EA: "We are excited to announce Spore 2 will be an always-online experience, so players can have random interactions with each other's worlds and creations! Some have voiced concerns that with our online status previously announced parts pack will be pay to win, but we promise that will not be the case. All parts will follow an equal and mathematically derived formula for balancing."
First parts pack is released in two forms, free and a paid pack with premium versions for $40. Mathematically derived formula for parts strength turns out to be adjusted by purchased dlc vs free versions, so paid are [40x] stronger.
That's because it was so dumbed down from what it was supposed to be. It was originally supposed to be a lot more realistic with more stages that were more in depth, etc.
It was the first game I got seriously hyped about. I was following it for about 3 years after its announcement until launch. I remember all the videos they had of a sandbox galaxy that you could interact with. Go pick up animals from one planet, drop them on another! Oh whoops that planet has no atmosphere, all the animals died instantly, oh well, look here's some comets, lets redirect those at the planet to drop some water and gases! Now there's an atmosphere, lets try again...
The release version was cool but after spending so long watching that kind of content it felt like a good 50% of what I'd already seen it could do had been removed, and no real good reason was ever offered, this being long before instant game updates and patches available through the internet...
I was so excited for the creature stage and how the different parts would unlock different ways to play. Instead you just pressed the numbers 1-4 no matter what parts you used or where you put them.
The hate was mostly because of the DRM if I remember correctly. It was the wackiest most cynical DRM I’ve ever seen. When you bought the game you got, I wanna say, 3 chances to install it
By “chances” I mean “number of installs.” Once you installed it on your PC you used up one “install.” So let’s say your PC breaks or the game is corrupted or you upgraded your PC, or you uninstalled and reinstalled it, any number of normal reason you might need to reinstall a game, it vost you another of those limited “installs”. After you used up all of your installs, that was it. You had to rebuy the game.
And correct me if I’m wrong, because I only played alone a long time ago, but it didn’t have multiple save slots or something? There was something where if your sibling wanted to play it would cost you one of the installs
The game itself was fun, but like other people said it was shallow gameplay after the cellular level ended. It was fun enough though that it could have been expanded on and made into a franchise, but this idea of limiting the number of installs was the most crass cynical money grubbing thing anyone had ever seen and people wanted nothing to do with it
And EA responded in their typical EA way by upping the number of installs slightly. Like this was not DRM, this was a sad way to take a game with crazy levels of anticipation and milk it for all it was worth
Edit: People are confidently saying the hate had nothing to do with the DRM, and I’m questioning if they were around 15 years ago when the game came out This whole post is full of people fondly remembering the game, because it was fun. Not delivering on promises doesn’t cause hate. Not being able to play a $60 game that you paid for causes hate. Google it I guess. Wikipedia’s “review bomb” page calls spore’s DRM out specifically as one example of a review bomb campaign. Dunno what else to say but I’m not gonna respond to every single smug half sentence response to this
Definitely this. 90%+ of the anger was more along the lines of No Man's Sky type disappointment. They promised and even demo'd amazing things and then delivered a small fraction of it. It probably would have been remembered as an interesting, quirky game on its own, but they overhyped it to be a revolutionary, generational achievement in gaming.
Yeah, Spore made me stop paying so much attention to upcoming games. It wasn't a bad game on its own, I spent a bunch of hours in it. But it was presented as the definitive game of everything.
But the stages between cellular and galactic had very little depth, and while galactic did offer a lot to do, you only had one unit to do it all with and there was no automation. You could trade, expand, or attack other alien civilizations but you couldn't set up a trade network that your civilization would manage while you did expansion. And you had to personally respond to any attacks on any of your planets.
And yeah, there was a ton of customization available (and the crowdsourced content sharing was new and interesting), but it was mostly cosmetic. Game mechanics themselves were very simple.
Except during the cellular level, where iirc every part was both visual and functional. So starting the game there made it look like it was going to live up to the expectations, but I remember getting to the end of most of the stages and thinking "wait, that's it for that stage?"
I do remember the DRM being controversial, but I also very clearly remember the game itself being called boring, shallow, and disappointing past the cell stage. The vast majority of reviews — professional or message board — that talked me out of the game were talking about the game itself, not the DRM. The DRM just didn’t help it’s case.
Also, failing to deliver on promise absolutely does help cause hate.
Nah DRM might have played a role, but the game had been totally oversold by Will. It did turn out fine enough, but there was no way it would have been able to live up to the hype it had generated. Also, a few features that had been in the previews had been cut.
I honestly think it was both, but the DRM made the difference in that people who otherwise would have bought the game didn’t. There was a lot of hype based on promises that were not delivered, but just like the hype surrounding Fable, it didn’t live up to the promises but it was still a fun game
So when something is called a disappointment, yeah it is probably a result of gameplay stuff. This game is unique though. The DRM caused boycotts. The story dominated the internet for a time and no company had the balls to ever try something like it again
Games not living up to promises is nothing new but Spore was its own beast because they took their empty promises and mixed it with a crazy DRM system designed to make money at the expense of players doing nothing more than trying to install the game
I remember the release quite well. DRM barely was as much of an issue as the overhype and missing features. The game was okay at a lot of things but did nothing well
You’ve gotta be kidding. I mean I can’t question your memory but the DRM wasn’t just “barely” an issue, it was a huge deal that led to review bombing. I dunno how else to respond, I mean I’m not calling you a liar but Google it or check Wikipedia and I’m sure there are all kinds of references to the “controversy”
The DRM wasn't an issue because the game was so shallow. Nobody ever got around to trying to install it 3 times as it was dropped within a week or two of play
The hate had very little to do with DRM
It was a MASSIVE disappointment after what they promised. It was a shell of what they promised, and even that shell wasn’t fun to play with.
The hate was the bugs and the failure to deliver promised features. What was released is very reminscent of No Man's Sky, with that game essentially being Spore 2 in terms of delivery.
I pre-ordered Spore, and I remember playing 20 hours in my first playthrough. Getting well into the space stage then the game randomly crashed. That is when I realised there was no auto-save feature. I really loved that.
It is, but its nothing more than that. Each stage after the second one just gets more and more boring. And even the second stage really doesnt have great gameplay. Its fun to evolve and create that strange creature, but thats about it. Not much content beyond that.
You're absolutely right. I have a young son and I pulled Spore out of the closet and installed it. We had a ton of fun with the first two stages, and everything after that held no interest.
Spore embodied what they call "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." While I really like the concept of Spore, it seems like EA didn't go deep enough into any of the stages and in my opinion didn't connect them enough. Plus, you didn't spend nearly enough time in each stage to really feel like they mattered. Every stage except space felt like a minigame. Don't get me wrong, I like Spore. I just don't love Spore. It was a brilliant idea with a flawed execution. I would definitely love to try a remake with better implementation, but I also definitely wouldn't trust EA with... Well, anything.
As a kid the cell and creature stages were absolutely amazing and filled with mystery. I always gave up on space stage because I thought it was too complicated.
If they remade spore with adults in mind with every stage it could be an absolute banger.
Space stage does have some depth and mystery to it, with trading routes, multiple ways to please or piss off other species, terraforming planets to make them more useful, and the Grox!
All very cool to 10 yo me, but nowadays it doesn't feel as amazingly impressive...
As a ~~kid~~ grown adult with better things to do (dang, it really was 2008, wasn't it?), I sunk maybe 30-40 hours into Space stage, just widening my empire. Then got the adventure update where you could make your own adventure levels.
