Forums > Game Forums > Spore > Mathematicians, I implore you...
So Hai (261) on 9/12/2008 3:18 AM · Permalink · Report
...to quantify the "hype" versus "reception" ratio. This game was flogged to death by the marketing department months before we had to sit through the underwhelming reviews. Can anyone else think of any examples (apart from "Daikatana") that were more exercises in marketing rather than gaming?
vedder (70862) on 9/12/2008 10:06 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
Underwhelming reviews? Spore? It's getting great reviews from the critics. It's just overhyped fanbois that had totally wrong expectations that seem to post poorly constructed devastating reviews on gaming sites.
Personally I find Spore delivers on every aspect it promised us. And sure, if you are a die-hard Civ fan you're going to think the Civ phase is not complex enough. And if you are a RTS fan the tribal stage won't be complex enough to your liking. But they said it would be like that a million billion times during press releases. It's a game aimed towards a more casual (The Sims playing) audience.
The only real thing I find disappointing is the lack of influence the first two stages have on the latter. Only 1 or 2 abilities. Exactly what your create looks like has no meaning anymore whatsoever. I would have loved to have seen more drastic concequences for how I built my create. (as in statistics wise)
And yes the reason for all the disillusioned fanbois can be linked with the amount of marketing the game received. But it's well deserved, because not only is it a technologically marvelous title (aka it was very expensive and they really want their money back). It is also an interesting gambit of trying to bring RTS games (which are in a slump right now) to more casual players, in the hope of revitalising the genre.
The game where I was most disappointed with and received quite a lot of marketing was Black & White. But, what can I say, I was young and naive, and looking back on it, I just had the wrong expectations on how the game would play. It wasn't a bad game per say, It just wasn't a game for me.
Somebody bring me Sisko! (8) on 9/12/2008 2:50 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Nevermind the poorly constructed reviews, some of them bring up viable points, but we just skip the part of "shallow, non-challenging and repetitive, sorry-the-rest-will-be-delivered-in-expansion-packs-gameplay lol" and the brain dead DRM system for the sake of the points you made I'm interested in, okay?
Let two of the "fanbois" @ metacritc speak for themselves:
1. "First of all the game itself is different product that was promised. Years back the demos showed totally different game with rich in content and real challenge."
2. "This game was not what they showcased at the conventions in 2005."
My questions therefore as you probably followed the whole drama with a more open eye: 1. Is it true that something significantly different was showcased in 2005 and all those press releases gradually dumbed down the feature list, as was the game itself?
You wote: It is also an interesting gambit of trying to bring RTS games (which are in a slump right now) to more casual players, in the hope of revitalising the genre.
...and so: 2. Do you think this will succeed, and how and why?
Mobygamesisreanimated (11069) on 9/12/2008 3:21 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
It seems that a lot of people have trouble differentiating between what was actually shown a few years ago (very little) and their imagination (Spore will lead us to the Promised Land). I was slightly disappointed as soon as the first hands-on impressions and previews showed up a few month ago. I don't know what so many people are surprised about now.
vedder (70862) on 9/12/2008 4:14 PM · Permalink · Report
I don't know exactly what was shown in 2005, but what I played looks exactly like what they have been showcasing the last year round (and where my expectations were build around). 2005 is also already 3 years ago: what did they expect, that nothing would change in 3 years time? Again I refer to my point of them having the wrong expectations, which makes them disillusioned.
And for point 2. No I don't think they will succeed. Though I've played the game on hard difficulty, so I can't speak for easy or medium difficulties (don't know if that simplifies things), I think the tribal and civilization phases, which both play similar to real time strategy games will be considered too complex for most casual players. But that's my guess, and time will have to tell. I think strategy games are will remain a genre for more hardcore players. It's too complex, hectic, and requires too much training.
Nontheless, I'm not saying people aren't allowed to be disappointed or anything. I've been disappointed with a lot of games in the past, in retrospect I could've see that coming from miles away in most of the cases. Spore is not a game for anyone. Hardcore fans of any of the portrayed genres in spore will find that "their" genre has been dumbed down. It'll all depend on how much you are willing to sacrifice 'depth' for 'breadth'. Less hardcore players who don't focus on 1 or 2 genres normally, and players who are easily charmed by spore's cuteness-factor will probably like spore. I'm not so sure about casual gamers. I think quite some casual players will buy the game, but I don't know if they'll play it for long. I think the game's scope might be to intimidating for them. It depends on their creativity and love for the ingame editors how long they will stick, I think. I also think that that will remain the main selling point of the games (the creature/vehicle/building editors combined with the whole community surrounding it).
