, eyes and mouth in roughly the same positions). He also mentioned that how each phase is played develops the creature's personality, talking about how the creatures could be logical or emotional based on the tribal phase.
And also...
"Massively single-player"
Wright calls the game a "massively single-player online game". Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), cataloged and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games. The data transmitted will be extremely small  only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the "phenotypes" of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc.
At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game[5].
At E3 2006, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game[6].
Sources:
Wright, Will (February 2004). Evolve! Will Wright's Grand Unified Theory. Wired magazine.
Kosak, Dave (March 14, 2005). Will Wright Presents Spore... and a New Way to Think About Games. GameSpy.
Davis, Galen (March 11, 2005). Will Wright Wows GDC with new Sim. GameSpot.
Parish, Jeremy (March 11, 2005). Spore PC Preview. 1UP.
Hopkins, Don (March 11, 2005). The Future of Content (GDC demo review).
Glicker, Steve (2005-06-09). Interview with Will Wright and the Spore development team. Gaming Steve.
Terdiman, Daniel (May 20, 2005). Wright Hopes to Spore Another Hit. Wired magazine.
Waugh, Eric-Jon (March 29, 2006). Spore: Pre-Production Through Prototyping. Gamasutra.
Wright, Will (April 2006). Dream Machines. Wired.
King, Tayfun (May 2006). User-generated future for gaming. BBC News.
Rating: 5.00/5.00 [1]
Author:
Editorial Team City: London, UK • Executive Management Team • Articles: 17
Author
Comments
Thomas Lohse
Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Articles: 6
Comments: 8
Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:58 pm Post subject:
Wow this game sounds like its going to be really neat. I hope My pc will be good enough for it. Great article Sam.
Rating:
0.00/5.00 [0]
Josh8178
Joined: 22 Aug 2006
Articles: 2
Comments: 5
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