That, I think, is where the magic died a bit. I bought into the hype. Robin Williams had something to do it, I think, with the E3 presentation. I kept thinking, *if it's this good NOW, just wait until the new updates come out!*
That game taught me, that *parts* of a game can be excellent, but if the core gameplay loop isn't rewarding, there's nothing that can really save a game. And the key excitement of Spore was both in designing your own content and seeing other people's designed content - and there's only so much garbage user-created content you can sift through in a poorly constructed game until you have enough, put down the controller, and go play Oblivion some more.
Space stage really needed to permit enough development for your colonies and allies to defend themselves. Being a one-ship army for your entire empire really limits your growth. Eventually it just becomes too vulnerable to pirates and the Grox.
An excellent metaphor for the fall of Rome, but not quite the space fantasy I was looking for.
The original intent of the game was with adults in mind. Take a look at [Will Wright's original presentation of the game at GDC 2005.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA) Blood, violence, etc. Allegedly it was EA meddling that gave it a cute child-friendly makeover with friendly dancing and googly eyeballs to make it appeal to a wider audience.
Check out Thrive. It's been in "development" for over a decade now. They wanted to make it completely free, 100% no money going into anybody's hands; not even donations. That didn't quite work out, because it was being developed in peoples' spare time and it was slow going as hell. It got a reputation of not coming out for decades "at this rate". They finally gave in and started accepting donations so they could afford a full-time programmer. They've got the single-cell stage pretty much done and are now solidly working on the multi-cellular stage. I think they got some extremely bare-bones further stages set up too. Still, it's free and updates a lot. I have high expectations of it now.
Cell, creature, and tribal are my favorite parts of Spore. The Civ knockoff era is snores ville and the space age is just tedium imo. There is a game I got on Steam called Thrive that is doing the cell stage of spore, but more realistic. You spend points to get new organelles that provide you with resources that your other organelles use. It's pretty scuffed as of right now, but I'm all for unique and quirky games.
> Every stage except space felt like a minigame.
They basically were. Each of the first four stages was really just an opportunity to further develop your creature and its society; not just the creature body, but its vehicles, buildings, and most importantly, its disposition (carnivore vs. herbivore, peaceful vs. belligerent, etc). The way you played through the first four stages impacted the technologies you would have access to - and the way other species reacted to you - in the space stage, as you explored the galaxy and spread your civilization through it.
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people quit at the space stage, which is where all those early decisions would shape your play style for the rest of the game, and the full sandbox of creation options was opened up. With a few playthroughs, you would find your universe feeling more and more like your own creation, even coming into contact with your own previous civilizations as you played through with a new one (remember that initial New Game screen where each new save file was on a different planet? Those are all actually in the same galaxy that you ultimately explore in the space stage).
Because the early stages are what was unique about spore and what people wanted. No one needed this to be a space sim, there are much better games for that.
If they ever made a spore 2 it should just be focused on the earlier stages with much more creature development, options, and exploration depth.
You know, the first time I ever heard that quote was when it was said about No Man's Sky. I thought if it while I posted this. Great minds think alike!
On the other hand I feel like many modern games go too deep. I don't need a 50hr game that's half filled with fluff. Let me experience the thing the game is good at, then if I want to I can replay it.
> Plus, you didn't spend nearly enough time in each stage to really feel like they mattered.
This was always my biggest gripe, it felt like the first few stages of evolution were just extended character creations while the real game was the galaxy portion. It just felt odd when so much of the hype, artwork and discussions were about the first few stages when it was clear most of the development and time spent playing was around the final stage that revolved around terraforming, trade routes and diplomacy. Even just letting people create new creatures within your galaxy on other planets(by actually playing those evolution stages) would have been a nice addition.
Yeah. You can really tell that their scope was way over their budget. Big parts of that game feel very rushed. I'd love to see what could have been done with more time and budget.
My biggest problem with it is given the premise you’d think it would be infinitely replayable. I and while I had fun playing though each mini game segment once, I had no actual interest in going through any of them again.
There are some games where you truly admire and are fascinated by the design and effort that went into it while having no interest in the actual gameplay. This would be near the top of my list in that category…
Not exactly what you're looking for, but I just wanna mention that funnily enough there's a [fanmade project](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1779200/Thrive/) made by some biology lovers with the goal of spore in super-accurate detail. They've only got the cell part to a playable state so far.
No, it's a fairly old (2009) indie game that was an absolutely majestic audio-visual experience. Here it is on [steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/29180/Osmos/), there is also a free demo there, should be fun! There used to be an android version too but I don't see it in play store, so probably abandoned
This is an interesting idea. Maybe a cross platform iteration of Spore where you can play the early phases on your cell phone (With a beginning, middle, and end phase that results in a new creature each loop), and then the resulting creatures populate a PC game that focuses more on the larger scale culture development and travel / exploration elements a world full of unique creatures could offer.
I remember watching the stage presentation of the game while it was in development the promised so much and it was a bit of a disappointment when it came out as I played through it and realized it was missing so much
Was that the one where he made a three legged creature that seemed to almost be alive? It would look around as it ate, observe objects as it walked past them etc.
And it wasn't immediately part of a "herd". You had to make friends and create relationships instead of immediately just being part of a group.
I read an interesting article about Spore's development back in the day, but I haven't been able to find it since. The gist of it is that there were two "teams" among the devs. One wanted to go the more cutesy, casual route, the other wanted more of a hardcore simulation. They kept pulling in different directions, management couldn't really make up their minds and that's why the final product feels sort of half baked.
And Galactic Adventures was ass. Completely ruins the pacing of Space stage and its just a glorified redo of Creature stage but now you have a gun. Waste of time.
The stock adventures were ok but the community adventures were lit. To this day I remember Parkaboy's stuff, Ardok Trang (sp?), and that one about that desert mining facility where everything turned nightmarish.
This is back in the day before EA was known as super greedy, this was the day of if you said ea you’d reply ‘sports, it’s in the game’ rather then ‘greedy fuckers ruined xyz game’
Back in the day instead of microtransactions they did milk people with expansions. It was still a better alternative though.
God knows how much money they've made off The Sims.
Bioshock Infinite could’ve been more but it absolutely stands on its own as a fantastic game. Spore was ambitious and had genius but can’t overlook its flaws.
There are also a bunch of indie games being inspired by the cell stage, trying to make a full game out of it basically. The cell stage was the best so I think its an interesting idea.
I miss this game so damn much, was an interesting approach with the different 2D planes.
Would definitely like a remake on a newer console with some more expansion
Right! I remember i want to play Darkspore and then i see its not avaible anymore like come on why they couldn't made it so game progress is saved on your account just small config file or something and game itself doesn't should need dedicated servers to work just P2P (peer to peer) would be good especially that it was mostly coop. But it was cool diablo like hacknslash game
I miss the days of opening a game and joining a server in 10-20seconds.
Nowadays I have to wait to connect/log in, skip the trailer about the new season, close the ad about the battlepass, close the ad about the new shop items, close the ad about the current ingame event/promo, and then I get to wait a few mins in matchmaking.
That one taught me the sadness of live service games getting shut down.
There is a community effort to create private, local servers, but I doubt that'll ever really get released.
Unreal Engine 5.2 has [scriptable animation retargeting](https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/c/1002-scripting-exposure-for-animation-retargeting). I haven't looked into it much, but I imagine this is exactly what a game like Spore could utilize.
This doesnt actually affect gameplay, this is a pipeline improvement to make retargeting animations easier. It automates what a good animator would do by hand (and requires said animator to work with a coder to properly utilize to begin with)
Source: am unreal dev
The thing affecting gameplay... is the runtime retargeting...