Tim Čas on 9/15/2008 4:07 PM · Permalink · Report
Here is the 2005 video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198
The game has 2 big problems: One is DRM, other (and bigger) is the fact that it didn't deliever on what it promised.
[ SPOILER WARNING ON 1 AND ABOVE ] [ DISAPPOINTMENT WARNING ON BUYING THE GAME ]
0) Regarding DRM, WHAT THE HELL?! I bought the game, LET ME PLAY IT, don't lock it to 3 installs! Sure, there is a "toll-free" line to get more, but - I already bought it, why do I have to explain myself for deciding to reinstall the game? Also, regarding the online activation - what if EA goes dead? Or better: What WHEN EA goes dead (every corporation sees its end, no matter how big and/or successful it was before that - look at 3dfx and Digital). I'm left with a nice round plate that I can use for frisbee. Yeah, 54€ for a damn frisbee.
I know what you're going to say: "It's because of the pirates." No it isn't - let me elaborate. Spore was cracked even before it was officially released, so why bother with malware that has a tendency of screwing your PC up? It only means that the pirates actually get a BETTER version of the game, one without malware with it - and unlimited installs. Sure, ones that actually bought it (I did, thought I'd get a good game, not this crap - and I didn't know about DRM at the time) get the online features, but who the hell cares? They even reduced most of the statistics about your creature to almost nothing.
So, why DRM, you ask? To erase the middle man (well, one of) - second hand shops and game rentals, that's why.
1) What happened to the realism? The tide pool (cell) phase had nice cells, with realistic looks. It looked awesome. Then someone decided it would be "cute" if they had eyes. I hated the idea, but OK, I can live with it...
1.1) The whole stuff was made much more cartoonish. The combat isn't as good, either (in the 2005 video, you could see your creature attacking with its tail).
1.2) Also, I see the whole social part of the creature stage just odd. Non-sentient species making friends with another species? Sure, it happens on Earth - but it's an exception, not a rule.
1.3) And why do all the creatures stick with the nests all the time (apart from attacking, which happens rarely anyways)
1.4) The 2005 video shown nice attack animations and such. Dragging corpses around might be simply cruel to someone, but it actually has an useful meaning - If you kill a creature and see a bigger one coming towards you (not noticed you yet), you could quickly drag the corpse away to eat in peace. Besides, eating a leg and such was way more realistic, too.
2) Where the hell did the underwater phase go?! In the released game, you go right from cell to a land creature.
3) The tribal phase - I loved the idea of creating a fire and such that would have long-term events (think of it as squatting a bug, 3 million years in the past - it could have HUGE impact on today). And why do I have to place the buldings on predefined spots?! Oh and all the stuff you've done to your creature earlier? They don't matter anymore. That's why people say it's like a series of minigames: The creature you made earlier has no effect on later gameplay (other than 2 or 3 benefits that you get, depending on the game you play), and any alliances made are broken when you get to a new phase. Yeah, that's nice. "Hey, it's been nice having you as allies, but we can't be friends with ya anymore... You're... You're too stupid. We have cities and vehicles, you idiots are still running around with spears.
4) City phase - Why are you limited on predefined spots for the buldings in the city phase? The 2005 demo showed the buildings would be placed and the city could be made bigger (unless I misinterpreted it - at least it didn't have predefined stuff). Also, once you find a configuration that has the best factory-house ratio to keep happiness and max profit, you're just going to use it all the time... Why bother having to do it all over again then?
4.1) What the hell happened with the procedural generation of cities?!
<hr />Get ready, because it's about to get really, REALLY bad.
5) The space phase - what the HELL?! The 2005 video shown that the space phase would be the ultimate sandbox - exploration, terraforming, adding species to a planet to see how they interact...
5.1) Events. They happen WAY too often, are repetitive and annoying. You're just terraforming a planet (possibly at the other end of the galaxy) and an eco-system collapse pops up. FINE. You go to the planet, do the stuff (you get no reward, BTW - not even a repair, recharge: "Yeah, thanks for saving our planet and all, but you still have to pay for the energy you used to do the job.") and go back - then a pirate attack. You go, kill some pirates, go back and - what's this? The damn atmosphere stuff you've done were UNDONE. So you gotta do it all over again, and possibly keep getting requests for help from allies and such. An event, say, every 6, 12 or even 24 hours would be cool. An event like 12 times an hour is NOT cool. It's just annoying and repetitive.
