spore 05 - 08 comparison

Taken from http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page
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Pre-development
I worked on Spore for four months in summer 2004 as an intern and worked on several prototypes and concept art during the prototyping part of development. My work included the creature part selector (which surprisingly turned out exactly the way it was prototyped, though I'm sure it went through numerous revisions later on), built early prototypes of creature and building parts (with draggable widgets for re-shaping your parts or blocks), and spent countless hours messing with an early version of the creature.

First I'd like to dispel the rumor that the 2005 demos were "rendered" or "heavily scripted". I'm not 100% certain to what extent the demos were "scripted", but at the stage of development when I was there the builds of the game already had most of the mechanics that we see today.

The creature editor that was available at the time had some of the most amazing procedural animation work I've ever seen anyone develop. Perhaps, somewhat more innovative than what we see in the game today (more on this later).


After stalking this forum for about about a week after release, and reading all the reviews and reactions, then having played the game myself for about fifty hours, here are some of my opinions.

Creature creation seems over-simplified
This was a big deal for me. In the extremely early versions that I toyed around with, I was able to make creatures that shifted under their own weight. Creatures that exploited the length of their arms or legs for greater reach. Creatures that behave and move true to how they were built. A short bunny-creature would definitely be out-run by the long-legged dragon-giraffe. That was very neat, and it implied several exciting possibilities in gameplay.

For instance, creature morphology actually mattered. This implied deeper strategy to creature creation. You have a small inkling of this in the Cell stage where placement of parts somewhat mattered. For example, spikes placed behind your creature saved you from being bitten when chased. But, the strategy that earlier prototypes implied went beyond placement of parts. The length of limbs or spine felt like it mattered. If you had a forward-heavy animal with legs placed in the back, it would run poorly as it tries (and fails) to counteract its own weight.

I can see the reason why Maxis shifted the design from a "morphology matters" philosophy to a "every design works". Somewhere along the line, someone must have decided that it wasn't good to build creatures that could fail. This emphasizes (hopefully) people to experiment with different looking creatures, rather than focus only on creatures that perform well (or perform at all).

The problem with this is that within "friendly" game design, all creatures became a bland, unified "idea" of a creature. With a game being so inspired by evolutionary design, the game takes so little advantage of the exciting things that could be done with the ideas its selling. I have a strong feeling that this is the main reason why people feel the game-play to be "shallow".

Imagine for a moment that morphology does matter. Less surface area would mean less area to be bitten (or perhaps, less mass to carry around). Longer necks would mean eating better fruits found higher up on trees. Bigger and stronger arms could let you pick up and use larger and larger objects (pick up other creatures, or throw rocks and boulders). Longer legs (including legs that end up in a tentacle-like spiral fashion) would mean faster running, but legs might tangle up with each other if poorly designed. Less protrusions from the body might mean better aerodynamics, and thus more controlled flight.

This leads to a tight feed-back loop more true to "evolution", and I would think, leads to more fun gameplay. You're forced to consider whether or not you could afford that longer arm or that longer tail. You're forced to decide whether to put those spikes on the head so it hurts another creature as you're biting, versus hurting someone only from a tail-strike. Even with this setup I would imagine there's would still be a huge space for creature designs, making it a challenge to build creatures that both perform well and look awesome.

These ideas got off-loaded to the responsibility of creature parts, which IMO is sort of disappointing. By the way, none of the above ideas s impossible. It was by sheer design choice that Maxis, for whatever reason, avoided altogether.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• spore
• gdc
• 05

[shadowfire976]

i dont think it was maxis' fault. EA probably told them they wanted a younger target audience. so they dramatically lowered the complexity and

depth. and now it's a pretty good game but it could have been the best game ever. they need to make a spore 2

[liquos]

My guess is because they were scared people could make "broken" creatures. They could make a creature that could trip over it's own legs, or not be as great a fighter as other creatures, WHICH IS THE FUN OF THE GAME. I seriously want to cry when I watch the 05 video. I feel so sad over the fact that we could have had this amazing, wildlifelike game we could be playing for ever and ever, and instead we got this simple, basic, "nothing new" piece of junk. I hate Spore. It only brings bad memories.

[Kalkazaar]

Feels bad man

[sythe13]

Appealing to kids doesn't even make sense to me. The idea of creating bizarre creatures and actually seeing them move realistically with all their faults would have made my favorite game list as a kid.

[lkjhgfddfd]

@shadowfire976 I know... It's EXACTLY what happened with Sim City and it fucking sucks. :/

[atomiczombie101]

holy hawkings chair!

why did they completly rape the 05 version, seriously i want the 05 version now, not EA's 08 fisherprice abomination.

[TheEpic38]

/watch?v=19Hlei-G_w0 a petition for old spore like

[Sporefan04]

I can't believe EA destroyed a perfect life simulation game just to make it more appealing to 3 year olds. That's just sad.

[MRLein93]

@shadowfire976 No it was an internal argument of Cute vs. Science as stated by Will Wright himself. He blames himself for why it went wrong because it was his job of managing as lead designer.

forum*spore*com/jforum/posts/l­ist/11211*page

[majicm9]

That's what we call the ol' bait and switch.

[1Nekit1]

@TheRaptorsaur however, SPORE is still kinda fun to play! :)

[TheRaptorsaur]

@1Nekit1 i agree,they should just make some kind of violence on and off in game options so that the children could turn blood and realistic attacks off and other players could play the normal game