On the Origin of Spore
May 22nd 2008 03:18
I’d like to interrupt the gushing about how awesome Will Wright’s Spore is going to be (“HUGE” if we believe Wired magazine) with a little ray of bitter sunshine. I can’t be the only person who played SimEarth and wished for an update throughout the long years of the 1990s. As such, I am clearly not the only person who was excited to hear about Spore – after all, they practically told us “if you liked SimEarth, you’ll love this game.”
Like SimCity, SimEarth saw you assuming the viewpoint of an essentially omniscient viewer, but you had an entire planet instead of just one city. You also had control over certain elements of the solar system environment, such as the sun’s heat, the planet’s axial tilt, and icy meteors with which to bombard your planet. One of the nicest things about it was that the various classes of fauna were treated equally, meaning that you could diverge significantly from historical accuracy and end up with sentient dinosaurs or spacefaring jellyfish. It was one step up from SimCity in that sense – instead of rebuilding your hometown in your own image, you could rebuild the entire world as you saw fit. And all for less cost and personal risk than making a doomsday weapon.
The appeal of a Sim game is that you watch it unfold under its own power. You start the process and you can intervene to nudge it in a different direction (or make more drastic changes), but it essentially simulates an actual living system. It was a sort of cathartic voyeurism, like seeing yourself on the mall’s CCTV system.
How are they going to do this in Spore?
“The player guides simple protean microbes around in a 2D environment where the microbes must deal with fluid dynamics, being eaten, and weaker microbes. There are many different types of cells, many of which can damage and/or eat the player's microbe. Once the player's microbe has eaten several cells, the player can enter the cell editor which allows the player to modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe. The player can then add various offensive, defensive, and/or mobility abilities, by spending "DNA points" which are the main unit of currency for this phase. A player may choose to remove a part during this and the next phase, which will recoup DNA points.”
(Interview with Lucy Bradshaw, Spore executive producer)
Let’s boil it down. You make a character, explore an environment, interact with other characters, buy upgrades with an in-game currency. Sounds an awful lot like… Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Or maybe… Baldur’s Gate?
Am I reaching? I’m not the one who said that the microbes will have statistics that describe their offensive (Strength?), defensive (Dexterity?), and mobility capabilities. Nor am I the one who described the chores that must be undertaken to induce one’s microbe to progress to the next stage of evolution. Were they concerned that kids don’t get enough chores in the real world, and they need to be sure they’re learning an appropriate work ethic from their leisure time?
So apparently they took the broadest possible interpretation of the SimEarth concept of guiding evolution from the molecular level to the space age and added, of all things, RPG elements. There is a reason that RPGs have their own games where they use RPG systems, and the Sim games are (or used to be) a different genre. Trying to mix the two sets of elements will only result in both of them being diluted and in releasing a game that tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing.
Like SimCity, SimEarth saw you assuming the viewpoint of an essentially omniscient viewer, but you had an entire planet instead of just one city. You also had control over certain elements of the solar system environment, such as the sun’s heat, the planet’s axial tilt, and icy meteors with which to bombard your planet. One of the nicest things about it was that the various classes of fauna were treated equally, meaning that you could diverge significantly from historical accuracy and end up with sentient dinosaurs or spacefaring jellyfish. It was one step up from SimCity in that sense – instead of rebuilding your hometown in your own image, you could rebuild the entire world as you saw fit. And all for less cost and personal risk than making a doomsday weapon.
The appeal of a Sim game is that you watch it unfold under its own power. You start the process and you can intervene to nudge it in a different direction (or make more drastic changes), but it essentially simulates an actual living system. It was a sort of cathartic voyeurism, like seeing yourself on the mall’s CCTV system.
How are they going to do this in Spore?
“The player guides simple protean microbes around in a 2D environment where the microbes must deal with fluid dynamics, being eaten, and weaker microbes. There are many different types of cells, many of which can damage and/or eat the player's microbe. Once the player's microbe has eaten several cells, the player can enter the cell editor which allows the player to modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe. The player can then add various offensive, defensive, and/or mobility abilities, by spending "DNA points" which are the main unit of currency for this phase. A player may choose to remove a part during this and the next phase, which will recoup DNA points.”
Let’s boil it down. You make a character, explore an environment, interact with other characters, buy upgrades with an in-game currency. Sounds an awful lot like… Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Or maybe… Baldur’s Gate?
An amoeboid crawler from Spore? Oh wait, it's just Yoshimo. I always get them confused because they're both USELESS
Am I reaching? I’m not the one who said that the microbes will have statistics that describe their offensive (Strength?), defensive (Dexterity?), and mobility capabilities. Nor am I the one who described the chores that must be undertaken to induce one’s microbe to progress to the next stage of evolution. Were they concerned that kids don’t get enough chores in the real world, and they need to be sure they’re learning an appropriate work ethic from their leisure time?
So apparently they took the broadest possible interpretation of the SimEarth concept of guiding evolution from the molecular level to the space age and added, of all things, RPG elements. There is a reason that RPGs have their own games where they use RPG systems, and the Sim games are (or used to be) a different genre. Trying to mix the two sets of elements will only result in both of them being diluted and in releasing a game that tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing.
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