@penhalion: @penhalion: @projectmayhem:

122456

@penhalion:

122456

122456

Sandbox games come about because people are actually interested in design and, tragically, not that interested in yet another adolescent power fantasy involving escalating levels of violence and polygons. Wax eloquent about the blood splatter physics, yet decry a game that is focused on creativity and exploration more than leveling.

Look at the talks again. Make your own damn stories, that's the point. You got a typewriter instead of a book: stop trying to read the typewriter like a book.

Gritmonger

You know, when you don't spend time with it. You can stay in any stage as long as you want. It takes only 5 hours if you right away start trying to discover fire in the Creature Stage, so you can advance. If you want to stay in it and actually PLAY the game like it was meant to be played, then it takes more than 5 hours to play. :/

5 hours was the minimum amount of time it takes.

Eagle73

Serdun

blp2021

guitarboy0915

BigChiefSmokem

As usual everyone who didn't go to the demos though I was lying. Well now you know and I can smugly say "Told you so!"

Seriously though. It seems to me that so many people these days see a screenshot and somehow manage to read a thousand page book into it. The thing suddenly becomes some mega title. A little thought should have told most people that the game description alone didn't leave any room for actual gameplay. "You create a creature and WATCH it grow". Really. Did no-one simply think why the frak would I want to sit about watching it grow?

penhalion

Isn't that what you were expecting? That's what I was expecting...

Relee

triplehelix

...but as time goes on i feel more jaded about the title. this post just hits me where it hurts (the nutsack, generally). what's the point of "simming the shit out of stuff" when the simming ammounts to just a few hours gameplay before getting what really is the end goal (a fancy spaceship to boldy go where noone has been before & then get really bored and move onto the latest directx10.7 game that renders your €500 graphics card useless).

projectmayhem

Dark_Cheetah

BurningRevenge

Pit falls and the loss of the sheen that has been placed on this game is bound to happen. the real question is just how much is going to let us down before we get our mitts on this game?

dsvella

ALTAHOLICS REJOICE!

justhesh

And then those players blow the shit out of your planet of course, but that's besides the point.

Since no official announcement's been made yet, my guess is that the box copy you buy of Spore gives you about a 5ish hour game, built almost entirely of a very polished version of the tools made to build the game. Kinda like buying Neverwinter Nights, only the focus is almost entirely on the Aurora Toolkit and the single player campaign is just an afterthought thrown in as an example of what you do with the tools.

Then once you reach space ... I won't be at all surprised if there's a LOT of micro-transaction fees. The premise of seeing hundreds or thousands of other planets built by other players (think of downloading complete plots in Sims, only on a much larger scale) .. on the one hand it sounds cool to zoom around in space and view / corrupt other people's creations. On the other hand you can no doubt expect to pay for the opportunity.

My guess is that at least a part of the delays and extended development time is that they're simply trying to figure out how to host and charge for all of the uploaded content, yet still be able to sell the concept to Sims users who've been getting user-created content for free for years now.

Sardu

Uglyshoe

hoorayforcorn

Then again, a player can adjust the speed of play as they wish, considering civ mode doesn't start until you build up brain size.

Ghede

You could say a similar thing happens in The Sims 2 - baby through to elder - with each 'stage' having its own challenges - but the difference there is that the Sims all inhabit the same concurrent world. So you end up with young sims and old sims needing attention - and so on.

With Spore, however, there seems to be little incentive to go 'back' a stage unless you're starting a new species. But you don't seem to play them concurrently, so you can't swap between sorting out a warmonger tribe and bringing up a legless ball of lard with arms... and I may be wrong, but it seems this 'discrete' structure of the game is where a lot of the difficulty in getting it to work well is stemming from.

humilitybecomeshim

Exploration of the game contains both the horizontal (explore the world) and vertical axis (explore the different stages).

azer

I think the idea that, after you reach galactic overlord status, you can go back and try to evolve a whole new species on a world you've already built up/taken over, taking wildly different approaches, is a good thing.

