

The dumbification of Spore - hhm
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/the_dumbification_of_spore.php

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markessien
When you design by consensus, you end up with this. When a single person is
responsible for most of the major decisions on a project, the project will
either spectacularly fail or will be amazing, depending on the genius of the
person. But when you take the same genius, and force him to change his concept
to bring in elements of more traditional people, you will tend to create a
normal product.

Designing by consensus will always lead to an average product. The only way to
create a blow-out success is if a single person handles the design part of
things.

No major artwork was created by a comittee. None of the great books were
written by a newsroom team. Engineering has to go the same way. Let people use
their imaginations without being constrained by the opinions of tens of other
people.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_No major artwork was created by a committee._

Actually, William "The Princess Bride" Goldman argues in his famous book about
screenwriting ( _Adventures in the Screen Trade_ ) that _all_ movies are
created by committee. He lists a bunch of people that need to do their jobs
correctly in order to make a movie any good, starting (obviously) with the
screenwriter and the director but also including: The cinematographer, the
casting director, the designers and costumers, the film editor, and the
composer. To say nothing of the producers, who need to come up with sufficient
money or the film doesn't get made.

Goldman makes this point in the course of lampooning the "auteur" theory of
criticism, in which entire films are attributed to the genius of one person --
usually the director. It's because of those auteur theorists that we tend to
speak of "Hitchcock's" _North by Northwest_ , ignoring the fact that a lot of
that film's genius was contributed by Cary Grant, to say nothing of Bernard
Herrmann.

A great example is _Star Wars_ , which as we all know sprang from the brow of
George Lucas. Except, of course, for the parts that were actually created by
Ben Burtt (sound designer), John Dykstra (FX supervisor), Rick Baker (makeup
artist), Ralph McQuarrie (production illustrator), John Williams (composer),
and Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and Marcia Lucas (film editors). And that's just
scratching the surface.

A game on the scale of _Spore_ is also, inevitably, created by committee. The
question is whether you can keep the committee on the same page. It sounds
like Spore's team had some struggles, which had to be mediated, and which were
ultimately resolved in a way that isn't quite to my taste. Which is not to say
that the enterprise is a failure. It's sold a lot of copies, and no doubt many
people are pleased with it. I played with the creature creator, and it _was_
very cute.

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unalone
This all reminds me of an interview that happened with Nintendo a year ago:

<http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks_vol3_index.jsp>

Mahito Yokota originally wrote the soundtrack as an homage to Mario 64: goofy
and kid-friendly. Kondo told him to scrap it: he said that if you aimed for
kids, you'd get a worse product than if you aimed for something with a more
timeless feel. So he changed the music to a full orchestra, and the result was
the brilliant soundtrack to Galaxy, which is incidentally absolutely worth
owning.

Spore dumbed down and lost. It's a shame.

~~~
divia
pg said almost the same exact thing about arc's design philosophy:

"Good design is timeless, and if you want something timeless you can't pander
to the limitations of some hypothetical 'average' user. It's too vague a
target. It's also a moving target: the average user might not be as stupid as
you think." <http://www.paulgraham.com/design.html>

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dangrover
The reason I was disappointed with Spore wasn't because it was fun at the
expense of being scientifically inaccurate... it's because it wasn't all that
fun period.

I enjoyed most of the Sim games because they give you a complex system with
rules where every little decision has some slight impact on the way the game
turns out. Part of winning is learning the rules to the system and
strategizing (whether or not that system really reflect the reality of what it
is ostensibly a simulation of).

There are too many things in Spore that don't make any difference in the
gameplay. Most of the influence from one stage to the next is purely aesthetic
or otherwise very limited. And everything except the Space stage was pretty
simplistic with few opportunities for strategy.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. I mean, I love The Sims 2. Still have it installed: it was one of the
few games, other than Civ2 and Pharoah and Lords of the Realm that I moved
over. And I love it because it's so incredibly detailed. So intricate.
Everything combines into everything else. And Spore PROMISED that. I was
expecting to have to balance different types of flora to maintain the
ecological balance on my planets. At the very least, I was expecting some very
intricate classes. Because that's FUN. Always has been.

Spore was one-dimensional, start to finish. (Though I didn't play too far on
the space stage: from there I'd lost interest.) There was no interaction. I
wanted the first stage to be the simplest. I wanted rapid iteration of
complexity. Something for everybody. I got none of that.

It's a shame, because the technology was so incredible. It just went into an
awful game.

~~~
boredguy8
And that's the downside of having to plop down $50 for a game.

I don't understand how the 'game industry' expects to beat piracy when it
costs so much for so little assurance that you'll get what you want.

If this had been (nearly) any other product, I could have returned it, gotten
my refund, and gone on my way.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. I'm feeling the exact same way about my copy of Spore.

