• lawsuit

    EA Hit with Two New Anti-DRM Class Action Suits

    Two people filed suit in federal court against Electronic Arts back in October, alleging the SecuROM digital rights management installed on their machines by a trial version of Spore Creature Creator, and a full version of the Sims, constitutes unlawful and deceptive business practices.

    These two suits, reported today by GamePolitics, seek class action status and join a third filed in September over the use of DRM in Spore. More »

    3:00 PM on Sat Nov 8 2008
    By Owen Good
    7,038 views, 96 comments

    Most discussed antisniper: Like I said, time and time again, there is no definitive proof that Securom causes those problems by itself. You more »

  • halo

    You Got Your Master Chief In My Spore!

    It may not be as mindblowingly impressive as the amazing StarCraft recreation done in Spore, and the shine of Spore creature creations may have started to dull to the more jaded of us, but this collection of Halo universe heroes, beasts and vehicles, built in Maxis' sim-everything game is still pretty darn neat.

    Culled from all over the Sporepedia, this collection of all things Halo remade in Spore is likely to impress. From Master Chief to the Prophet of Truth to Warthogs to even the little things, like a Covenant energy sword, there's not much that doesn't show serious craft and dedication.

    Halo Invades Spore [Hawty McBloggy]

    4:40 PM on Thu Nov 6 2008
    By Michael McWhertor
    5,744 views, 11 comments

    Most discussed Lazlo: Wow, that must've taken a lot of time. Has anyone made a Big Daddy Spore creature cause then I would more »

  • spore

    Time Announce Top 50 Inventions Of 2008, One Game Makes List

    Time magazine, masters of the high-brow "top XX" list, are back this week with their take on the top 50 inventions of 2008. The vast majority of them don't apply. To us, at any rate. We don't really cover the retail DNA testing industry, or the daily comings and goings surrounding the (awesome) global seed vault. No, we do games, so we're interested in the one, single video game that managed to make the list. And that game was...wait for it...yes, Spore, which came in at #20. Dubbed "the everything game" by the magazine, calling it "blasphemy, brilliance or both".

    Oh, and deviant commenters will be thrilled to see that disemvowelling came in at #42.

    50 Best Inventions 2008 [Time]

    11:30 PM on Fri Oct 31 2008
    By Luke Plunkett
    13,193 views, 86 comments

    Most discussed ReconToaster: ok, I'm tired of spore being revered as such an amazing thing. I was excited for it as were many more »

  • spore

    Science Says ... Spore Flunks

    An article in Science magazine discussing why Spore flunks various kinds of science after close scrutiny by a variety of scientists reminds me of history buffs that get hysterical when a movie is historically inaccurate. While a couple of them had a few nice things to say, Spore in general got poor marks in organismic and evolutionary biology, squeaked by with barely sufficient grades in cultural anthropology, physics, and astrobiology, and was reasonably highly rated in sociology and galaxy structuring. But they're not just trying to grouse, really: More »

    11:30 AM on Sat Oct 25 2008
    By Maggie Greene
    9,012 views, 104 comments

    Most discussed XForce: "When you stick a limb on your creature, wouldn't it be nice to have an optional pop-up window that explains more »

  • clips

    Harry Connick Jr. Explains Spore To Conan O'Brien

    Harry Connick, Jr. — musician, actor, humanitarian, and now Spore enthusiast — appeared on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" to talk about his the latest happenings in the world of Harry Connick, Jr. Those happenings are Will Wright's latest Maxis creation and something about a Christmas album. Hopefully, Harry can be weened off his Spore addiction before anyone gets hurt — the phrase "I've taken it out on my wife now" in relation to his interstellar frustrations is hopefully more tame than it sounded at first listen.

    Also, "joystick panel," Conan? I thought you were one of us. Thanks for the heads up, Kyle.