And, in fact, it makes the ~5 hours to space something that's actually manageable. Do you really want to be stuck doing a repetitive task for 15-20 hours at a time, 20-30 times over the lifespan of a game, when you want to set up your own galactic war, full of races you've built yourself?

SilverStar95

Let me instead point out that you may have to go through every stage each time you make a new creature. 6 hours a pop to get to the space age again sounds a lot more acceptable then, say, 20 hours per go.

Tatortot

rezeul911

I can't wait for it.

Reuptake

Rabish12

Deletable_Man

It's like playing the Sims until your first Sim dies of old age then complaining that the game is too short.

Sabre_Justice: Okay, no more long name.

Anyway, take this next quote into account too:

"The space phase, for instance, would have missions and more of a campaign structure, something, they said, that will make the game endlessly playable."

Sub

30 minutes for what is essentially flow seems fine to me. An hour and a half of the next 5 stages is fine with me. You guys have to think about it like this: The game starts when you get into space. So it's 5 hours of training you for the game, then the real game begins.

Reserve judgement until you've played it.

Sub

Billqvist

K4el

tawxalotl

unless

It appears we've entered a new phase in the Spore release build up: the anti-hype stage. Then, once our expectations are all sitting way down low...they'll release something that totally rocks and the hype will crank up again. Yawn. Whatever. I'll try it when it come out. That's all I know. If it is good, I'll probably pick up a copy of my very own.

lophat

VakeroRokero

gsilverfish

If you think about it, that's plenty of time for the creation stages.

I mean, I sure as hell would not like to spend 3 hours as a single cell, followed by 5 of the next stage, 3 of the next, and so on.

Besides, just because you can reach space in 5 hours, doesn't mean you have to. Maybe you can stay in a stage as long as you want until you decide to "activate the next". You cant become a land animal if you never touch the shore!

Coquiton

SHEEZ.

DoggySpew

With the first level acknowledged as an introduction, the point of the next four three is to spend as much time as you want on them. A player interested in getting to the next level could burn through them in that hour and a half, while anyone who actually enjoyed what they were doing might spend 2-3 times that long easily. Certainly enough to stretch out the initial phases of the game to something even a length-queen might appreciate. (Length as measured in game time of course. Get your mind out of the gutter.) And then as Will has said, there's an unlimitted universe out there to explore. Hopefully you won't be done with that so quickly.

And all of that avoids the biggest point of all: replay ability. Why do people play a second round of Civ? Why do they make 15 Sims, or create an alt or two in WoW? To try things out a different way. And think how many different ways one could go about Spore. You've just gotten so worked up in the "single player campaign" aspect you're used to seeing in most games, I think you've forgotten the point behind this one, and lost the forest for the trees.

icelight

But with the ability to create your perfect society in a matter of hours, it allows you to start again if you lose your poop-seeing creatures. I'm assuming this is something Will Wright took into account when deciding how long you would spend in each stage.

If this is indeed the case, then congrats to good ol' Wrighty.

thewisestfool

Kamikazii

In about 34 minutes, I had a maxed stats Robot living with his family of robots and over 500,000 excess simoleons. Additionally, he owned a home business with virtually no limit to his profit potential (like he bought the infomercial on limitless wealth). The robot had also mastered a number of retail skills and perks that could make people buy stuff at will.

So, I could effectively progress through the entire game in 34 minutes! Which is not to say that Sims2 only contains 34 minutes of game play.

Basically in the sim-games, you can burn through the game progression ultra fast until you essentially plateau in terms of achievements, or you can spend the day watching clouds, and playing kicky bag with the lesbian couple next door while cheating on your wife with both of them.

So you can spend hours of game time being a convenience store clerk, living in an unfurnished box and sleeping on the couch. But if you want to get that nice flat-screen TV, or raise a family with the friendly neighbor you just met, it only takes 10-30 minutes of progression for you to achieve your goals.

The reason SimCity and the Sims are such addictive games is because that they offer highly compelling game play whether you are progressing or not, as game play, game progression, and goals are designed to be highly independent.