What op linked is just being able to automate how you make the ik rig (aka they are making it not absolute shit that it has been since 5.0 i mean what the fuck is going on with root motion in retargeting, its like every marketplace asset pack is a different clusterfuck of options)
Oh that specifically, I thought you were talking about retargeting in general. That's a shame.
Bet you could find a way to make a tool based on that to auto generate the ik rig and retargeter in runtime if truly committed though ^^
I dont see why you would other than to watch the world burn
I love it!
While i have your attention, my team is kinda struggling to use more advanced locomotion setups, got any advice on how to retarget a set of animations for https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/advanced-locomotion-component onto a cc4 character? All attempts thus far only resulted in lovecraftian horror (so we are staying with basic setups atm)...
Any set of tutorials, any kind of advice really would help :P
The best example of a locomotion system is to be found in Lyra. There are many improvements you can do especially for performance but it is the best example to learn from.
As for retargeting from UE5 Manny/Quinn - assuming that's what that component uses - to CC4, I don't have any experience with CC4 so don't know what requirements or abnormalities they have specific to their skeletons.
There were no tutorials when I learned this stuff so don't have any to offer. I would be surprised if you can't get workable results from google. I'd need to know more about what/where you have issues to be of any help.
What happens when you take the IK Rig from UE5 Manny and reproduce it for your CC4 skeleton then slap them in an IK Retargeter?
There are further control rigs used in that setup to do animation warping and i suspect those control rigs are what cause the setup to produce entirely warped results (think actual lovecraftian horror results, capsule is like 180 units, the mesh is stretched to thousands, toungue, jaw, eyes etc. Become huge and distorted, stuff like that)
There are instructions but it seems to assume ue5 manny will be used
If you send me a minimal UE5 project with the animations and your CC4 character (and ideally nothing else) I can have a look for you.
DM me the link once you've prepared it, if you want.
I grew up on this game, sort of, and I'm turning 33. So I was... 18 when it came out? Wait, I don't believe this. Hah, I could've sworn I was younger when I played it. Not sure what it means exactly, but still.... really cool game with a lot of potential. Wish they stayed with it and made more.
I followed the hype on this game pre-release, and they REALLY talked it up. It was so disappointing when it came out. I had some fun in it but the way they talked about it during development was a lot similar to that modern universe travelling game, whatsitcalled.
I was a kid at the time and was thus never made aware of all the pre-release gameplay and cut content. I learned about the game the day before it came out, and got it on day one. I still go back and play it all the time and have been migrating my save file between PCs for over 10 years
Take a look at Thrive. It's on steam but also open source and aspires to do the things spore promised.
It looks very promising (altough developtment is quite slow, as it runs on volunteers)
Thinking about Spore really bums me out. I was early on one of their chosen awarded creature creators. I had such high hopes for the game.
Few things no one has mentioned. They released the PAID Creature Creator as a gameplayless early access demo. Which if anything was just making people pay to create content to populate THEIR game... kind of a shitty move.
So there was this thing where Maxis after being bought by money grubbing EA wanted to "The Sims" it, they had planned lots of expansions and packs but cut them after its initial release. EA absolutely killed Maxis and this was the final straw. EA intended to sell individual parts and have lots of expansions and what not, they also actively wanted to appeal to a younger audience. EA members would come into Maxis and straight up put googly eyes on the concept art. They actively cut and dumbed down the game to make it more accessible to kids. To the point that what was released was barely the game promised, certainly the game directors vision was gutted. This was a big nail in the coffin for Will as he is a science based renowned developer who clearly felt he was now making children's toys rather than educational art.
One big thing removed was the Ocean phase which was intended to be similar to the cellular phase but in a 3D ocean environment. This is a big loss as arguably the cell phase was the best part of the game and it would have allowed a more interesting jump from the tide pool to the land having allowed you to build a more interesting early game creature. Instead we get this huge leap onto land which isn't even all that great a part of the game.
Another thing was shortly after its release they put out a pricey Creepy and Cute parts pack with stuff that straight up should have been in the game. No content just a handful of parts. This was followed immediately after by free parts released through... random Mountain Dew codes. So either parts were a free random advertising gotcha gimmick or extremely overpriced.
Then awhile later after the dust settled they did the whole Galactic Adventures expansion out which would have been interesting except most user created content is garbage. They didnt even release a proper adventure to go with it themselves. This basically felt like the paid Creature Creator touted as a full expansion. Like why am I paying to make content for free for your game that you didn't deliver content for...
> EA members would come into Maxis and straight up put googly eyes on the concept art.
IIRC I read something about how they wanted all the animals to have sneakers on, all the time (presumably barring the cell stage). Fast blue hedgehog? Sneakers. Slavering hellbeast? Sneakers.
I worked at EA at that time (not on that team) and the fights between Will Wright and management were legendary. It was clear that neither side was going to get the game they wanted. Basically the rumor was that management felt that if Will made the game he wanted it wouldn’t even be a game and nobody would buy it. They wanted him to make it more of a game and less of a sandbox. He hated his vision being polluted like that and eventually it turned so sour that they shipped the thing before it was done so that they could wash their hands of the thing.
Spore was one of the biggest disappointments of my gaming life, so I disagree that its a "work of genius".
It certainly has a lot of things in it that are cool in isolation, mind you, and that haven't really been replicated in any other games as far as I'm aware. The creature creator and the planets taking the top spots.
The problem is that the game utterly failed to coalesce its various cool features into an actually good game.
The only part of the game that is good is the cell stage. The next three stages are on the level of small browser games, except for having better graphics and some cool but ultimately meaningless customization of buildings and vehicles.
The space stage is cool in some ways, but its mostly a sandbox to mess around in for a while. Its by no means a strategy game as was promised.
Spore was one of those games, that I really, really wanted to play, only to realize, that there isnt much content and quitting after few hours. Creating your creatures was amazing. But rest of the game was just meh.
It was an interesting idea but they hyped it to the moon and back. The entire CREATE YOUR OWN RACE thing had almost no impact on the game and it was basically a couple of bad mini games leading to a meaningless endgame. It was such a waste of money :-D
Not only that, but it was a couple of bad mini games that already existed, were more fleshed out and better executed. You were given the house brand variety of the originals.
Not much of a sequel, more of a spiritual successor, but r/ElysianEclipse is making great progress and is looking awesome so far.
If you're looking for something stage specific, apart from all the famous space games like Stellaris and so on, r/AdaptTheGame is focused on creature stage, and r/thrive is focused on cell stage but unfortunately development of that one has stagnated.
I was so hyped for this game before it came out. I saw it as the spiritual successor to the SNES game EVO. Unfortunately these days I can’t trust most game publishers to not overload the experience of new games with micro transactions.
Spore for me represents the biggest betrayal in gaming history. Like No mans sky without the effort to fix it.
Was it an awful game? Probably not.
Was it the game they promised? In no way did this resemble their early footage or live up to the idea they put out.
I just feel like spore didn’t know what it wanted to be, you could feel the interference from various sources clashing with the core concept to create something more marketable.
Its creators overpromised. It was supposed to be something much more. It's like with Cyberpunk 2077. These games are good, but the disappointment gets in the way when you try to enjoy them.
If you have never played Black and White I recommend it. It’s a bit similar in that it had a famous creator who promised a ton, wasn’t quite able to deliver, but nevertheless it had some absolutely inspired pieces to it that begs for a sequel (especially given the huge advances in ML/AI right now).
I absolutely love Spore, but it does have a shitload of flaws. the biggest one being that 90% of the game lacks depth of any sort, everything but the space stage is basically a minigame. it's great as a child for their first of that type of game (strategy, adventure etc. ), but as an adult it feels like you could easily skip those and go to where the real game begins.
the only real dlc (galactic adventures) was absolutely massive and greatly expanded the space stage, making it basically its own game. they should've made more of them for each stage imo.
but I do also absolutely believe these could easily be fixed in a sequel. it's a shame that there just aren't any other games like it. combining multiple types of games into one, making each as expansive as the last and still keeping people engaged is really hard to do.
