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[Torak]

As for the Developers being Lazy... Look man, Spore touches areas of gaming that have NEVER been touched before in many different areas. They also spent 2-4 extra years on it then they believed they were supposed to (Yet that doesn't show in the price does it?).

The only truly unique thing in spore was the terraforming of planets. The rest is just remade and shittier versions of other game's mechanics.

[Neonivek]

As for the Developers being Lazy... Look man, Spore touches areas of gaming that have NEVER been touched before in many different areas. They also spent 2-4 extra years on it then they believed they were supposed to (Yet that doesn't show in the price does it?).

The only truly unique thing in spore was the terraforming of planets. The rest is just remade and shittier versions of other game's mechanics.

Who cares about Truely unique? It has unique qualities

[Torak]

Who cares about Truely unique? It has unique qualities

A cake made of mustard has unique qualities, that doesn't make it any good.

[Idiom]

Chocolate, melted cheese, salad dressing, and ketchup are all tried and true, sell well, and are great on their own with a little bit of something else. When you mix them all together, it turns into the mustard cake of a failed conglomeration that is Spore.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Spore didn't really invent anything new. All of its components were existing in other games, and much better done. The only NEW thing it does is not related to the game itself - it introduces the concept of a "Massively Singleplayer Online Game", where the game is always singleplayer, but it can use the shared database created by many players online for its workings. This is different from a normal "Massively Singleplayer Game" (like Space Rangers or Dwarf Fortress's adventure mode, should it reach v1) in that it relies on connection to the Internet for most of its diversity, whereas other games rely on the creativeness of the original authors, and the gameplay system.

Ironically, all Spore has in terms of evolution is also not related to the gameplay. It simply took many elements of different games and genres, and tried to evolve them into one uniform substance. In the end, the Creature Creator evolved most of all, and the rest crumbled into dust.

[Idiom]

I just said that in fewer words, and with a metaphor.
I win.

Hopefully they learn that you can't have everything. Especially when you simply cut and paste the bits of everything.

[Neonivek]

Don't forget that combining elements in interesting and new ways is ALSO a way to be original.

Sure someone invented Chocolate
Sure someone invented Peanut Butter

But is Chocolate and Peanut Butter any less of an invention?

Theories of Evolution existed LONG before Charles Darwin

But is the fact that Charles Darwin introduced it to Science any less of an achievement?

Spore took things normally isolated outside the gaming genre and made it work. They also took many game mechanics and put them together in new ways.

Remember that Original =/= Good so many of the Horrible parts of Spore are unique in their horrificness.

And Spore's problem isn't that they tried to do everything... It is that they assumed that a shallow game attracts consumers... (Which is overall correct... but you need a special kind of shallowness) that having depth just makes the player afraid of the game and that Hardcore Gamers settle for a mode that had a "Hard" word on it. They had more then enough time to make the game currently better then it is even with the scope.

In otherwords Spore is the perfect example of what Egalitarianism can do to a game no matter how large in scope or potential it may have. (I hope that is the right term)

[Capntastic]

Becuase they dont think its worth $60?

That doesn't answer my question of "If they don't like it, why pirate it?"


Anyways, forgiving that, why not just say "I don't feel like paying for this, I'll steal it."   Why try to make it sound clean by throwing up words of rebellion and justice when in reality it's nothing more grandiose than simple theft that isn't even that technically challenging.    That's all I'm asking- why the need to rationalize it as something romantic?

[Sean Mirrsen]

No. The game, overall, is different just because they've stuck editors into it, that don't serve much of a purpose anyway.

Had the different gameplay elements been actually embedded into eachother, we could have been talking about something original. When a game is basically just a series of already existing minigames stuck together, it's not original. Raving Rabbids averted that, because the games were original by themselves. WarioWare averted that, because partly the games were original, and partly because it all relied on a slightly different set of skills. Spore takes no effort to somehow make itself original, except the aforementioned editors, that, as said, have virtually no meaning.

