4 ms·

Spore wasn't really a victim of high expectation, but rather a cool ambitious idea that just didn't work as a game. Unlike many others, I think the game they de

Spore wasn't really a victim of high expectation, but rather a cool ambitious idea that just didn't work as a game. Unlike many others, I think the game they delivered matched very well to what they demoed. The issue was that it just didn't congeal into a game. The sacrifices they did have to make (making it linear and limiting the freeform sandbox aspects) were necessary to make it a game at all. The ambitious "this will make you see the connection between all stages of life" goal isn't achievable if the game you're building isn't going to actually be a good game. There just wasn't any good gameplay loop in there.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"There just wasn't any good gameplay loop in there. " Opinions differ, to me it was a fun arcade game, with some evolution theme. No more, no less. But I also did not read anything about it before and had no expectations.
- scheeseman486 3y ago
  Until it turns into an action RPG, then an RTS, then a Civ-like. Which all sounds cool on paper, but usually games that stack on systems and genres like that end up cleanly integrating them with each other. Spore treats them more like they're a minigame collection, it never feels like a cohesive game. The building tools are great though.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Ok yeah, I stopped at the civ like stage, where it was too weird, that I can adjust the evolution of fighting machines and make them fast or strong just as needed in real time. That felt so half baked. And the "action rpg" was also not very thought through, but still enjoyable.
jeroenhd 3y ago
There were plenty of good gameplay loops, they just didn't get enough time and development. Spore's biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is that there's not enough of it. The creature stage is interesting and fun, partially because it lasts long and there's an exploration element. Then you get to the tribal stage and the second tribal stage but with cars and honestly I kind of just rush through that. Then you get to the end game which is the most interesting (but least customisable) part. The building blocks for two RTSes are there, but they've been dumbed down so far that there's no fun to be had. With a tech tree and bigger tribes, I think a minor Age of Empires stage could be great. The city stage would have the same benefits, but I can imagine a civ style game portraying the technological and cultural progress from the bronze age to the space age would be a nice intermediate. Instead of your evolutionary tree picking one or two arbitrary flags in each stage, you could keep the tech tree going for much longer. Show me how I got that teraforming equipment, don't just teleport it into the store because I traveled a thousand spots! The end game could do more. Perhaps a Stellaris style unit distant unit control mechanic would allow for a more realistic galactic simulator, with different ships of your empire whizzing around while you go on your space adventure. I have a feeling that if the game were developed by a Paradox or a Firaxis, the later stages would be a lot better. It would be fun if Paradox were to set up a system where you can automatically launch the next game, all the way from Rome Total War through Hearts of Iron, and maybe jump to Stellaris from there. I know converters exist but it's not a perfectly clean process with fan projects needed for some steps.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  The right way to do this is what Jane's / EA started in 1999 -- individual games that contain code to hook into a unified larger world. It would have been branded "Jane's World War" and shipped with every subsequent sim game, allowing different sim gamers to participate in the same conflict at the same time, from different perspectives. https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/04/29/janes-world-war https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/04/29/janes-world-war Sadly, the sim market crashed around then, and/or EA and Jane's parted ways over the trademark. Thus, it never came to fruition. But if the components of the metagame you want to build each need to be games themselves... just build them as individual games, and contain latent linking code inside them!
  - Andrex 3y ago
    That idea is so cool. Eve and Dust got a lot of hype for something similar but I never followed up on how it ended up working out.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      I have a soft spot in my heart for ahead-of-their-time or there-but-for-mismanagement game oddities. :-) There's also an alternative universe where the Japanese game industry cracked the MMO formula instead of Ultimate Online / EverQuest. See Sega's Heat.net / 10six: https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-archaeologist-segas-10six-mmo/ https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-archaeologist-se... As a beta player, it was hellaciously fun, in a very similar way to EVE, even on dialup. Other oddities: LucasArts' 80s Habitat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) 3DO's pre-Niantic Meridian 59: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59 Sierra's The Realm Online: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online (also beta'd this one, which was really slick and well-executed)
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
There was a lot of potential, and I think that if they did a sequel where they added depth to every stage it would've been a lot better. I mean the last part of the game is a 4x like Stellaris, other parts are RTS / city builders, etc. On that note, I wonder why there hasn't been anything like it from the indie developer space.
- cubefox 3y ago
  There was a community effort to make such a game since the original Spore came out. https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ Since this was too ambitious, they focussed just on the cell stage. They are working on that to this day. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1779200?updates=true https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1779200?updates=true
  - ChoGGi 3y ago
    Thanks for the link
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  I think the fundamental creature tech was so expensive (time and scale) to develop that indies couldn't possibly replicate it
drones 3y ago
Interestingly enough, I think the core gameplay loop of the first cell stage has actually influenced gaming much more than anything else in spore. All of the popular .io games I know (Agar.io, snake.io, diep.io) all have some feature of that stage as part of the game. Growing in size, fighting other players, getting new abilities: it's all there.
CoryAlexMartin 3y ago
There actually were things of note from the early demos that didn't make it into the final game. For example, the way you created your creature had gameplay implications. Things like limb length, limb count, limb placement, center of mass, etc were going to influence the viability and pros and cons of your creature. However, there were philosophical disagreements between team members and ultimately the decision was made that they'd throw the systemic approach out the window in the name of cosmetic freedom. Personally, that isn't the decision I would have made, because I think the game is more shallow because of it. Maybe it would have made the game less enjoyable for people who just want to make whatever they want with no consequences, but that could have been solved with a difficulty option.
- Levitz 3y ago
  Entire sections of the game were cut. I remember a puzzle section at the very start in which you had to combine aminoacids to start creating life that never made it, for example. The option to be a water-based species didn't make it either. The game did overpromise and underdeliver, hard.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  I've seen it hinted that the ~half dozen designers had pretty different visions and that seems to have caused a bunch of churn and disagreements.
toast0 3y ago
> Unlike many others, I think the game they delivered matched very well to what they demoed. That's not really enough. If you watch The Fountain, it's pretty much the same as the trailer. But while it's a great trailer, it's a terrible movie. There's an expectation that a demo shows parts of a game, and the finished product will be more and cohesive. Spore really wasn't cohesive, but imagining the parts demoed as a cohesive game was super compelling. One of a couple lessons from that time that have me pretty much sworn off pre-ordering things. Or at least pre-ordering things without predicting my feelings if the product isn't great and being ok with that (hello Looking Glass Portrait)