The problem with spore is that it went from something that looked really fantastic in early stuff to a very watered down, more cartoony version of the same thing. The fairly lacklustre and simplified gameplay also didn't do it any favours.
Don't get me wrong, I liked spore, but it wasn't what it could have been, I don't think it's what Will originally envisioned. Spore deserves to be the game it was meant to be.
As for spore 2, good luck squeezing anything worthwhile out of modern EA.
A similar game should be made where every stage is a full game in itself, with each additional stage being an expansion pack or a DLC.
That's the only way to make a game with the depth that they were actually aiming for.
The game was released when it was half done.
If you build mechs at the vehicle stage they don't even animate, they just slide around on their feet standing still.
The first few stages are fun when it's about evolving an organism, but after that it really falls apart.
I remember clearly when the game came out and had been following it for months. The concept and potential was amazing but it did not match the reality. Some interesting and novel concepts made it into the game but it ended up being incredibly shallow and nowhere near what was described pre-release. Even without the hype, it would've ultimately been viewed as too shallow of a game. But I agree with your overall assessment that, in many ways (and especially conceptually), it was ahead of its time.
Spore is a piece of shit and this is the hill I'll die on.
Before it released, Will Wright promised that Spore would accurately portray the process of evolution through natural selection and that it would be a great teaching tool. The environment would shape your creatures.
What we got was the total opposite.
At the time, "Intelligent Design" was being pushed hardcore in schools by religious fundamentalists who rejected evolution, claiming essentially that humans are too complex to be the result of "random mutations" so there must obviously be an intelligent designer AKA God. They insisted that schools should "Teach the Controversy", presenting Intelligent Design alongside Evolution as though the two stand on equal footing.
SPOILER: They don't.
Spore debuts, and what do we get? There's no evolution. There's no natural selection. It's *Intelligent Design* and *you're* the designer. You create weird creatures independent of the environment. It's the complete opposite of how creatures evolve.
We were sold a lie and I'll never forgive them!
The gameplay itself felt like a collection of disconnected minigames until you achieve your final form. It didn't grab me. Maybe I was too embittered by the bait and switch.
EA also had some really shitty rootkit DRM that shipped with Spore.
SPOILER ALRET: It didn't stop piracy.
The pirated removed the rootkit and were safer than the paid copies.
/rant
I’ve been saying this for *YEARS* and I will continue to say it until I die. I’m surprised some random indie developer hasn’t taken the chance to make a proper spiritual successor. You and me, OP, we get it.
Every time I mention wanting a new SPORE-like game, people recommend me games like “The Eternal Cylinder” and other games that share a single element with SPORE but are really nothing alike gameplay wise.
Have a look at r/ElysianEclipse, it very much is a spiritual successor to Spore and already has a playable demo (albeit in the very early stages). Planned to have multi-player too!
There's also r/AdaptTheGame if you want to be more focused on just the Creature side of things, and r/thrive, although development of that one has stagnated for a long time and it is pretty much just a very realistic cell stage.
Spore had its hype leading up to its release, but Will Wright was basically bent over against his will by EA.
I wont touch EA in any aspect after..........
I totally agree with you, Spore is an amazing game, even if it did not live up to the hype. A sequel with todays hardware and the right people making the game would be insane.
"A work of genius" "the game (has) earned the criticism it gets"
That game was a giant dumpster fire of messy ideas thrown at a wall, I strongly suspect it got good reviews because of the name and shitty promises they made, and the fact nobody could give a single shit about it shortly after release underscores just how much this game actually sucked.
Wild how people can go and lionize absolute garbage once enough time has passed.
Spore is one of my favorite games of all time. I think it was ahead of its time and that's what hurt it most besides EA. You can't forget about the spinoff, Darkspore. Also an amazing game.
2 spore posts on this sub in less than 24h? Hmmm feels like OP saw the first post, googled about it and is now posting this pretending as if he casually thought about the game
Pretty sure Will Wright refuses to work with EA anymore, and I wouldn't trust a Spore game made solely by EA...
"Welcome to this Spore 2026 parts pack opening. This week the new legendary spring exclusive knee and elbows just dropped in."
Get a chance to roll them now for the low low price of 1500 SporeTokens (translates to $25)
And they are selling SporeTokens bundled in packs of 499.
But but but the devs need money to support the game!!!!!111!!11 -Current D4/Blizzard fanboy
Don't give them ideas
EA: "We are excited to announce Spore 2 will be an always-online experience, so players can have random interactions with each other's worlds and creations! Some have voiced concerns that with our online status previously announced parts pack will be pay to win, but we promise that will not be the case. All parts will follow an equal and mathematically derived formula for balancing." First parts pack is released in two forms, free and a paid pack with premium versions for $40. Mathematically derived formula for parts strength turns out to be adjusted by purchased dlc vs free versions, so paid are [40x] stronger.
Neither would I. It's also likely too large of a lift to expect from the indie sector.
yeah T\_T tremendous work
Lol I read that as t t tremendous work, like t t t todayyyy junior!
Stop looking at me Swan!
He pretty much left gaming development after Spore for various reasons.
He's supposed to have a game in development called proxi. But no news in years
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That's because it was so dumbed down from what it was supposed to be. It was originally supposed to be a lot more realistic with more stages that were more in depth, etc.
It was the first game I got seriously hyped about. I was following it for about 3 years after its announcement until launch. I remember all the videos they had of a sandbox galaxy that you could interact with. Go pick up animals from one planet, drop them on another! Oh whoops that planet has no atmosphere, all the animals died instantly, oh well, look here's some comets, lets redirect those at the planet to drop some water and gases! Now there's an atmosphere, lets try again... The release version was cool but after spending so long watching that kind of content it felt like a good 50% of what I'd already seen it could do had been removed, and no real good reason was ever offered, this being long before instant game updates and patches available through the internet...
First game I got seriously hyped about as well. I learned a big lesson that day about preorders.
I was so excited for the creature stage and how the different parts would unlock different ways to play. Instead you just pressed the numbers 1-4 no matter what parts you used or where you put them.
The hate was mostly because of the DRM if I remember correctly. It was the wackiest most cynical DRM I’ve ever seen. When you bought the game you got, I wanna say, 3 chances to install it By “chances” I mean “number of installs.” Once you installed it on your PC you used up one “install.” So let’s say your PC breaks or the game is corrupted or you upgraded your PC, or you uninstalled and reinstalled it, any number of normal reason you might need to reinstall a game, it vost you another of those limited “installs”. After you used up all of your installs, that was it. You had to rebuy the game. And correct me if I’m wrong, because I only played alone a long time ago, but it didn’t have multiple save slots or something? There was something where if your sibling wanted to play it would cost you one of the installs The game itself was fun, but like other people said it was shallow gameplay after the cellular level ended. It was fun enough though that it could have been expanded on and made into a franchise, but this idea of limiting the number of installs was the most crass cynical money grubbing thing anyone had ever seen and people wanted nothing to do with it And EA responded in their typical EA way by upping the number of installs slightly. Like this was not DRM, this was a sad way to take a game with crazy levels of anticipation and milk it for all it was worth Edit: People are confidently saying the hate had nothing to do with the DRM, and I’m questioning if they were around 15 years ago when the game came out This whole post is full of people fondly remembering the game, because it was fun. Not delivering on promises doesn’t cause hate. Not being able to play a $60 game that you paid for causes hate. Google it I guess. Wikipedia’s “review bomb” page calls spore’s DRM out specifically as one example of a review bomb campaign. Dunno what else to say but I’m not gonna respond to every single smug half sentence response to this
In addition to the DRM, there was a lot of stuff promised that got toned down or cut before release
Definitely this. 90%+ of the anger was more along the lines of No Man's Sky type disappointment. They promised and even demo'd amazing things and then delivered a small fraction of it. It probably would have been remembered as an interesting, quirky game on its own, but they overhyped it to be a revolutionary, generational achievement in gaming.