If we pick the game apart, we get Fl0w (with an editable creature instead of progressive evolution - which SHOULD have been in this game), a barely-scraping-by action/adventure (with the editor instead of, say, an inventory interface - I mean really, what purpose does it serve other than the usual "dress your doll" routine, that with the parts being all that matters?), an incapable invalid RTS that looks a lot like LotR:BfME (with editors, again, for the creature's outfit - nevermind that you barely ever see your creatures up close at this point), another incapable invalid RTS that looks like the previous one mated with Massive Assault (again with absolutely meaningless editors, since you neither see your creatures up close, nor do you usually care for how do your forces or buildings look, as long as they work), and the final bit of icing on the coffin, the "explore-the-galaxy-completely-alone-and-do-whatever-you-want" space phase, that is surpassed not only by many commercial games in terms of gameplay depth, but also by indie and freeware ones.

Really, I see nothing in this to pay for. I am glad I didn't. And I no longer own ANY copy of it. Until it gets completely redone, it's not worth the time and traffic to even download it. I won't even waste a .5$ disk or hard drive space on it.

Also, "it is not stealing when what you steal is rotten". I mean, seriously, there's a reason companies are paid to dispose of trash. Why should we pay for trash? If you need trash for some reason, even trash produced by a specific company that sells it - which already does not make much sense - you should be able to go ahead and take it for free. If it is useless and you see a use in it, you can choose to pay for it, but a useless thing is worthless by definition.

[McDoomhammer]

Becuase they dont think its worth $60?

That doesn't answer my question of "If they don't like it, why pirate it?"

Lest you begin to sound like a stuck record, a simple answer:

You have to play it before you know whether you like it.  If you're not sure- which seems likely, given the love or hate responses I've seen- then it seems sensible to try before you buy, especially given the price tag.  It's still theft, but if one pirates and then buys, no-one is harmed.  If one pirates and then deletes, the company loses out, but only if everyone does this, which would mean it wasn't really worth the money they were charging for it and seems only fair- especially since you could take the view that they started it by going to such extremes to make sure they have your money before you can play. EA's actions really don't say that they trust their product very much.

Pirating, keeping and not paying has pretty much no redeeming features, of course.

[Neonivek]

If most people who pirate games just installed it for a day, played it, and judging by if they liked it or not, bought the game... Id have little problem with it. (well excluding games that you can pretty much get bored of in a day)

Though I think we all know that isn't the case... The instance where they say "Wow, this game sucks... Ill just keep it because I am definately not going to buy it" is probably greater then the "I don't think the price is worth it. Ill uninstall"

"If we pick the game apart, we get Fl0w"
-NO WE DON'T THEY ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!! DAMN IT!!! Can everyone stop comparing Spore to Flow? There are only TWO major similarities and they are overall meaningless.

Sean your kinda stuck within generalisations... I mean, I could apply the same to Dwarf Fortress to make it seem like the most unoriginal game ever with its obvious Rogue-like Rip off gameplay and the fact that its Fortress mode so obviously is stollen from Diggles. (Ohh my they both are dwarves arn't they?). It is almost like your bashing Spore because it has discernable Genres.

In otherwords this is my perception of what your saying in a nutshell leaving some details out
Sean: "Spore isn't original... The editors are completely removed from the gameplay and thus don't count. Notice how it has a RTS section? There are other RTS games like Lord of The Rings except WORSE!!!. Spore sucks... Thus because of the above Spore isn't original"
Note: The above is just my perception... not an attempt to make fun of you or make you angry and I hope it isn't misinterpreted as such

Anyhow, for the creature editor... the closest I can think of to it is Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingom (DANG IT MAKE ANOTHER!!!).

[Toady One]

If one pirates and then deletes, the company loses out, but only if everyone does this, which would mean it wasn't really worth the money they were charging for it and seems only fair- especially since you could take the view that they started it by going to such extremes to make sure they have your money before you can play. EA's actions really don't say that they trust their product very much.

So, assuming people no longer have to pay in advance, would the end result be better?  As far as I can tell, the larger developers would have to make their money via subscription payments/microtransactions through online play on servers (if that's more piracy-proof, I have no idea),  include a lot of advertising, move to consoles, or else they'd have to scrape by on whatever money people choose to bestow upon them (which seems to be what's being advocated above -- donationware pretty much).  I'm sure there are other options, but I'll take this as a starting point.

The donationware model works for me and DF, but I don't think it would work that well for a larger production.  Because of the uncertainty associated with relying on payments after the fact, I think even the high budget game producers that you do like (if any!) would completely desert the market (e.g. for one of the other options I listed above) rather than risk their time and money.

