if Spore had been crowdfunded, would it have actually been awesome?
Yeah I think so
Mind you many of the things cut from the 2005 video were later discovered to be impossible (Ragdoll was an example) so in many ways a lot of the complaints would have never been resolved.
However the #1 thing cut that would have made the game amazing is the focus on science, learning, and philosophy. Will Wright and Waterson fought HARD for the game to retain that feel but lost. It doesn't surprise me that this crushed Will's will.
This would have made a less gamey Spore and frankly... that would have made ALL the difference. Spore needed to be a self-narrative game that focused more on feel then on balance. More on learning about survival and evolution then about amplifying your strength to become strong.
Ultimately a Crowd Sourced Spore would have saved it. It wouldn't have given you the 2005 video Spore... but it would have given us something many times greater then what we got. A timeless game. An instant classic. It would be the kind of game a lot of people still play today and years from now, a kind of game that makes us once again think of videogames as a true and honest artform. One that when people talk about the greatest games ever made, this could end up being discussed. Certainly not in raw gameplay but in just the effect it had on everyone who played it.
It is that raw gameplay is not the most important aspect of a game.