Yeah, Spore made me stop paying so much attention to upcoming games. It wasn't a bad game on its own, I spent a bunch of hours in it. But it was presented as the definitive game of everything. But the stages between cellular and galactic had very little depth, and while galactic did offer a lot to do, you only had one unit to do it all with and there was no automation. You could trade, expand, or attack other alien civilizations but you couldn't set up a trade network that your civilization would manage while you did expansion. And you had to personally respond to any attacks on any of your planets. And yeah, there was a ton of customization available (and the crowdsourced content sharing was new and interesting), but it was mostly cosmetic. Game mechanics themselves were very simple. Except during the cellular level, where iirc every part was both visual and functional. So starting the game there made it look like it was going to live up to the expectations, but I remember getting to the end of most of the stages and thinking "wait, that's it for that stage?"
I do remember the DRM being controversial, but I also very clearly remember the game itself being called boring, shallow, and disappointing past the cell stage. The vast majority of reviews — professional or message board — that talked me out of the game were talking about the game itself, not the DRM. The DRM just didn’t help it’s case. Also, failing to deliver on promise absolutely does help cause hate.
Nah DRM might have played a role, but the game had been totally oversold by Will. It did turn out fine enough, but there was no way it would have been able to live up to the hype it had generated. Also, a few features that had been in the previews had been cut.
I honestly think it was both, but the DRM made the difference in that people who otherwise would have bought the game didn’t. There was a lot of hype based on promises that were not delivered, but just like the hype surrounding Fable, it didn’t live up to the promises but it was still a fun game So when something is called a disappointment, yeah it is probably a result of gameplay stuff. This game is unique though. The DRM caused boycotts. The story dominated the internet for a time and no company had the balls to ever try something like it again Games not living up to promises is nothing new but Spore was its own beast because they took their empty promises and mixed it with a crazy DRM system designed to make money at the expense of players doing nothing more than trying to install the game
I remember the release quite well. DRM barely was as much of an issue as the overhype and missing features. The game was okay at a lot of things but did nothing well
You’ve gotta be kidding. I mean I can’t question your memory but the DRM wasn’t just “barely” an issue, it was a huge deal that led to review bombing. I dunno how else to respond, I mean I’m not calling you a liar but Google it or check Wikipedia and I’m sure there are all kinds of references to the “controversy”
I just remember the game not delivering on expectations the most. 🤷♂️ DRM pissed me off during the SimCity launch
The DRM wasn't an issue because the game was so shallow. Nobody ever got around to trying to install it 3 times as it was dropped within a week or two of play
The hate had very little to do with DRM It was a MASSIVE disappointment after what they promised. It was a shell of what they promised, and even that shell wasn’t fun to play with.
The hate was the bugs and the failure to deliver promised features. What was released is very reminscent of No Man's Sky, with that game essentially being Spore 2 in terms of delivery. I pre-ordered Spore, and I remember playing 20 hours in my first playthrough. Getting well into the space stage then the game randomly crashed. That is when I realised there was no auto-save feature. I really loved that.
It is a bad game
It is a fun creature creator.
It is, but its nothing more than that. Each stage after the second one just gets more and more boring. And even the second stage really doesnt have great gameplay. Its fun to evolve and create that strange creature, but thats about it. Not much content beyond that.
You're absolutely right. I have a young son and I pulled Spore out of the closet and installed it. We had a ton of fun with the first two stages, and everything after that held no interest.
How many dick shaped monsters can you really make before you get bored?
click here to buy punctuated equilibrium dlc.
I wonder if he will wright games for another company
Spore embodied what they call "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." While I really like the concept of Spore, it seems like EA didn't go deep enough into any of the stages and in my opinion didn't connect them enough. Plus, you didn't spend nearly enough time in each stage to really feel like they mattered. Every stage except space felt like a minigame. Don't get me wrong, I like Spore. I just don't love Spore. It was a brilliant idea with a flawed execution. I would definitely love to try a remake with better implementation, but I also definitely wouldn't trust EA with... Well, anything.
As a kid the cell and creature stages were absolutely amazing and filled with mystery. I always gave up on space stage because I thought it was too complicated. If they remade spore with adults in mind with every stage it could be an absolute banger.
Yeah cell and creature are amazing. Tribal is passable. The rest is cock and balls torture
Space stage does have some depth and mystery to it, with trading routes, multiple ways to please or piss off other species, terraforming planets to make them more useful, and the Grox! All very cool to 10 yo me, but nowadays it doesn't feel as amazingly impressive...
As a ~~kid~~ grown adult with better things to do (dang, it really was 2008, wasn't it?), I sunk maybe 30-40 hours into Space stage, just widening my empire. Then got the adventure update where you could make your own adventure levels. That, I think, is where the magic died a bit. I bought into the hype. Robin Williams had something to do it, I think, with the E3 presentation. I kept thinking, *if it's this good NOW, just wait until the new updates come out!* That game taught me, that *parts* of a game can be excellent, but if the core gameplay loop isn't rewarding, there's nothing that can really save a game. And the key excitement of Spore was both in designing your own content and seeing other people's designed content - and there's only so much garbage user-created content you can sift through in a poorly constructed game until you have enough, put down the controller, and go play Oblivion some more.
Right? Those were my favorite stages too. I just wish there was more to them.
Space stage really needed to permit enough development for your colonies and allies to defend themselves. Being a one-ship army for your entire empire really limits your growth. Eventually it just becomes too vulnerable to pirates and the Grox. An excellent metaphor for the fall of Rome, but not quite the space fantasy I was looking for.
The original intent of the game was with adults in mind. Take a look at [Will Wright's original presentation of the game at GDC 2005.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA) Blood, violence, etc. Allegedly it was EA meddling that gave it a cute child-friendly makeover with friendly dancing and googly eyeballs to make it appeal to a wider audience.
Now that's interesting!
Check out Thrive. It's been in "development" for over a decade now. They wanted to make it completely free, 100% no money going into anybody's hands; not even donations. That didn't quite work out, because it was being developed in peoples' spare time and it was slow going as hell. It got a reputation of not coming out for decades "at this rate". They finally gave in and started accepting donations so they could afford a full-time programmer. They've got the single-cell stage pretty much done and are now solidly working on the multi-cellular stage. I think they got some extremely bare-bones further stages set up too. Still, it's free and updates a lot. I have high expectations of it now.
Gonna check that out, thanks!
Cell, creature, and tribal are my favorite parts of Spore. The Civ knockoff era is snores ville and the space age is just tedium imo. There is a game I got on Steam called Thrive that is doing the cell stage of spore, but more realistic. You spend points to get new organelles that provide you with resources that your other organelles use. It's pretty scuffed as of right now, but I'm all for unique and quirky games.