5.2) The missions. There are 4 types of missions, which the whole deal repetitive. Yes, I can count all the types of the missions with one hand (not counting those you get on your home planet, which are something like "go paint a planet." Yeah, real productive - and you only get each of those once per game) -Go scan all lifeforms on a planet -Go fetch a plant/creature from a planet -Go kill some infected citizens -Go pick up some weird globe
5.3) Trading spices is not fun. You're just running around, selling spices, coming back for more, selling that... It's repetitive.
5.4) Speaking about trading, how comes that trade routes yield no income (at least in space, can't recall for civ)? At least that would take some weight off of manually trading spices.
6) Still referring to the space phase - what the HELL happened to exploration and the sandbox part? What you end up is a game which forces you to keep going back to your planet, doing missions (to make alliances and get money for tools), etc etc... I want to terraform planets, experiment with species on them - not help some ally who does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in return (apart from cheaper prices and giving you a spaceship which is almost useless anyways).
6.1) About the spaceships - why the hell does everyone else attack me with 3 big spaceships, with EACH surrounded by 4 smaller ones - while I'm stuck with my ship and up to 5 ally ones. When I attack a planet, there's always someone defending it. Why does a huge empire have a SINGLE spaceship for EVERYTHING?! Why can't I buy more for planet defense and offense?
6.2) While on the topic - why the hell are the defensive turrets useless, and why do I have to MANUALLY rebuild everything that was destroyed? Why isn't there are "rebuild all" button? I mean, my people are smart enough to make a spaceship that can go across stars and ride wormholes (yes - wormholes, not black holes) - but they can't figure out that they should rebuild stuff on their own?!
6.3) What was promised was experimenting with the creatures on planets, see how they evolve, what happens if you put another one on it... What you end up with is this static system with 9 plants, 6 herbivores and 3 omni/carnivores (oh and, why can't omnivores fill in any herbivore spots?). The view is too far to be able to see anything. Sure, you can use hologram to go up close, but with the attack and such animations removed (well, dumbed down), where's the point anyways? Also, the creatures don't evolve at all - they stay the same. I was expecting for them to have little changes overtime, but nope. Granted, you can use a tool that allows more animals, but again - with no evolving and no animations, again, where's the point? Speaking of the 9/6/3 system, where are all the creatures you could see while in creature stage?!
7) The center of the galaxy is a huge disappointment. At least that's consistent (unlike the controls - see 8) - A perfect ending (I know it has no true ending, but this is one - sort of) for a game that was hugely disappointing.
8) Controls suck. They're inconsistent as hell. At one stage, a certain control does something completely other than at another stage. I won't go in depth into this one.
8.1) Where's the option to configure controls?!?
9) The game keeps crashing, so it would be only fair to have some sort of autosaves - sure, there is a danger of the player doing something stupid, so an autosave would save over the old autosave, but it's still better than nothing (he'd have a separate slot for normal saves) - or better yet, have 3 (or so) autosave slots. As it is now, autosaves are completely missing from the game, and there is one single save slot.
9.1) There are also tons of show-stopper bugs which means that you cannot continue. I've read about one (haven't confirmed) that if you're planting a colony, and you accidentially shoot it at an ally ship next to ya (the thing snaps, I'll get to that), the thing flies into space, and you can't get off the planet until the colony lands and fully deploys - only it never happens, because the thing you shot isn't affected by gravity so you end up with the colony going into infinity and never landing.
Sure, bugs happen - I'm a programmer myself, so I know that and accept it. The problem is that EA tends to take its time with that first patch. Besides, the point wasn't the bug itself - it was to further show why the game needs autosaves so badly. With more than 1 slot, that is - so that if the bug happens, an autosave doesn't do its work just then - although you can't save on a planet anyways.
<hr />I could go on and on about this, but I think I've proven my point. We got promises, we've SEEN tha the features mentioned have been shown (apart from a few exceptions) - I'd love to play the 2005 version instead of this one.
But nooo, what could have became an educational game about evolving and such became exactly the opposite. See this: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=430684&tstart=0 Don't get me wrong, I'm not much into educational games - when I play, I want fun. School is for education, games are for fun. The worst of all is that the one-but-last email I got from Spore is telling me about the science behind Spore. Right.