    7:00 PM on Mon Oct 20 2008
    By Michael McWhertor
    4,752 views, 58 comments

    Most discussed Handbanana37: Is it me or is Harry Connick Jr. a retard? more »

  • will wright

    What Will Wright Thinks About Spore's DRM

    Will Wright attended the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards ceremony at the Hearst Tower in New York City last night where he saw Spore pick up an award for Setting Benchmarks in Design, Creativity and Engineering. I caught up with him afterward for a bit to find out his take on the whole DRM situation. EA's John Riccitiello said a few days prior that he isn't a fan of DRM, but something had to be done to stop those pirates. I asked Wright how involved he was in the decision process to include DRM for Spore or if it was mostly EA's doing. More »

    10:00 AM on Thu Oct 16 2008
    By Jim Reilly
    19,571 views, 76 comments

    Most discussed Quilt: What Valve and Blizzard have going on with Steam and Battle.net seems like a pretty good answer to me. more »

  • popular mechanics

    Popular Mechanics Honours Spore, Dual Flush Toilet

    Science & Technology journal Popular Mechanics is hosting its annual Breakthrough Awards this evening and will be celebrating the past year's high achievers in the fields of invention, engineering and general cleverness.

    Among the latest batch of winners is EA's intelligent design masterpiece Spore, which will be receiving a Breakthrough Product Award alongside Intel's Atom processor, Amazon's Kindle e-book and - of course - the Caroma Profile Smart Dual Flush Toilet.

    The ceremony will take place tonight at the Hearst Tower in New York.

    Breakthrough '08 [Popular Mechanics] More »

    5:20 PM on Wed Oct 15 2008
    By Stuart Houghton
    2,403 views, 23 comments

  • Expansionism

    Spore Gets Cute And Creepy, Space Adventures

    EA has announced two new expansions on the way for their blockbuster life-creation game Spore, and while things might be starting off a little slow with a simple infusion of new creature bits, new gameplay elements are coming that will change the way you play the game. Kicking things off in November is the Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, an expansion that adds more than 100 new parts to the Creator Creator, divided as the name would imply.

    That's nice and all, but the expansion to the game's Space stage slated for spring 2008 is where the real excitement lies. The upcoming changes will allow your space faring creatures to beam down to new planets, earning rewards for completing various missions. The expansion will com complete with an Adventure Creator, allowing players to create and share their own custom missions. It's going to be huge. Hit the jump for more info, along with some screens of November's crappy little parts update. More »

    11:40 AM on Tue Oct 14 2008
    By Mike Fahey
    9,366 views, 82 comments

    Most discussed mva5580: Let's just see how high the bitch-count can go with people coming on here to whine that it should have more »

  • rumor

    Retailers Listing Spore "Expansion"

    Listings have turned up on both GameStop and Amazon's store pages for a Spore expansion. Sorry, "expansion". Called Spore Cute & Creepy Parts Pack, it's got a shipping date of November 18, and is currently listed at $20. Going by the name - and really, that's all we've got to go off at the moment - we're subtly led to believe it's a new box of spare parts than anything that'll add any new meat to the mechanics of the game. And for $20, there'd want to be a hell of a lot of spare parts in there.

    Spore Cute & Creepy Parts Pack [GameStop, via Hooked On Spore]

    8:20 PM on Fri Oct 3 2008
    By Luke Plunkett
    4,728 views, 84 comments

    Most discussed Hamsfork: This expansion pack is coming out slightly over a month after Spore came out. This means that it's either terrible more »

  • drm

    On DRM: Not Every Inconvenience is "the Plight of Sisyphus."

    Chris Remo, in an op-ed on Penny Arcade, takes on the righteous indignation heaped on publishers — notably EA — over the use of DRM. The anger over DRM might be principled bitching, but the point is it's still bitching. Writes Remo:

    Though it's not a popular view, in my mind a lot of gamers are overreacting—look how many people buy music through iTunes, whose DRM mechanics are hardly lenient. That's not meant to be a judgment of right or wrong, it's just an observation that may illustrate the gulf between a certain gamer segment and the larger audience that seems to be continually more frightened away by non-casual PC gaming; I would submit their flight isn't based on activation limits.

    More »

    12:00 PM on Sat Sep 27 2008
    By Owen Good
    14,314 views, 158 comments