Picking up arma at gamesstop, they just asked me if I wanted to reserve my copy of spore.
If it’s your copy, why would you need to reserve it?
The game was first shown at GDC '05. Then E3 '05. GDC '06. E3 '06. There was a long presentation on it at DICE '07. There were multiple sessions on it at GDC '07. And there have been isolated stories and movies at random points in between.
I don’t know what the exact count is, but it’s a lot more than “twice.” :)
I demand linkage! I’ve been following every scrap of news I could find about this game but I’ve heard nothing from the mainstream gaming press since the unveiling. I blame you, message board denizens. Now work on redeeming yourselves.
BJB, WTF yo? RTFM u L0S3R.
“This word ‘mainstream’ - I do not think it means what you think it means.”
They even had a video of Robin Williams playing it (linked in the Youtube thread).
The previews I have seen go up to the “UFO” and then talk about how they haven’t really figured out what gameplay they were going to add. I wonder what they have come up with in the past few years because anything I see never elaborates on that part.
Some features I hope spore will allow would be:
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Allowing creatures to evolve in seemingly impossible environments, such as lava lizards, crystal creatures, etc… It would be neat to have really weird worlds and environments to explore.
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Mapping a personality matrix for you civilization. If you play as a peaceful civ, then when it is ‘uploaded’ to the general library, everyone else who will find them will have a peaceful version. The same is true if they are warlike. It will be even better if they can map it more granularly. Maybe you creatures are OK with humanoids, but hate bugs. Although as far as I know there are no pheno-types, so there is no way for the game to determine if your critter is a bug, mammal, bird, etc…
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Having your civ automatically explore, expand, terraform, etc… later in the game. I do not think it would be much fun if your UFO was doing all the work. It should help get things started, but most of the heavy lifting should done by your main race automatically. It would seem bad if in the end game your ufo went around blowing up worlds that were troublesome and weakening ones you wanted to conquer.
Okay, let me try again: I don’t go to gaming news sites. I read Eurogamer every so often (never would have known about Slitherlink for the DS without them) but I don’t ever drop by 1UP or IGN or GameSpot or Jose Liz’s Copy and Paste Emporium just to read what passes for daily content.
What I do is read message boards. This one and Planetcrap and NeoGAF, and when something newsworthy appears on one of these cursed sites, someone tells me about it. Like the preview of Crackdown’s DLC on Gamespy. Sounds amazing.
Now, since Spore is without question the single most important game currently in development, a game that puts to shame an entire industry while simultaneously holding out hope for its redemption, every image and word, every scrap of information, is sacred. Thus it is vital and imperative that those of you who can stand to visit the awful news sites and do so, that you use your gift to bring us blessed news of our savior when such news appears.
Well, shit. Only game to which I have been looking forward.
Look at it this way: Now you can look forward to it even longer.
Excellent point.
Quoted for awesomeness.
On a sad panda note, I remember feeling this way about Thief 3. Knock on wood!
Thief 3 was not a bad game. Like most games, it could have been better. Like many sequels, it was a step back (although in this case a slight step confined to certain problems) from the original. But still, it was good.
Kotaku is reporting on an article in the latest Game Informer:
The latest Game Informer reports that Spore has been “delayed indefinitely”, but reached for comment today, Electronic Arts says that “Spore has slipped out of fiscal 08 and into fiscal 09”.
What the hell is happening to this game? I thought we were getting close to seeing this game materialize until the last delay reported in early May. Now we get this. Fiscal 2009? WTF. What is going on over there? Is Spore the next Duke Nukem Forever?
When they got the guy from Firaxis to come on board, we all knew major delays were going to happen.
Dude, it takes a long time to seed the entire solar system with microbes that will eventually evolve into game designers who can finish your intergalactic game.
But yeah, this has “Will Wright has lost all ability to actually make a game, and Soren is starting almost from scratch” written all over it. Will’s clearly a toymaker, and EA can’t afford Spore to be just a toy. They need a GAME in there, and they don’t have one at all yet.
My take is that Spore has just way too many major systems and it’s going to take a long while to either flesh all of them out or decide which ones to use and which parts to get rid of. Might be not so much that Wright has lost his ability to make the game as the addition of Soren can actually effectively build the game. I’m thinking that while Wright is still the brilliant figurehead and designer, they could lack the experienced and nuts-and-bolts-type person to actually run the boat.
I’m just guessing at this point obviously.
— Alan
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I bet this turns out like Fable. The game will come out and it will be a pretty decent game, but when you compare it to the initial vision and hype and factor in the hype fatigue for having to hear about it for years and years before playing, it’ll be kind of “meh”.
Sounds like the pieces we haven’t seen yet (tribe and civ) are getting a working over. I guess the devil is in the details when it’s not a simple eat and be eaten mechanic or playing a god game with a spaceship avatar.
Still looking forward to the game though.