Spore

[loonyboi]

I knock the DS because I think it's gimmicky, but I think this game sounds pretty cool.

An excerpt:

Spore seems to be a concise summary of Wright's virtuosic approach to game design. In tackling the most significant issues and trends facing developers moving into the next generation of games, he appears to have designed a project that gracefully encompasses a wide array of genres while giving players an unprecedented level of control over their game experience.

What appeared initially to be a demo of a new approach to low-effort game design (game assets are created with procedural techniques, or with user-based tool sets, rather than pre-defined) slowly revealed itself over the course of an hour to be one of the most comprehensive games ever attempted. Wright describes it as an homage to his favorite games, from Pac-Man to Populous, from Diablo to Civilization, with a heavy dose of classic sci-fi. However, the overall experience is ultimately defined by the user; user-created civilizations on display included both organic, Roger Dean-like cities and cold steel fortresses that wouldn't have been out of place on the Death Star.

It might not work at all. But I think Wright's wacky enough to actually pull this off.

[loonyboi]

Woops, I left out the description of the actual game, I just threw in the hyperbole.

Spore could end up being quite literally the biggest and most ambitious game ever attempted. Although it begins at the microscopic level, with players taking control of a monocellular organism in a tidal pool, the scale changes as the creature evolves and grows. The end result: A massive adventure spanning an entire galaxy with player-driven gameplay and design shared seamlessly online among the entire Spore community.

[hermes]

at first I thought it was meant for the ds.... ha - no go sir....

[baconian]

This Wilol Be Abso-fucking-lutely Fucking Amazing

Omfgwtfdeadly

[baconian]

every post in this forum has something to do with this game. Every hope expressed, every thought cruelly quashed, every subject squeamishly circled, has direct relevance to this, the pinnacle of human achievement. Spore.

[baconian]

call me a fanboy, but Will Wright is god. Ill get the site up soon.

[MrHoatzin]

call me a fanboy, but Will Wright is god. Ill get the site up soon.

Hey now!

[chromatose]

i think this is one of the only games on the horizon that actually has me excited.

[SiN]

sounds absolutely stunning.

its the type of concept only will wright could come up with ... and him (and Molyneux) are the only people in the industry who'd actually get away with creating and finding a publisher for such an "out-there" game.

this really seems like the sum of all of Will Wrights game theory concepts rolled into one game, and i love that. it encompases the "tinkering" quality all his games have, the user creativity factor he's always strived for, and on a couple of occasions, he has talked about game assets getting to become too big ... the solution to this problem is certainly the most intriguing part of the game (ie : the fact that all the media will be created on-the-fly)

im looking forward to some screenshots ... i bet its gonna look like nothing else we've every seen ... i cant wait!

SiN

[Jake]

Will Wright is a really clever guy. The fact that a billion hojillion people like the Sims is obviously not definitive proof of anything, but erm, yeah. He's clever, and likes experimenting with games. I doubt he expected the Sims to be as popular as it is. It was a project he had to fight with EA to even get funded. Anyway I don't know enough about Will Wright to answer Sean's question, but I have a huge amount of respect for that guy and interest in his projects, even though the Sims bored me after a very short while.

[Marek]

Holy crap that sounds like the Godzilla of game concepts. I'd laugh very hard if this were announced by Peter Molyneux, and I'd be at least super skeptical if any other game designer announced it, but Will Wright is definitely the one big exception. If anyone can pull it off, it's him.

[BigJKO]

at first I thought it was meant for the ds.... ha - no go sir....

Well, the preview mentions that there's a real possibility for Spore to be ported to the DS and PSP, since the data, that user exchange between one another, is supposedly very small. And, of course, both handhelds are online-able.

[MrHoatzin]

So is this gonna be a mmo ordeal or more along the lines of Black-and-Whitesque, show-your-monkey-to-the-world kind of thing?

[Marek]

Read this.

[manny_c44]

Do you guys think it will be the kind of game where you'll spend a few days on each phase? Or is Wright trying to go the 'Pirates!' way and be able to most of the things in just a few sittings?

I know that in Sim City you could spend days and days growing your city, and that Sims rubbish was pretty much an endless time drain...

[BigJKO]

Knowing Wright, you'd think you'd be able to spend as much time as you want on each phase, and once you get into the invasion phase you're pretty much in sandbox mode, where you can spend the rest of the time you didn't devote to the other phases.

...or something.

[MrHoatzin]

Read this.

Hell, there are people here more than willing to recapitulate the facts for me. Why should I get out of my way? ¬ ¬

[Moosferatu]

Awesome, we need that as a smiley.

[Roderick]

If anything, this is another typical Will Wright gameconcept that puts me aflame just by reading these wild possibilities. The same thing happened when I read about the Sims, and that turned out to be awfully boring and disappointing. Still, I can't help myself. It sounds so good. Even though I wouldn't call it the Godzilla of concepts; the way it's written in the 1UP article made it sound like a Pirates!-type approuch, where each phase has a distinctive style of gameplay. Still, it tickles the same spot that Age of Empires tickled; rising up and building an empire over the centuries/eons. Let's hope this is done with more [visual] flair than the Sims!

[Jake]

Well okay, maybe the concept of The Sims is interesting enough, along with spores. But it's really hard for me not to hate things that millions of stupid people like. Especially since The Sims is just a big stupid machine that keeps releasing tons of add-ons and sequels that are pretty much there to eat more of your stupid dollars.

I think the Sims addons are more EA's doing than Wrights. I mean he might contribute to them or approve them or whatever, or even like what each individual one does from a conceptual standpoint, but it seems like he's been working on the Spore, at least in the background, more or less since The Sims came out.

[Marek]

the way it's written in the 1UP article made it sound like a Pirates!-type approuch

The guy who wrote it just posted in a web forum somewhere that you can in fact sort of scale back and forth fluidly. So the different stages are more connected and mixed together than his writeup suggested. I'm paraphrasing here since I just closed the window and can't be bothered to look it up again

[lailoken]

should be interesting how Wright is going to make the gameplay work. It sounds nice, but it also sounds a lot like a typical Molyneux game concept and in the end it's nothing but a GOOD gimmick game...

[Roderick]

Ow Jeez, I'm hyped now. Dammit!

[baconian]

should be interesting how Wright is going to make the gameplay work. It sounds nice, but it also sounds a lot like a typical Molyneux game concept and in the end it's nothing but a GOOD gimmick game...

I'll be looking forward to the sort of scaling that Katamari Damacy had, sort of seamless. Wright does indeed know a lot about simulation, and the supposedly procedural nature of the content in the game should combine with this to allow for an environment where changes on the cellular level have a direct, but not neccessarily predictable, effect on the macro level.

[ysbreker]

isn't everything a gimmick in the end?