I bought Spore, even _after_ seeing all the warnings about piracy, because I
had such faith in Will Wright and Maxis. I thought that they would make my
money worth it. Now? My list is down to Valve and Maxis. If The Sims 3 or
Spore 2 comes out, I'm going to pirate it first to make sure it's worth my
money. I'll buy it afterwards, but my trust is gone.

~~~
Chocobean
I have always intended on purchasing a copy, in spite of all the DRM stuff. I
wanted to play it three days early though, and obtained a copy online. I was
disappointed, but I still went out and bought the copy on the launch day,
hoping to have the experience improve with online sharing.

Turns out that the creators, and sharing your creation, and then pimping your
creation IS the entire game. Your meticulously designed creation which took 3
hours to make is evolutionarily no better than a 10 year old's cell with legs
and googly eyes, with the only difference being how much time you have to
"sell" it on the official forum to get any attention. It's an intelligent
introvert's worst nightmare: your works will not be noticed amongst the
hundreds of millions based on merit, but on how marketable it is and how much
marketing resources is backing the creation.Your beautifully designed planet
with semi-realistically balanced ecosystem performs absolutely no better than
a randomly generated neighboring planet inhibited by "variations on the theme
of vomit-green spheres."

As a new best selling game it's not bad, but I was looking for a "simulation"
game. I did find a spectacular one though, so this year wasn't a complete loss
: <http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves>

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mechanical_fish
This puts words and an explanation to the sinking feeling that I had earlier
this year, as I compared the reviews of the release version of Spore to the
Wil Wright demos and lectures of previous years. It turns out that the
lectures were by the "science team", but the final game is more influenced by
the "cute team".

Too bad.

~~~
tptacek
On the other hand, think of how much time a really _good_ game could have
sucked out of your life.

~~~
unalone
I dunno. You could argue the same about the works of Shakespeare, Citizen
Kane, The Big Lebowski, and on. Really, you could say that anything great is a
time drain. (I'm about to start watching all of The Wire, which is a hundred-
some hours long. But from what I've heard, it'll be worth it.)

I'd have preferred something great, and then decided not to play it if I
wanted to spend my time more wisely. There's no excuse for what Spore became.

~~~
tptacek
You absolutely can say those things about The Big Lebowski, The Watchmen, The
Wire. It's not a slippery slope. If you're good at building stuff, you enjoy
doing it, and it's sane to be scared of competing enjoyments --- especially
when, like a game, they suck hours away at a time.

~~~
unalone
Yeah, but... I don't think it's good to say "It's a good thing it sucked, look
at how much time we saved." That leads to people thinking it's good to suck.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps I'm just paranoid.

~~~
tptacek
I'm just saying, it's a silver lining. If someone comes out with some new
totally hyped up MMORPG, I am going to be relieved if it sucks and terrified
if it is the greatest thing since Trade Wars. I lost friends to EverQuest.

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hhm
And this is interesting: <http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5225.page>
"Thoughts on Spore from an ex-Maxis intern."

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iamah
Maybe the world was a better place if everybody overestimate people's
intelligence. Evolution and long necks should be a hint.

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teamonkey
Spore isn't supposed to be a scientific simulation, it's a form of
entertainment. Programmers tend to prefer their games to be strictly rule-
based simulations, but that's not necessarily what the target audience want
and it doesn't equate to good game design.

I'm not saying that Spore is perfect, just that it's very easy as a game
developer to get carried away with stuff that you find cool, only to find
there's no game there.

The irony is that Chris Hecker is pretty much the man who popularised (and
evangelised) the use of simulated physics in games. Virtually all papers on
inverse-kinematics in games reference his essays.

~~~
Chocobean
I agree with your comment that Spore is an entertainment game, not a
scientific simulation, and I definitely see why EA went with the "entertaining
art" version of Spore.

the only problem is that Spore wasn't advertised to many of us that way. We
got a beautifully decorated cake, but wholesome multi-grain was promised to
the masses who have been starving for the past 5 years.

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fjl
_a summer spent playing with pattern language and cellular automata_

if they had followed that route, the game would probably have been a lot more
fun to play. games should really be done in an exploratory way, since what
comes out is a universe of ideas, closed over itself.

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Tichy
I have yet to test Spore, but I must admit that I am really a bit concerned
about this. I suppose ultimately Spore is a product that will promote
Creationism, and it targets kids.

~~~
Chocobean
Care to explain why Spore is a product that will promote Creationism?

There is simply no element of creationism in the game. All terminology and
interface point to an (albeit inaccurate) model of "evolution". Guided
evolution, panspermia, saltations, probably. Creationism, no.

On a tangent: Spore has specified organized religion as a viable route to
planetary domination, on the same effectiveness level as economic and military
take-overs. Elements of conversion and religious assimilation also comes into
play in the space stage, somewhat. But even if I replace the word
"Creationism" with the word "religion", your "think of the children!"
sentiment is still...naive at best. One could equally ineffectively argue that
the game promotes ruthless economic colonization, militaristic violence,
wasteful exploitation of resources, intentional extinction of entire
species.....

