Spore?

Wow. A week ago i watched the E3 preview of this game featuring Will Wright showing off some of the aspects of the game. I was quite blown away by the whole concept when i first heard of it, but now when i've seen it in action i am completely sold. My only question now is if it really is a game or just a sandbox. The mechanics seem to imply completely open ended and 100% editable content, which sort of restricts the challenge/reward incentive. If you haven't heard about it yet, the game lets you start out as a single microbe swimming around in a little puddle, eating smaller creatures and evolving. You will be able to customize your creatures by earning points and eventually you will grow into a fully developed creature ready to colonize the world, eventually the whole galaxy, sounds neat right?

To our great despair, the game wont be released until mid 2007. The game seems rather finished but i think what is holding it back is one of the biggest features, which is online content sharing. Basically as the player-base starts getting creative - their creatures will be uploaded and then downloaded into your world. There is no true multiplayer function, it's more like an automatic downloadable content feature. Now this will of course result in more than one planet of walking penises but other then that it seems great. It will of course have a tag-function for inapropriate content but it doesn't seem waterproof to me. The other thing holding it back - beyond the immense amount of balancing and bugfixing a game like this would need - is EA, who basically said "Get this one right" and gave Wright all the time he needed. EA seems to have economical troubles and will need another The Sims to keep up.

In my opinion, this game has a good chance of becoming a critically acclaimed hit. It will ship to all platforms and due to the childlike simplicity and intuitivness of the interface it will capture players of all ages. Sales will be huge. But, Wright has established the width of this game but little is known about the depth. I am personally guessing that for the hardcore sim-enthusiast, this will be boring. There are of course creative nerds out there who love sandboxes and will experiment with the editors to no end, but what about the rest of us? I want to create life, destroy galaxies, engineer diseases and discover the 8th dimension. You see these people who are deviantly lurking every little Spore forum on the web, hunting new bits of info and going to bed at night with the word Spore on burned into their retinas after a hefty flame war about intelligent design, are actually the ones i think will get bored first.

Not only will they get burned out on the game before it's even released, but once it is, they will realise it's just a game and not Hitch hikers Deep Thought. It's just a compilation of minigames with some nifty editors built in. I'm not saying Wright is full of shit, but it isn't quite "simeverything". It's more like a Tamagotchi/Marioparty hybrid powers of 10. I myself got caught in the hype for a few weeks and this game seemed like a gaming-heaven tailored just for me. But then i remembered Fable and Black & White 2. What makes this different? Oh right, user-created content. So, you're telling me that having my personal universe invaded by half-assed, homemade, bullshit, pokemon-wangs is the answer? I've seen the ideas, the problem with user-created content is that regular people dont create good content. It's just a bunch of spiderhounds, ligers, dragons etc. "Yeah you see, it's like a Zerg, with the head of an Alien and it can fly... Cool huh?!". The whole game is gonna look like a drawing straight out of kindergarden.

But hey... Its Will Wright.

20 years of nothing.

My first post on here will be about one specific genre of games that is still widely regarded as PC-only. This genre started out in the early 90s with one particular game involving an intensely desired form of seasoning and giant worms. Based on innovative gameplay backed up by an extremely overrated but none the less great novel, it turned out a huge success. The game was Dune and would spawn more clones than there are cheap hookers in Lithuania.

So today, two decades later, what have we got? We've got Dune upon Dune upon Dune upon Dune. This genre should be awarded for the great feat of effectively scaring away any change or development that cold ever happen to it. You could describe the exact gameplay of all RTS games ever created in less than two lines.

Gather resources. Build soldier-producer. Amass soldiers equal to roughly 120% of the enemies defense capability. Drag box, push A, click in enemy base. Win.

Why anyone is still making money on this concept is beyond me. Oh but right, i forgot, we did have a little revolution didn't we? You know? Warcraft 3? Why this game would be concidered to have any sort of revolutionary features is just a result of millions of gamers suffering from battered wife syndrome. We are so accustomed to the same meal every day that as soon as someone adds a little salt to it we create chants and hymns proclaiming its greatness of innovative spoon-feeding for all eternity.