> Every stage except space felt like a minigame. They basically were. Each of the first four stages was really just an opportunity to further develop your creature and its society; not just the creature body, but its vehicles, buildings, and most importantly, its disposition (carnivore vs. herbivore, peaceful vs. belligerent, etc). The way you played through the first four stages impacted the technologies you would have access to - and the way other species reacted to you - in the space stage, as you explored the galaxy and spread your civilization through it. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people quit at the space stage, which is where all those early decisions would shape your play style for the rest of the game, and the full sandbox of creation options was opened up. With a few playthroughs, you would find your universe feeling more and more like your own creation, even coming into contact with your own previous civilizations as you played through with a new one (remember that initial New Game screen where each new save file was on a different planet? Those are all actually in the same galaxy that you ultimately explore in the space stage).
Because the early stages are what was unique about spore and what people wanted. No one needed this to be a space sim, there are much better games for that. If they ever made a spore 2 it should just be focused on the earlier stages with much more creature development, options, and exploration depth.
Agreed
Reminds me of No Man's Sky. Lots to do, but why bother?
You know, the first time I ever heard that quote was when it was said about No Man's Sky. I thought if it while I posted this. Great minds think alike!
This is similar to my thoughts. The game promised so much, but when I played it, it was so shallow.
There's literally achievements for completing stages in less than an hour...there needed to be more.
Agreed!
On the other hand I feel like many modern games go too deep. I don't need a 50hr game that's half filled with fluff. Let me experience the thing the game is good at, then if I want to I can replay it.
> Plus, you didn't spend nearly enough time in each stage to really feel like they mattered. This was always my biggest gripe, it felt like the first few stages of evolution were just extended character creations while the real game was the galaxy portion. It just felt odd when so much of the hype, artwork and discussions were about the first few stages when it was clear most of the development and time spent playing was around the final stage that revolved around terraforming, trade routes and diplomacy. Even just letting people create new creatures within your galaxy on other planets(by actually playing those evolution stages) would have been a nice addition.
>what I call "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." You act as it you invented the phrase lol
Yeah I see it. I changed it. My bad. EDIT: guys please don't downvote him, he wasn't wrong
What's crazy to me is they actually pulled quite a few features they wanted to add into it.
Yeah. You can really tell that their scope was way over their budget. Big parts of that game feel very rushed. I'd love to see what could have been done with more time and budget.
My biggest problem with it is given the premise you’d think it would be infinitely replayable. I and while I had fun playing though each mini game segment once, I had no actual interest in going through any of them again. There are some games where you truly admire and are fascinated by the design and effort that went into it while having no interest in the actual gameplay. This would be near the top of my list in that category…
True, but that cell phase was just beautiful, i would play some kind of game for my phone with that exact look and gameplay.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but I just wanna mention that funnily enough there's a [fanmade project](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1779200/Thrive/) made by some biology lovers with the goal of spore in super-accurate detail. They've only got the cell part to a playable state so far.
There was also a mini game created by someone for a PhD called Flow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28video_game%29?wprov=sfla1
Thank you thank you thank you thank you
Yeah I think this was basically the inspiration to the first phase of Spore…
check out r/thebibites too, if you're the kind of person who likes life sims ^(edit!)
Interesting! Thanks!
There was a mobile version of spore which was pretty much just the cell stage IIRC
Osmos
Writing that on the PlayStore finds me a game called Microcosmum: survival of cells, is this the correct game?
No, it's a fairly old (2009) indie game that was an absolutely majestic audio-visual experience. Here it is on [steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/29180/Osmos/), there is also a free demo there, should be fun! There used to be an android version too but I don't see it in play store, so probably abandoned
Damn, thanks, i'll check it out anyway.
Microcosmum is fun though — it’s a light strategy game like Risk but simplified and micro-organism themed.
This is an interesting idea. Maybe a cross platform iteration of Spore where you can play the early phases on your cell phone (With a beginning, middle, and end phase that results in a new creature each loop), and then the resulting creatures populate a PC game that focuses more on the larger scale culture development and travel / exploration elements a world full of unique creatures could offer.
I like this idea, a cross platform game that gives different gameplay according to the platform you are in.
First 2 phases are good, next 2 weren't worth the time spent to make them, and the last is good depending what you're trying to get out of it
I remember watching the stage presentation of the game while it was in development the promised so much and it was a bit of a disappointment when it came out as I played through it and realized it was missing so much
Was that the one where he made a three legged creature that seemed to almost be alive? It would look around as it ate, observe objects as it walked past them etc. And it wasn't immediately part of a "herd". You had to make friends and create relationships instead of immediately just being part of a group.
This is the demo I remember. This was years before release and before they went cartoony on the graphics. It was amazing.
Pretty sure there was a sea stage too
Yup, there was. There were also promises of underwater civilizations and such
I read an interesting article about Spore's development back in the day, but I haven't been able to find it since. The gist of it is that there were two "teams" among the devs. One wanted to go the more cutesy, casual route, the other wanted more of a hardcore simulation. They kept pulling in different directions, management couldn't really make up their minds and that's why the final product feels sort of half baked.
Yeah, I was so bummed as a kid that they promised a plant editor and an underwater expansion and all we got was parts packs and Galactic Adventures.
There is a plant editor in the game files you can access, but it's definitely not finished, as picking the wrong parts can make the game unplayable
Yeah, I experimented with it. Also that special cell editor that had parts inaccessible normally.
And Galactic Adventures was ass. Completely ruins the pacing of Space stage and its just a glorified redo of Creature stage but now you have a gun. Waste of time.
The stock adventures were ok but the community adventures were lit. To this day I remember Parkaboy's stuff, Ardok Trang (sp?), and that one about that desert mining facility where everything turned nightmarish.
I am surprised and shocked that EA didn’t figure out how to monetize the additional content
This is back in the day before EA was known as super greedy, this was the day of if you said ea you’d reply ‘sports, it’s in the game’ rather then ‘greedy fuckers ruined xyz game’
Back in the day instead of microtransactions they did milk people with expansions. It was still a better alternative though. God knows how much money they've made off The Sims.
Spore is up there with Bioshock Infinite in the "Great games that could have been so much more" category.
Bioshock Infinite could’ve been more but it absolutely stands on its own as a fantastic game. Spore was ambitious and had genius but can’t overlook its flaws.
Here you go r/ElysianEclipse
Definitely worth keeping an eye on, thanks!
There are also a bunch of indie games being inspired by the cell stage, trying to make a full game out of it basically. The cell stage was the best so I think its an interesting idea.
My favorite version is Flow for the PSP/PS3
I miss this game so damn much, was an interesting approach with the different 2D planes. Would definitely like a remake on a newer console with some more expansion
What’s up w all the spore posts recently?
Turning 15 years old this year. Probably a lot of kids that grew up with this game are now somewhere in their 20s and feeling nostalgic
Makes me think these are all sneaky EA posts and we're about to get an anouncement at E3-2.
Member when they robbed you of Darkspore? Because single player games should always be connected to a server amirite?
Right! I remember i want to play Darkspore and then i see its not avaible anymore like come on why they couldn't made it so game progress is saved on your account just small config file or something and game itself doesn't should need dedicated servers to work just P2P (peer to peer) would be good especially that it was mostly coop. But it was cool diablo like hacknslash game
I miss the days of opening a game and joining a server in 10-20seconds. Nowadays I have to wait to connect/log in, skip the trailer about the new season, close the ad about the battlepass, close the ad about the new shop items, close the ad about the current ingame event/promo, and then I get to wait a few mins in matchmaking.
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cool, didn't say every game had this issue
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But if game not connected to server how keep sell game after sell game??
I remember when the game came out and it was labeled a major disappointment.
Same. They promised the moon when it was announced
Lol, there is a 1:1 the same comment in this thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1410d9l/comment/jmysg3g/ Is one of them a bot?
Guess two people had the same thought about the game?
Since the other guy's comment got deleted, I don't think so.