Remember when you used to play with Legos? Now imagine a planet being these Legos. Now imagine someone telling you every 5 minutes to go do something else (in Spore's case, save a planet from an eco-disaster or something). You get back, do some stuff, and you gotta go again. Now imagine your baby brother (in this case, resetting the atmosphere back to its original state, if not stabilized) comes and wrecks your creation.
Speaking of stable atmosphere, why can't it just stay that way? I don't want the planet to go back to what it was once I've created it, I want it to say this way, or change in minor increments (like creatures evolving, and erosion and such).
vedder (70862) on 9/15/2008 6:16 PM · Permalink · Report
0) Actually that's not what I'm going to say, because I completely agree. DRM is rubbish that only helps in converting more people to piracy. And I hope that things like the 2000 1-star reviews on Amazon will help EA and other publishers to see that the consumer just won't take this crap anymore.
1) I absolutely love the "cute" look. I think it's much more fun to look and play with than the quasi-realistic look of the creatures in the 2005 demo. Also look how the 2005 demo already has cartoony foliage and buildings, which totally do not fit with the more realistic creatures. Good call on their part.
1.1) Yes it is quite odd and a shame that they took that out.
1.2) You'd rather just walk around and eat fruit for 2 hours? They'd have to implement some kind of game for non-predators.
1.3) So you can find them and complete your missions. Really this is just game design taking precedence over realism. Something I couldn't agree more with.
1.4) Eating a leg, I'm fairly sure they took that out because their main target audience is supposed to be casual gamers. Most casual gamers don't like "hardcore games" because they contain too much violence. It was only logical for Maxis to take it out. As for dragging your enemy, I don't see that much gameplay advantages in that, because eating a corps takes like 2 seconds, and if it were to take longer it would just be increadibly dull, boring and tedious to sit trough every bloody time.
2) This is the first valid point, which can make me understand why some people would be greatly disappointed with the game. It's quite a shame they took it out. Mainly because there aren't so many underwater games. But, as a game designer myself, I can understand it from a gameplay perspective. The underwater phase would just be exactly the same as the creature phase. Kill and befriend. Also if you give the player the option to become either a land or a sea creature (i.e. you combine bothe phases into one), the content of the game suddenly increases in size twofold! You'd need submarines, swiming animations, underwater flora, underwater buildings and weapons and civilizations and everything. Though feasible, that would be a big burden on the cost and development time. You'd much rather leave that out, and have it as a possible option for a later expansion pack.
3) This is my greatest disappointment with the game too, there are too little connections between the phases, except for the few abilities, there are too little consequences linked to your choices in earlier phases. Also there's no point in not taking the best +5 item of everything on every playthrough.
4) What does it matter that you can't place your buildings anywhere? The strategical depth of the game doesn't go as far as to actually make it matter. Also the buildings ratio depends on the city size and thus won't be the same in all your cities, because the city you just nuked won't have much building slots available.
4.1) The what?
5)+6)+7) To be frank I've only just started with the space phase, so I can't comment much on it. So perhaps this is going to be really disappointing me, who knows?
8) As stated in various interviews: Because they didn't want to shun hardcore gamers away from the game, they tried to keep the controls as true as possible to the conventions of each genre. Yes, this means they will vary from phase to phase. Is this a good thing? I don't know. For me it is, but for casual gamers, probably not I guess.
8.1) Dunno, I'm a lefty (I play shooters and action games with the cursor keys or sometimes numpad, and thus always have to reconfigure my controls) but I found all controls immediately and instinctively. (see 8)
9) Had no crashes whatsoever. Though I guess autosaves would be nice.
9.1) I'm still waiting for patches that actually make Neverwinter Nights 2 playable in single player...
All in all, aside from the underwater phase, I don't see too much missing features that are worth being disappointed about. Perhaps I will find more disappointment in the space phase, I'll comment on that later, once I've played that a while. And again, I'm not saying this is the best game every or anything. Hell, once I've played the space phase through to the end I'll probably never touch this game again. But that's exactly what I had expected from the game. It plays exactly how I had expected it to play in every way. If anything it is even slightly more entertaining than I would have expected.
Tim Čas on 9/15/2008 7:35 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Well, stvedder - thanks for the constructive reply instead of "YOU SUCK!!!111!!!"
Firstly, don't get me wrong - I respect your opinion, but I guess I have to elaborate on some things.