hutzlibu 3y ago

"There just wasn't any good gameplay loop in there. " Opinions differ, to me it was a fun arcade game, with some evolution theme. No more, no less. But I also did not read anything about it before and had no expectations.

scheeseman486 3y ago
Until it turns into an action RPG, then an RTS, then a Civ-like. Which all sounds cool on paper, but usually games that stack on systems and genres like that end up cleanly integrating them with each other. Spore treats them more like they're a minigame collection, it never feels like a cohesive game. The building tools are great though.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Ok yeah, I stopped at the civ like stage, where it was too weird, that I can adjust the evolution of fighting machines and make them fast or strong just as needed in real time. That felt so half baked. And the "action rpg" was also not very thought through, but still enjoyable.

jeroenhd 3y ago

There were plenty of good gameplay loops, they just didn't get enough time and development. Spore's biggest shortcoming, in my opinion, is that there's not enough of it. The creature stage is interesting and fun, partially because it lasts long and there's an exploration element. Then you get to the tribal stage and the second tribal stage but with cars and honestly I kind of just rush through that. Then you get to the end game which is the most interesting (but least customisable) part. The building blocks for two RTSes are there, but they've been dumbed down so far that there's no fun to be had. With a tech tree and bigger tribes, I think a minor Age of Empires stage could be great. The city stage would have the same benefits, but I can imagine a civ style game portraying the technological and cultural progress from the bronze age to the space age would be a nice intermediate. Instead of your evolutionary tree picking one or two arbitrary flags in each stage, you could keep the tech tree going for much longer. Show me how I got that teraforming equipment, don't just teleport it into the store because I traveled a thousand spots! The end game could do more. Perhaps a Stellaris style unit distant unit control mechanic would allow for a more realistic galactic simulator, with different ships of your empire whizzing around while you go on your space adventure. I have a feeling that if the game were developed by a Paradox or a Firaxis, the later stages would be a lot better. It would be fun if Paradox were to set up a system where you can automatically launch the next game, all the way from Rome Total War through Hearts of Iron, and maybe jump to Stellaris from there. I know converters exist but it's not a perfectly clean process with fan projects needed for some steps.