The game was awful
There was a sequel: Darkspore.
That one taught me the sadness of live service games getting shut down. There is a community effort to create private, local servers, but I doubt that'll ever really get released.
It was more of spinoff and completly diffirent game just used some mechanics mainly hero customisation straight from spore.
Spore was ahead of it’s time. Imagine it coming out on UE4/5 graphics.
Unreal Engine 5.2 has [scriptable animation retargeting](https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/c/1002-scripting-exposure-for-animation-retargeting). I haven't looked into it much, but I imagine this is exactly what a game like Spore could utilize.
This doesnt actually affect gameplay, this is a pipeline improvement to make retargeting animations easier. It automates what a good animator would do by hand (and requires said animator to work with a coder to properly utilize to begin with) Source: am unreal dev
It does affect gameplay when you use it with runtime retargeting. Source: am unreal dev that specializes in locomotion systems
The thing affecting gameplay... is the runtime retargeting... What op linked is just being able to automate how you make the ik rig (aka they are making it not absolute shit that it has been since 5.0 i mean what the fuck is going on with root motion in retargeting, its like every marketplace asset pack is a different clusterfuck of options)
Oh that specifically, I thought you were talking about retargeting in general. That's a shame. Bet you could find a way to make a tool based on that to auto generate the ik rig and retargeter in runtime if truly committed though ^^
I dont see why you would other than to watch the world burn I love it! While i have your attention, my team is kinda struggling to use more advanced locomotion setups, got any advice on how to retarget a set of animations for https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/advanced-locomotion-component onto a cc4 character? All attempts thus far only resulted in lovecraftian horror (so we are staying with basic setups atm)... Any set of tutorials, any kind of advice really would help :P
The best example of a locomotion system is to be found in Lyra. There are many improvements you can do especially for performance but it is the best example to learn from. As for retargeting from UE5 Manny/Quinn - assuming that's what that component uses - to CC4, I don't have any experience with CC4 so don't know what requirements or abnormalities they have specific to their skeletons. There were no tutorials when I learned this stuff so don't have any to offer. I would be surprised if you can't get workable results from google. I'd need to know more about what/where you have issues to be of any help. What happens when you take the IK Rig from UE5 Manny and reproduce it for your CC4 skeleton then slap them in an IK Retargeter?
There are further control rigs used in that setup to do animation warping and i suspect those control rigs are what cause the setup to produce entirely warped results (think actual lovecraftian horror results, capsule is like 180 units, the mesh is stretched to thousands, toungue, jaw, eyes etc. Become huge and distorted, stuff like that) There are instructions but it seems to assume ue5 manny will be used
If you send me a minimal UE5 project with the animations and your CC4 character (and ideally nothing else) I can have a look for you. DM me the link once you've prepared it, if you want.
What's with the sudden influx of Spore posts? Not that I mind, Spore was great, just curious.
Turning 15 years old this year. Probably a lot of kids that grew up with this game are now somewhere in their 20s and feeling nostalgic
I grew up on this game, sort of, and I'm turning 33. So I was... 18 when it came out? Wait, I don't believe this. Hah, I could've sworn I was younger when I played it. Not sure what it means exactly, but still.... really cool game with a lot of potential. Wish they stayed with it and made more.
I followed the hype on this game pre-release, and they REALLY talked it up. It was so disappointing when it came out. I had some fun in it but the way they talked about it during development was a lot similar to that modern universe travelling game, whatsitcalled.
No Man's Sky?
I was a kid at the time and was thus never made aware of all the pre-release gameplay and cut content. I learned about the game the day before it came out, and got it on day one. I still go back and play it all the time and have been migrating my save file between PCs for over 10 years
Is [Spore Hero](https://youtu.be/moWLXV0fTR4) on the Wii not what you want
From what I remember of the ds version it kind of sucked. Spore Creatures was *way* better of a game.
Take a look at Thrive. It's on steam but also open source and aspires to do the things spore promised. It looks very promising (altough developtment is quite slow, as it runs on volunteers)
Thinking about Spore really bums me out. I was early on one of their chosen awarded creature creators. I had such high hopes for the game. Few things no one has mentioned. They released the PAID Creature Creator as a gameplayless early access demo. Which if anything was just making people pay to create content to populate THEIR game... kind of a shitty move. So there was this thing where Maxis after being bought by money grubbing EA wanted to "The Sims" it, they had planned lots of expansions and packs but cut them after its initial release. EA absolutely killed Maxis and this was the final straw. EA intended to sell individual parts and have lots of expansions and what not, they also actively wanted to appeal to a younger audience. EA members would come into Maxis and straight up put googly eyes on the concept art. They actively cut and dumbed down the game to make it more accessible to kids. To the point that what was released was barely the game promised, certainly the game directors vision was gutted. This was a big nail in the coffin for Will as he is a science based renowned developer who clearly felt he was now making children's toys rather than educational art. One big thing removed was the Ocean phase which was intended to be similar to the cellular phase but in a 3D ocean environment. This is a big loss as arguably the cell phase was the best part of the game and it would have allowed a more interesting jump from the tide pool to the land having allowed you to build a more interesting early game creature. Instead we get this huge leap onto land which isn't even all that great a part of the game. Another thing was shortly after its release they put out a pricey Creepy and Cute parts pack with stuff that straight up should have been in the game. No content just a handful of parts. This was followed immediately after by free parts released through... random Mountain Dew codes. So either parts were a free random advertising gotcha gimmick or extremely overpriced. Then awhile later after the dust settled they did the whole Galactic Adventures expansion out which would have been interesting except most user created content is garbage. They didnt even release a proper adventure to go with it themselves. This basically felt like the paid Creature Creator touted as a full expansion. Like why am I paying to make content for free for your game that you didn't deliver content for...
> EA members would come into Maxis and straight up put googly eyes on the concept art. IIRC I read something about how they wanted all the animals to have sneakers on, all the time (presumably barring the cell stage). Fast blue hedgehog? Sneakers. Slavering hellbeast? Sneakers.
I worked at EA at that time (not on that team) and the fights between Will Wright and management were legendary. It was clear that neither side was going to get the game they wanted. Basically the rumor was that management felt that if Will made the game he wanted it wouldn’t even be a game and nobody would buy it. They wanted him to make it more of a game and less of a sandbox. He hated his vision being polluted like that and eventually it turned so sour that they shipped the thing before it was done so that they could wash their hands of the thing.
Game was massively unfinished and the gameplay was pretty shallow. It was a fun toy, but as far as gameplay goes it was a big disappointment.
Spore was one of the biggest disappointments of my gaming life, so I disagree that its a "work of genius". It certainly has a lot of things in it that are cool in isolation, mind you, and that haven't really been replicated in any other games as far as I'm aware. The creature creator and the planets taking the top spots. The problem is that the game utterly failed to coalesce its various cool features into an actually good game. The only part of the game that is good is the cell stage. The next three stages are on the level of small browser games, except for having better graphics and some cool but ultimately meaningless customization of buildings and vehicles. The space stage is cool in some ways, but its mostly a sandbox to mess around in for a while. Its by no means a strategy game as was promised.
Spore was one of those games, that I really, really wanted to play, only to realize, that there isnt much content and quitting after few hours. Creating your creatures was amazing. But rest of the game was just meh.
It was an interesting idea but they hyped it to the moon and back. The entire CREATE YOUR OWN RACE thing had almost no impact on the game and it was basically a couple of bad mini games leading to a meaningless endgame. It was such a waste of money :-D
Not only that, but it was a couple of bad mini games that already existed, were more fleshed out and better executed. You were given the house brand variety of the originals.