Because of this, game progression (the usual goal within a video game) takes a back seat to game play (the traditional form of entertainment that drives you to progress), and the player goals are essentially user defined. This is in stark contrast to most games where progression is the goal, and gameplay is almost entirely geared towards progression.

ludwigk

Clearly you enjoy Will's games..good for you. I'm sure you still play the sims...and if so how do you have to time to complaine about anything...doesn't your sim need to go to the bathroom??? Yeah thats "genius" game design"....whatever fanboy.

Mr. Pot meet Mr. Kettle

Admonisher

seasponge

I mean, if there is this huge after-game where your created world can be conquered by anyone from around the world -- I'll probably be creating world after world just to see who finds them :)

In the end, I guess it comes down to changing the expectations of what we want in a video game. How long does a game of chess last? There's enough strategy there to keep people coming back. I always saw Spore as a different sort of game, not one about the narrative, but rather about the creation process -- where the users create the narrative afterwards.

Wow, I really hope there's a feature where you get a film of your world being take over :D How would you like to wake up to the e-mail, "Your world has been dominated. Click here to view the footage."

jayntampa

Stupid Civilization... after 4000 years the game decide to end. I want a world to go infinite.

zutto

horcruxmt

MC2009

The guy is a freaking genius and one of the greatest game creators of all-time. He knows what he's doing and I'll certainly reserve judgement until I, oh I don't know, play it myself.

And to what another poster said, yes Wright did essentially say that the beginning of each game was more or less the "tutorial" to prepare yourself for the space part of it.

Little articles like this drive me nuts because they force the internet fanboys to go into full self-destruct mode, as is clearly shown in these comments.

It's Will Wright. The Game will be great, period.

mva5580

thewisestfool

iwanttobeasleep

I say we approach this game as optimistically as possible. Any negativity will surely only result in disappointment.

thewisestfool

InsidiousTuna

Well. I hope he knows what he's doing.

Anyway, I'll judge the game once I've played it.

little_dragon

lestat730

hehahohee

It was never stated how it was learned that the game would last five hours. So unless it was said specifically by maxis I doubt that we are getting the full truth.

Iwoq

How long did it take to take a city from a fledgling village to filling in the sea to place more arcologies?

The key with these games is A replayability - doing it again differently, and B, pointless continuation. Even when your racing around the galaxy in your space ship (correct me i'm wrong but this is how i understood it) you could play through the whole game again on another planet, modifying the genes of species and sending down monoliths or whatever.

I agree the hype on Spore is too much, but I'm going to allow Will the benefit of the doubt for the time being, he has enough of a pedegree behind him to have earned that.

Spindaden

NoMorePuppies

monkey_87

Don't freak them out from releasing the damn thing, please. It only feeds the casual/throw-away/quick game industry :(

Tubatic

Spore will be eaten by the hype monster

landu13

Okay....That was a ridiculously long set up for such a crappy joke.

Kirbytheslayer: In-Kirby XMB

perrinbar

eternalplayer2345

FreddyGlitter

Blasphemy!

At least, I hope that isn't the case... I've been waiting a long time for Spore (and, it would seem, I will continue waiting a long time for Spore), and I am one of those unfortunate people to place this game in a brighter light than it could possibly be worthy of.

5 hours? That's not only disappointing, that's depressing.

I'm going to go find a rocking chair, face the corner, and repeatedly mubmle beneath my breath "work in progress... work in progress... work in progress..." until I can convince myself that '5 hours' turns into '15-20 hours', with the space play being an extended experience beyond the main game of growing into an interplanetary civilization.

Heliophage

booyagrandma

...Yeah, that's why I don't get excited for stuff like this anymore.

parallellines

RabidMoose

El Patricko

Even still, it seems like such a pathetic length for a game that, on paper, seems to be truly epic. From cells to conquerer of galaxies? How could you NOT be epic?

By watering it down to bite sized, casual friendly increments, that's apparently how.

PapaBear434

I hope that impression is wrong...

NfoRcErX