1) As you wish, but the fact is that Will Wright kept talking about using the game to teach people stuff... All I've learnt from it was that evolution can mean that one creature can change to a very different one very, very quickly. Oh and that four hands wouldn't make any living being stronger than one with two hands.
About the realistic look: They'd just improve the looks to make it realistic. If they can dumb it down, they sure can "undumb" it up (granted, it is more difficult, but so is the burden, knowing that you tricked someone into buying it, while he thought he'd get something completely else).
1.2) No, but there could be other things. Granted, I can't think of many right now, but it's Will Wright for crying out loud! Well, plus the whole Maxis dev team.
1.3) I don't dislike the nest thing because of realism, but I see it as poor design. I never expected Spore to be 100% realistic
1.4) I agree with the reason, however - I'm not sure if casual gamers would spend 56€ on a game they're only planning to play for an hour. Besides, it could be toggleable. And no, it wouldn't take longer.
2) The problem with EA is exactly that - expansion packs. They often release a game, and then make a SHITLOAD of expansion packs. Just look at The Sims 1 & 2 (2 is worse). Sure, they'll probably have all these features in the game (apart from the violence perhaps), but it should be in the VERY FIRST VERSION.
4) Once you get to the space phase, all the cities you place have the EXACT SAME layout of paths & spots for the buildings. I've found an optimal configuration, and I use it all the time.
4.1) Will Wright talked about the buildings being generated by the computer, depending on the style of play. When I first entered the city phase, I was expecting that the computer would kind of take my style and apply it to other buildings, after I've done the town hall, but nope.
5.5) This is more of an addition to 5: I've forgotten to mention micromanagement. You have to rebuild EVERYTHING by yourself after an attack - and many times, all the turrets (which do practically nothing) are destroyed in the process. Why can't there be a "rebuild all" button, or better yet - why can't there be sort of a "governor" to manage the cities, build defensive vehicles (penalty could be, say, less spice production for having the governor).
5.6) If this was made for the casual gamer, why the hell does the space stage require so much micromanagement? Also, why the hell does the difficulty either raise to a high level or get really, really easy? This won't work for the casual gamer - he'll get to the space stage really easily, then - WHAT THE HELL?! He's getting his ass handed to him.
I consider myself a hardcore player and when in space stage, I spawned in middle of a ton of agressive races that wanted my head on a pole. I barely managed to get a few colonies up, and all of sudden, 3 at once are under attack. It's just not fair - go bug someone elses race, I'm trying to paint planets (well, in all honesty, I couldn't do it until later, because I was too deep in wars, because I had no cash to pay)!
5.7) Related to 5.6 - the main problem is the other, agressive races starting right next to ya. It's space, I should be glad when I meet a new race, not see one on every other system in the galaxy and think "meh, yet another one to ally or get in war with." There's a reason they call it the vacuum, the space, the void. I'm not saying it should be hard as hell to find another race, I'm just saying that they shouldn't be so common. I can't step anywhere without going into another race's territory.
8.1) There's simply no reason not to allow for change of controls. Perhaps a casual gamer (not me, I just use the keyboard and mouse) will want to use a joypad for playing Spore?
9) Lots of people do, you just got lucky (for now!). Some people's games don't even start, and apparently, it doesn't work with SLI - you have to disable it prior to starting the game. If the game was from like 2002, I wouldn't blame 'em, but this is 2008! EA is famous for making games that look good and use new technology (although most of them have little in terms of imagination (BF series, I'm looking at you!), apart from exceptions - such as Will Wright's games). Well, the other part is sucking every cent out of a person's wallet (see 2).
About the last comment... "Hell, once I've played the space phase through to the end I'll probably never touch this game again" I bet that if you've played the 2005 spore, you'd touch it again and again and again. This came could have been awesome, but as it turned out, it's just average.
You see, this game is promoted as a sandbox game, and I love sandbox games (Garry's Mod, anyone?) - it was meant to give YOU power, but what you get is the game forcing you to do the same things over and over again - saving planets from eco-disasters and such. If you want to have a planet that works well, you need T3 (you'll know what I'm talking about when you get to it), and they all look very similar, so no much diversity there - but that kind of ruins the artistic part. If you wanted to make it by your image, you can change the atmosphere - but it changes back! Why? I want my own planet!
PS: Off-topic, but why doesn't this post system take newlines correctly?