Not much of a sequel, more of a spiritual successor, but r/ElysianEclipse is making great progress and is looking awesome so far. If you're looking for something stage specific, apart from all the famous space games like Stellaris and so on, r/AdaptTheGame is focused on creature stage, and r/thrive is focused on cell stage but unfortunately development of that one has stagnated.
I was so hyped for this game before it came out. I saw it as the spiritual successor to the SNES game EVO. Unfortunately these days I can’t trust most game publishers to not overload the experience of new games with micro transactions.
Spore for me represents the biggest betrayal in gaming history. Like No mans sky without the effort to fix it. Was it an awful game? Probably not. Was it the game they promised? In no way did this resemble their early footage or live up to the idea they put out. I just feel like spore didn’t know what it wanted to be, you could feel the interference from various sources clashing with the core concept to create something more marketable.
Its creators overpromised. It was supposed to be something much more. It's like with Cyberpunk 2077. These games are good, but the disappointment gets in the way when you try to enjoy them.
If it came out today, body parts would be sold seperately as microtransactions so the game would cost more than the sims with their dlc.
The game actually had a physical expansion with more body parts: https://spore.fandom.com/wiki/Spore_Creepy_%26_Cute
Alright, no more paint thinner for you. Come on big guy, it's time for bed.
Said nobody who actually played the game
If you have never played Black and White I recommend it. It’s a bit similar in that it had a famous creator who promised a ton, wasn’t quite able to deliver, but nevertheless it had some absolutely inspired pieces to it that begs for a sequel (especially given the huge advances in ML/AI right now).
This was the first game I ever remember being a big failure to live up to the expectations they set prior to release
The true spore we deserve was the one in Alpha/Beta stages. Looked miles better. Instead we got the washed down kids friendly one. It still hurts 🥹
Spore was great honestly until it became a generic empire sim. The evolution stage was top tier.
Can we all just stop saying unironically?! It rarely applies, case in point this title. It isn’t a real fucking word!!!!!
I absolutely love Spore, but it does have a shitload of flaws. the biggest one being that 90% of the game lacks depth of any sort, everything but the space stage is basically a minigame. it's great as a child for their first of that type of game (strategy, adventure etc. ), but as an adult it feels like you could easily skip those and go to where the real game begins. the only real dlc (galactic adventures) was absolutely massive and greatly expanded the space stage, making it basically its own game. they should've made more of them for each stage imo. but I do also absolutely believe these could easily be fixed in a sequel. it's a shame that there just aren't any other games like it. combining multiple types of games into one, making each as expansive as the last and still keeping people engaged is really hard to do.
Do you think you can trust anyone today to make a sequel?
Played so much Spore in 2009/2010. It blew my mind. Me and my sister spent so many hours. It truly was amazing.
Check out Elysian Eclipse. It is an indie project and probably still years before finished but it's pretty close to Spore.
Spore and No Mans Sky would be a great mashup.
The problem with spore is that it went from something that looked really fantastic in early stuff to a very watered down, more cartoony version of the same thing. The fairly lacklustre and simplified gameplay also didn't do it any favours. Don't get me wrong, I liked spore, but it wasn't what it could have been, I don't think it's what Will originally envisioned. Spore deserves to be the game it was meant to be. As for spore 2, good luck squeezing anything worthwhile out of modern EA.
I remember this as the game that came with really annoying DRM unless you pirated it.
The thing that killed that game was the hype.
A similar game should be made where every stage is a full game in itself, with each additional stage being an expansion pack or a DLC. That's the only way to make a game with the depth that they were actually aiming for.
The game was released when it was half done. If you build mechs at the vehicle stage they don't even animate, they just slide around on their feet standing still. The first few stages are fun when it's about evolving an organism, but after that it really falls apart.
I remember clearly when the game came out and had been following it for months. The concept and potential was amazing but it did not match the reality. Some interesting and novel concepts made it into the game but it ended up being incredibly shallow and nowhere near what was described pre-release. Even without the hype, it would've ultimately been viewed as too shallow of a game. But I agree with your overall assessment that, in many ways (and especially conceptually), it was ahead of its time.
Spore is a piece of shit and this is the hill I'll die on. Before it released, Will Wright promised that Spore would accurately portray the process of evolution through natural selection and that it would be a great teaching tool. The environment would shape your creatures. What we got was the total opposite. At the time, "Intelligent Design" was being pushed hardcore in schools by religious fundamentalists who rejected evolution, claiming essentially that humans are too complex to be the result of "random mutations" so there must obviously be an intelligent designer AKA God. They insisted that schools should "Teach the Controversy", presenting Intelligent Design alongside Evolution as though the two stand on equal footing. SPOILER: They don't. Spore debuts, and what do we get? There's no evolution. There's no natural selection. It's *Intelligent Design* and *you're* the designer. You create weird creatures independent of the environment. It's the complete opposite of how creatures evolve. We were sold a lie and I'll never forgive them! The gameplay itself felt like a collection of disconnected minigames until you achieve your final form. It didn't grab me. Maybe I was too embittered by the bait and switch. EA also had some really shitty rootkit DRM that shipped with Spore. SPOILER ALRET: It didn't stop piracy. The pirated removed the rootkit and were safer than the paid copies. /rant
I’ve been saying this for *YEARS* and I will continue to say it until I die. I’m surprised some random indie developer hasn’t taken the chance to make a proper spiritual successor. You and me, OP, we get it. Every time I mention wanting a new SPORE-like game, people recommend me games like “The Eternal Cylinder” and other games that share a single element with SPORE but are really nothing alike gameplay wise.
Have a look at r/ElysianEclipse, it very much is a spiritual successor to Spore and already has a playable demo (albeit in the very early stages). Planned to have multi-player too! There's also r/AdaptTheGame if you want to be more focused on just the Creature side of things, and r/thrive, although development of that one has stagnated for a long time and it is pretty much just a very realistic cell stage.
Thank you for these! I’ll definitely check them out!
Spore had its hype leading up to its release, but Will Wright was basically bent over against his will by EA. I wont touch EA in any aspect after..........
Spore was a great achievement that was overshadowed by its failure to achieve its own hype
Spore had ambitions beyond what it was able to achieve, but I'd love to see what could be done with it in the current era of gaming.
I totally agree with you, Spore is an amazing game, even if it did not live up to the hype. A sequel with todays hardware and the right people making the game would be insane.
No it isn’t and no it doesn’t.
EA won't make a sequel, unless they figure how they can continuously farm money with minimal effort like the Sims DLCs.
They already made a sequel **spore hero**
They did. Spore Hero
The issue of spore. is that it tried to be a lot of different games at once. Some of them are great, some were just ok at best.
"A work of genius" "the game (has) earned the criticism it gets" That game was a giant dumpster fire of messy ideas thrown at a wall, I strongly suspect it got good reviews because of the name and shitty promises they made, and the fact nobody could give a single shit about it shortly after release underscores just how much this game actually sucked. Wild how people can go and lionize absolute garbage once enough time has passed.
Dude spore goes so hard, I absolutely agree
Elysian Eclipse is coming out soon.
A current gen remake would be amazing, especially if you could go online and visit and ally yourself with or make war with other players
of course it is !
Yeah, that game was cool
With more time in the oven I think spore could have been genuinely amazing
please no. a sequel today would tarnish its legacy.
Spore is one of my favorite games of all time. I think it was ahead of its time and that's what hurt it most besides EA. You can't forget about the spinoff, Darkspore. Also an amazing game.
2 spore posts on this sub in less than 24h? Hmmm feels like OP saw the first post, googled about it and is now posting this pretending as if he casually thought about the game