It isn't just about squeezing out mediocrity or games that you otherwise don't think deserve your money; even if you trust and believe in your project completely, you still have to respect the reality of the financial situation -- all the more so when you need to fund and organize a large-scale project prior to seeing a return.  What was Spore's budget?  How many people did they have on the project?  I don't see any company's investors green-lighting something like that if they have to rely on the honor system.

I dislike a lot of things that come out of the fixed-price pay-in-advance model, and many things that could be changed or aspired to, but compelled donationware seems even worse to me at this point.  There are examples of massive collaborative efforts that survive on that kind of support, but I'm not sure that setup would work as well for getting a reasonable and completed computer game out there -- again, I'm talking about high budget projects with lots of employees, not what comes out of the (thriving) independent scene.  I don't have a lot of examples of large collaborative donationware games, if there even are many, so I don't mean to overstate my vague feeling here.  Anyway, the reorganization required for such a system pretty much implies the destruction of every company out there, which isn't really the point.  The hypothetical situation here is just "don't charge for your games in advance", and I don't think that would work out very well.

[Soulwynd]

I don't pirate games with decent demos or shareware. There's no need in those cases. But there were games that really really cheat you with the demos, like they put all that's fun and good in the demo but when you play the real thing, you think it's crap.

Not the case with NFS underground (I think that's the one I'm thinking off), the demo had 3 distinct races and that was pretty much the game (no open world in the demo tho) but made me buy it and I had it installed for a year, good deal. Sadly, I took a fall in their following two installments and that sucked *shrugs*. Seems like the newest one will be fun tho.

Seriously, people need to understand that digital piracy doesn't necessarily means they are losing money. In fact, it's likely, specially for games with online content, that the piracy increases the sales. I had NWN pirated and if it didn't have online content, I'd have deleted it in less than a week, but I tried a hacked server and at the time, that was like a make-your-own-mmo and that was it. I bought NWN then all the following expansions.

If I was in charge of a major company, I'd distribute it with a 5 or 7 days shareware scheme. Nothing can be more fair than that. If MMOs can have 7-14 days free trials, why not other games? It seems like these companies want to be movie theaters where you pay 50 bucks to play it once and go like... wtf... wasted money.

[Neonivek]

there were games that really really cheat you with the demos, like they put all that's fun and good in the demo but when you play the real thing, you think it's crap

Constructor was exactly like that! The Demo made me want to buy it on the spot. Then when I played the real thing I wanted to vomit!

Theme Hospital probably had the best Demo I ever played in the way that the game was EXACTLY like the demo except better. (I only regret I havn't played Theme Hospital More)

The reason MMORPGs have have 7-14 day free trials is simple... because you can't do anything in 7-14 days. MMORPGs are based entirely around keeping you in the game for extensive periods of time. Normal Videogames rely on giving you a fun week or afternoon.

The Average person never beats a videogame. How long do you honestly think they play it for?

[Tormy]

I don't pirate games with decent demos or shareware. There's no need in those cases. But there were games that really really cheat you with the demos, like they put all that's fun and good in the demo but when you play the real thing, you think it's crap.

Not the case with NFS underground (I think that's the one I'm thinking off), the demo had 3 distinct races and that was pretty much the game (no open world in the demo tho) but made me buy it and I had it installed for a year, good deal. Sadly, I took a fall in their following two installments and that sucked *shrugs*. Seems like the newest one will be fun tho.

Seriously, people need to understand that digital piracy doesn't necessarily means they are losing money. In fact, it's likely, specially for games with online content, that the piracy increases the sales. I had NWN pirated and if it didn't have online content, I'd have deleted it in less than a week, but I tried a hacked server and at the time, that was like a make-your-own-mmo and that was it. I bought NWN then all the following expansions.

If I was in charge of a major company, I'd distribute it with a 5 or 7 days shareware scheme. Nothing can be more fair than that. If MMOs can have 7-14 days free trials, why not other games? It seems like these companies want to be movie theaters where you pay 50 bucks to play it once and go like... wtf... wasted money.

Allright, I think that we've read enough posts about piracy, so stick to the topic please. Talk about the game, if you have something to say.
I don't wanna be rude, but I guess Toady was clear enough in the Hinterland topic, and I can totally understand his point.