I’m just about sick of Spore and I’ve never even played it. You guys need to go into stealth mode and never mention the title again until the day it ships. I think that Silicon Knights guy is right about this shit, the old ways of doing PR don’t make sense given today’s ridiculously long dev cycles.
I’m not surprised. Its clearly a trouble project. All we’ve seen is the very beginning and the very end. They haven’t shown us the middle sections which should make up the majority of the game play at all.
So that’s what they needed Soren Johnson for. “Mr. Johnson, could you please write a little Civilization game for us? You know, neanderthals to astronauts…”
I’m so glad that I don’t read previews anymore. I’ll be happy to see how good or bad spore is when it comes out, and until then, not spare a single thought for it. Easier to avoid frustration if you have no anticipation. And honestly, guys, would you rather they take as long as they need to make it fun, or would you prefer to end up with the next high-concept Black & White mess?
I dont get the whole “games must be polished for 2 years before release” thing. Just finish what you have ffs. No amount of QA testing will equate with releasing it to 500,000 - 1,000,000 players who will give you the feedback you need to make Spore 2 that much more awesome. I would prefer more games, with less content, and less hype, than 1 game every 10 years that always ends up dissapointing the stypidly high expectations.
I’d prefer that the Spore team get it right the first time, while they still have Will’s attention. He doesn’t work on sequels these days.
bah and I just upgraded my PC so that I could happily run this come it’s release… I hope they don’t jack up the requirements through the roof to see a good high quality game.
(I rarely have a powerful PC - and right now I have a semi-powerful one) by the time Spore comes out it will, of course, no longer be up there.
Have you actually seen any of the Civilization Phase? I don’t think they’ve demoed that one at all, nor talked about in anything but the vaguest terms. The Space Phase got shown a tiny bit at E3 a year ago, but it was a carefully-constructed developer-driven demo that implied much more than it actually showed. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of demo, I’ve done them myself. But until there’s at least a hands-on demo, you shouldn’t put too much faith in what developers promise. Sure, the vague descriptions sound great, but when the rubber hits the road, implementing them often turns out to be much harder than you initially thought.
This is exactly why I am a Spore Skeptic ™.
Look at WoW. 5 years of polishing. It seems to have worked.
If they don’t succeed with the first one (and clearly a bug-ridden release can hurt sales quite a bit, see several recent releases), there won’t be a second one. Also, all your reviews get written before release, not after 6 months of patching.
This isn’t the downloadable market of “long tail” and “infinite shelf space”. I wish it were. Instead it’s a market where first month sales make or break a franchise.
They’ve shown the game, what, twice ever? Will Wright unveiled it at GDC '05 and then there was that Popular Science article recently. All this supposed hype is of your own making.
Five years of polishing? Wait, did you even play WoW at release?
All I can say is,
“RaidIDs.”
There was also a breathless New York Times article on it last October. Also there were a number of things last year.
Yeah, so, that would mean WoW was finished in 1999 and Blizzard spent the rest of the time just polishing?
— Alan
Yes you are right, and thats a pity. I wish more games had ongoing development after the event, and some payment model where they could recoup that. Kind of like MMos that are released early, and get better as more dev effort goes into them, and they learn from their mistakes. If spore is as original as it claims, there is no way it will get it 100% right first time around. Far better to have shorter dev cycles and iterative development than a ten million dollar splurge on a single roll of the dice. But then, I work on small indie games so I guess I would think that. shrug.
What does this mean for the next Sim City and The Sims 3? Spore was to come out this year, Sim City Next in 08 and Sims 3 in 09. I can’t imagine EA would pull all three out close together.
Sim City and Sims 3 are walks in the park compared to Spore. I think EA will ship Spore the second Will and Soren say it’s shippable. They really want return on investment on this.
Dennis Dyack notwithstanding, most major game companies are not yet ready to deliberately delay titles for any reason at all.
How much does it cost to get custom chrome car emblems made?
Surely I can’t be the only one thinking of making an emblem of my creature profile, with the word SPORE inside. I mean, heck, if you can get them made for the Flying Spaghetti Monster…
I’ve actually made the personal decision not to get sucked into marketing hype before a game is released. There is no way any game can live up to the massive hype that gets generated for AAA games anymore.
Just be aware of any game that might catch your interest and when you start reading reviews make an informed decision then.
With Soren being involved, there’s no doubt in my mind it’ll be worth the wait.