I am of course talking about the level based hero units, which have come to plague just about every fantasy inspired RTS ever made since WC3 those years ago. Eureka, said the lead designer at Blizzard when he looked at his demographics and realised that he could reach out to two target groups with one product, hybrid gaming, if you will. If it wasn't for Blizzards extremely tight engineering and quality the fetus would have seen its horrible shape in the reflection of the placenta and strangled itself immediately.

Here we have an industry which repeatedly promoted the concept of dumbing down everything. How many times haven't we heard "Well, we wanted to take away the attention spent on resource gathering and focus on the combat aspect instead". Which is just another way of saying "Most kids today have the attention span and IQ of a lobotomized squirrel so we decided to scrap the hard part and give them lots of explosions".

In most RTS games the real fun lies in setting up an effective economy while struggling to fend off the constant attacks. After hours of twists and turns and surviving against all odds you suddenly become superior, invade and win. I mean really? how fun is the "combat" part. Assign groups to buttons 1-9 based on unit type. Try to remember what unit is scissor and what unit is rock and then press the infamous A button accordingly. Anyone remember the Myth series? Ah yeah, there we had an RTS game with no base building, just pure combat, face it, it was boring as hell.

This RPG Hero nonsense is just a little mini-game integrated to cover up the formulaeic gameplay. It is by no means innovation, merely a complication.

So by now somebody whos reading this is thinking "Yeah your right and all, but, its like that with all games". The difference is that some genres can progress solely on new technology to eliminate boundaries and limits. RPGs for example have been moved out of the turn and grid-based interface and reached new heights with games like Morrowind.

RTS games on the other hand are still more or less exactly like Dune, gameplay wise at least. You still have your little chessboard-like maps with tiny trees and plateaus, with tiny squares where you place your little command center and then begin the same old process.

Games like C&C Generals have captured the essence of this total lack of innovation. So what is the point to all my whining? What would i like instead? There's no use whining about a situation if you can't bring anything to the table. As stated, the trend today is to cut out resource gathering and focus more on "Dragbox+A+Click". The result of this is that RTSs have been reduced to micromanagement and spasmic clicking all over the place. Their way of focusing on strategy is to give tiny abilities to every god damn unit in the game, promoting micromanagement. Is this really what all the desktop generals out there want? I thought strategy in war was about maneuvering large forces and setting up frontlines, pushing the attrition and conducting large-scale raids.

My answer is to do the exact opposite of what the industry is doing. Expand resource gathering nad make setting up a successful economy the true challenge, because in all RTSs, the one with the best economy will eventually win. I don't want a dumber combat aspect, i just dont want to take all my time and attention to pressing hotkeys and turn it into a war between who gives the most orders per second. I say let the concept of rally points evolve. In some games, there has been a function where you can draw on a minimap to show your human ally how your invasion plans are going to be conducted. Why not use this feature for the whole thing? You could have different arrows and lines for different kinds units and they would attack accordingly. Furthermore, your units will be pumped out of your buildings by themselves as fast as your economy can support. I am so god damn tired of queing up the same damn unit a trillion times every 30 seconds as soon as an invation is started.

This whole concept would make the warfare so much more realistic. Morale would also be an important aspect. As it is now, when two forces meet, they start shooting at each other untill every last soldier is dead on one side. Instead, if a force realises it is going to lose badly it will automatically retreat, pushing the frontline back in your direction until the odds even out.

Artillery for example, is so god damn misused. The intention of a long range artillery piece is not to wipe out large armies from a long distance, they are used to pin down enemy offensives, forcing them to stay down and hurting morale. This would work perfectly with this concept.

Well, i could go on and on about this, but i think you get the picture. My message to gamers is: Demand more, raise your expectations and for gods sake stop supporting EA.