ethbr0 3y ago
The right way to do this is what Jane's / EA started in 1999 -- individual games that contain code to hook into a unified larger world. It would have been branded "Jane's World War" and shipped with every subsequent sim game, allowing different sim gamers to participate in the same conflict at the same time, from different perspectives. https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/04/29/janes-world-war https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/04/29/janes-world-war Sadly, the sim market crashed around then, and/or EA and Jane's parted ways over the trademark. Thus, it never came to fruition. But if the components of the metagame you want to build each need to be games themselves... just build them as individual games, and contain latent linking code inside them!
- Andrex 3y ago
  That idea is so cool. Eve and Dust got a lot of hype for something similar but I never followed up on how it ended up working out.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    I have a soft spot in my heart for ahead-of-their-time or there-but-for-mismanagement game oddities. :-) There's also an alternative universe where the Japanese game industry cracked the MMO formula instead of Ultimate Online / EverQuest. See Sega's Heat.net / 10six: https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-archaeologist-segas-10six-mmo/ https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-archaeologist-se... As a beta player, it was hellaciously fun, in a very similar way to EVE, even on dialup. Other oddities: LucasArts' 80s Habitat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) 3DO's pre-Niantic Meridian 59: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59 Sierra's The Realm Online: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online (also beta'd this one, which was really slick and well-executed)

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

There was a lot of potential, and I think that if they did a sequel where they added depth to every stage it would've been a lot better. I mean the last part of the game is a 4x like Stellaris, other parts are RTS / city builders, etc. On that note, I wonder why there hasn't been anything like it from the indie developer space.

cubefox 3y ago
There was a community effort to make such a game since the original Spore came out. https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ https://revolutionarygamesstudio.com/ Since this was too ambitious, they focussed just on the cell stage. They are working on that to this day. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1779200?updates=true https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1779200?updates=true
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  Thanks for the link
kevinmchugh 3y ago
I think the fundamental creature tech was so expensive (time and scale) to develop that indies couldn't possibly replicate it

drones 3y ago

Interestingly enough, I think the core gameplay loop of the first cell stage has actually influenced gaming much more than anything else in spore. All of the popular .io games I know (Agar.io, snake.io, diep.io) all have some feature of that stage as part of the game. Growing in size, fighting other players, getting new abilities: it's all there.

CoryAlexMartin 3y ago

There actually were things of note from the early demos that didn't make it into the final game. For example, the way you created your creature had gameplay implications. Things like limb length, limb count, limb placement, center of mass, etc were going to influence the viability and pros and cons of your creature. However, there were philosophical disagreements between team members and ultimately the decision was made that they'd throw the systemic approach out the window in the name of cosmetic freedom. Personally, that isn't the decision I would have made, because I think the game is more shallow because of it. Maybe it would have made the game less enjoyable for people who just want to make whatever they want with no consequences, but that could have been solved with a difficulty option.

Levitz 3y ago
Entire sections of the game were cut. I remember a puzzle section at the very start in which you had to combine aminoacids to start creating life that never made it, for example. The option to be a water-based species didn't make it either. The game did overpromise and underdeliver, hard.
kevinmchugh 3y ago
I've seen it hinted that the ~half dozen designers had pretty different visions and that seems to have caused a bunch of churn and disagreements.

toast0 3y ago

> Unlike many others, I think the game they delivered matched very well to what they demoed. That's not really enough. If you watch The Fountain, it's pretty much the same as the trailer. But while it's a great trailer, it's a terrible movie. There's an expectation that a demo shows parts of a game, and the finished product will be more and cohesive. Spore really wasn't cohesive, but imagining the parts demoed as a cohesive game was super compelling. One of a couple lessons from that time that have me pretty much sworn off pre-ordering things. Or at least pre-ordering things without predicting my feelings if the product isn't great and being ok with that (hello Looking Glass Portrait)