Four New Spore Games Coming This Year

[Susan Arendt]

Four New Spore Games Coming This Year

Will Wright is making good on his promise that Spore isn't just game, it's a franchise; four new titles are due out this year.

According to senior producer Morgan Roarty, the Spore party will start with ye olde expansion pack, Spore:Galactic Adventures (pictured). Offering a "deeper variety of gameplay," the expansion will take place in Spore's space stage and feature a large quantity of content made by the Spore community. May as well just call it Penismonster Adventures and be done with it.

Roarty described Spore: Creature Keeper, a PC title aimed at the younger crowd, as being "like a mini-Sims game." Players will have to tend to a newborn creature in much the same way you have to tend to your Sims, by feeding it, keeping it clean, and suchlike. No word on whether you'll be able to torture them by walling them in or taking the ladder out of the pool, however.

The last two Spore titles, which are earmarked for the Wii and DS, are being developed outside of Maxis. Roarty didn't share many details about Spore: Hero and Spore: Hero Arena, except that Hero will be an avatar-based adventure game. Which could mean just about anything. Personally, I think the game's emphasis on creature creation, combined with the "Arena" in the title, smacks of something Pokemon-esque, but I'm just guessing.

No release date schedule was provided, but expect to see the two PC titles before the pair for the Nintendo platforms.

Source: CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=206355]

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[Galletea]

It is a franchise that never interested me, but I have seen a DS version and it is appealing to my childish desire to make silly things. So I'm intrigued now. Maybe it can recapture some of those who were disappointed the first time around.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Unless one is a 'DRM removing makes the game not suck' expansion then they can forget it.

 

[Cousin_IT]

if they took a Sims expansion pack approach to Spore, which it doesnt sound like they are, then I would be interested. Like it or loath it the Sims expansions (the real ones not the cloths or ikea ones) do add something new to the game that once youve got a few, its hard to play the origional on its own & enjoy it as much. Alas it just looks like theyve got a name & a cute face, & are going to milk this franchise Nintendo style minus anything good coming out of it.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

"Avatar-based adventure game" may be the broadest description of a videogame I've ever heard.

 

[johnman]

4 games and an endless horde of people who just dont care.

 

[PumpItUp]

Sims was awesome. Sims expansion paks were also awesome.
Sims 2 was awesome. Sims 2 expansion paks (the early ones) were also awesome.
Spore was...less than awesome. Spore exansion paks will also be...less than awesome.

Spore was such a missed opportunity for EA. Had they not made it into the "I-hate-DRM-game" of the year, among other things, it could have been so much better.

Also, who would play Spore if they was an online feature where you could conquer territories claimed by other live players in real-time? I certainly would.

 

[elmaxx]

Had they not made it into the "I-hate-DRM-game" of the year, among other things, it could have been so much better.

You also forgot "Disappointment of the decade" in there

 

[PumpItUp]

Had they not made it into the "I-hate-DRM-game" of the year, among other things, it could have been so much better.

You also forgot "Disappointment of the decade" in there

No, that title is held by Fable 2 and Duke Nukem Forever. Remember, Spore was developed by EA. 'Nuff said.

 

[Odjin]

"Will Wright is making good on his promise that Spore isn't just game, it's a franchise;"

I correct this for you...

"Will Wright is making good on his promise that Spore isn't just game, it's CRAP;"

 

[DarkBlood626]

I want a non kiddie version like this one

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

this is the spore that got me interested

 

[shaboinkin]

well...it is ea after all. We all saw this coming i would think

I want a non kiddie version like this one

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

this is the spore that got me interested

what exactly was changed from that to the new one? I didnt look at the new one yet

 

[pleasedeletethisaccount]

Hopefully these will be better than the first DS one. That one didn't interest me at all.

 

[man-man]

well...it is ea after all. We all saw this coming i would think

I want a non kiddie version like this one

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

this is the spore that got me interested

what exactly was changed from that to the new one? I didnt look at the new one yet

Watch through that video, and make a list of all the details you think look cool, all the things that would make the difference between a mediocre game and a great game. Those are the things were removed.

In essence, all of the complexity and realism were dropped in favour of cutesy graphics and making the game nigh-impossible to fail at. To allow all the budding little artsy types out there to make whatever they like (based on aesthetics) and still let their stuff be successful despite making no damn sense, it had to be the case that the form of your thing has no effect whatsoever on its function

If you want to put your weapons on the backs of your knees, and have a gargantuan head supported by a spindly neck, and put the whole thing on one end of a 10 foot long body with 2 tiny legs at the opposite end... well done, you're the key predator of the ecosystem because the parts you used have good stats. (And don't let me mislead you, the stats also have minimal depth... when I say "good stats", I mean "the same stats as the 15 other parts in that set")

Strange concurrency of things- I was posting about this same thing elsewhere earlier (haven't thought about Spore in ages, now twice in one day...) so a brief summary of things we saw in the video that never actually got made:

2005 video: you could see a little skeleton even in the cell phase
Real game: the cell is an amorphous blob with bits stuck onto it

2005 video: the arrangement of body parts made it behave differently, so with a spike on the tail you'd attack by striking forward with the tail
Real game: with a spike on the tail or a spike on the head or spikes on the backs of your knees, they all attack the same way every time

2005 video: there were wandering herds of animals around the place in something resembling an ecosystem
Real game: every animal appears only in the area immediately around it's home nest, waiting for you to come along and either slaughter them into extinction or do a dance and be friends.

2005 video: procedural verbs, like telling the little dude to eat then walk to make him drag a carcass along
Real game: every action you can undertake is assigned a little button for you to click. Hooray for buttons.

2005 video: fun, complexity and challenge.
Real game: the only challenge is making it through Tribal without gnawing off your own limbs out of sheer frustration.