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[Thexor]

It's easy to find faults in Spore. Honestly, I think a lot of people are still bitter (and rightfully so!) about the DRM disaster at release.

The game's a mix of 5 different game concepts - an arcade, an RPG, two styles of RTS, and an MMO-esque ending. As you might expect, though, all 5 are pretty shallow and limited. They can be fun if you don't want to think too hard (even the hardest difficulty is child's play). Character creation is fun, at least.

Spore would probably be an amazing game for someone who isn't really in to gaming. You get to make funny creatures, you get to sample 5 different genres of games, and you probably don't care about the DRM politics so long as the game works. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who self-identifies as a 'gamer', though.

[Robigus]

I had to register to add my two cents about Spore (first time poster, long time lurker). 

Spore was the granddaddy of casual games.  Too bad they promised so much more.  It was nothing more than pretty graphics and 5 hours of gameplay.  I bought it day one based on it's heritage.  So much potential, but when you make it to the last stage you realize that nothing you did previously mattered.

Don't reward them (however little they'll get off the sale) for how badly they mislead the gaming community.

[Neonivek]

Don't reward them (however little they'll get off the sale) for how badly they mislead the gaming community

Once again that wasn't their fault that was a direct result of the community itself misrepresenting the game.

They showed videos and a lot of them that shown exactly what the game had become and every time someone asks "What is spore like?" people do not list videos from a year AFTER the very first one, but the very first one.

It is the only time I actually take the blame completely off the company for misrepresenting the game and instead put the blame entirely on the community for hyping the game undeservingly instead of using their brains.

It is why "I" a year before the release had concerns with the lackluster gameplay. While others chastised me.

If you want "my" evidence just look at any video that wasn't the first video. Everyone showed a dramatically different game. Heck I used to have a collection of Spore videos that actually cataloged the changes and explained why things such as ragdoll wasn't in the final version (As well "no water stage" was announced VERY early on).

What lies? What misrepresentation? We have ONE video, one early concept video that they said was a concept video... that was contradicted and disproved long before the final release.

If you want to know the game that absolutely taught me that sometimes you have to tell the truth about the game even when the community is ravenously defensive about a game? Spore.

[Hanzoku]

I don't know, my disappointment with Spore stemmed directly from 'beating' the game in one four-hour sitting. Yah, I could then spend time fiddling with the space age, but I had already read enough to know that there wasn't a lot to do there.

[Shades]

I don't know, my disappointment with Spore stemmed directly from 'beating' the game in one four-hour sitting. Yah, I could then spend time fiddling with the space age, but I had already read enough to know that there wasn't a lot to do there.

I quite enjoyed the first stage, but it was mostly down hill from there. The only stage that really had any amount of content was the final one, and didn't really feel like an extension of the earlier ones but more a different game.

[Neonivek]

I don't know, my disappointment with Spore stemmed directly from 'beating' the game in one four-hour sitting. Yah, I could then spend time fiddling with the space age, but I had already read enough to know that there wasn't a lot to do there.

Ohh don't get me wrong... Spore was a mess and in the end was only tiniest fraction of the potential it once had. It was extremely disappointing and if the creation system in the game wasn't there the game would be completely unplayable.

It is just that I don't agree with people when they say that Maxis/EA lied about Spore. It is the one case where the hype was entirely community based.

[nenjin]

It is just that I don't agree with people when they say that Maxis/EA lied about Spore. It is the one case where the hype was entirely community based.

No, the hype came from EA letting Will Wright talk off the cuff about awesome things. By the time the prototypes were demo'd though, it was obvious the game wasn't going to be anything to the degree he wanted it to be.

[sproginator]

Well, I for one thoroughly enjoyed spore all the way through

[bluejello]

I had fun with spore, but it completely lacks replay value to me,  a complete lack of content, and the space age takes ages to actually do stuff.  and this is after playing for several hours doing the first four stages.

five to ten dollars is what I would put the price to be reasonable at.

[Robigus]

True, lie was a strong word, but obviously a shift in design occurred between the videos and the final release.  EA/Maxis didn't do anything to shift the gaming community's expectations, so whether or not it was intentional it wasn't what people were lead to believe it would be.

It was fun for a couple of hours, but it didn't have much depth or replay value.

[Shadowlord]

If you want to know the game that absolutely taught me that sometimes you have to tell the truth about the game even when the community is ravenously defensive about a game? Spore.

The problem with Spore is more that it's a content creator with a license that prevents you from doing anything productive with it, with minigames wrapped around it. EA not telling the truth about the gameplay was annoying. Having Will Wright say that he wants to deflate expectations (which happened shortly before release) isn't quite good enough to deflate expectations from "BEST GAME IN THE HISTORY OF ALL GAMES EVER" to "CLAY MONSTERS AND MINIGAMES WTF IS THIS SHIT." If they had flat out told the truth prior to the game's release, they would have just lost sales, and... they're EA, so obviously they're not going to do that.

What I'm wondering is why they haven't taken the creature creator and started licensing it as a content creation tool (or if they have, why I haven't heard about it :V). At the very least they should be rubbing their hands with glee at the stacks of cash they could make by charging licensing fees.

[Neonivek]

It is just that I don't agree with people when they say that Maxis/EA lied about Spore. It is the one case where the hype was entirely community based.

No, the hype came from EA letting Will Wright talk off the cuff about awesome things. By the time the prototypes were demo'd though, it was obvious the game wasn't going to be anything to the degree he wanted it to be.

Once again, you are thinking of that very first video. Which was less "off the cuff" as it was something they were genuinely trying to develop that just didn't pan out.

Hense why every single other video wasn't about that.

If they had flat out told the truth prior to the game's release, they would have just lost sales, and... they're EA, so obviously they're not going to do that

They didn't need to. Every single thing the game had was on the table far before that. What you are expecting them to do is go "Hey community, stop digging up that old video.

Why didn't they have to "flat out tell the truth" was because they were never lying and were telling the truth. Even releasing videos that went "Hey remember that thing from the first video? Yeah that would have been great".

Heck they announced the lack of a water stage REALLY early.

but obviously a shift in design occurred between the videos and the final release

The shift occurred between the first video of Spore ever released... and the second (or possibly third hmm)

[Aklyon]

First impressions are important. Spore's was quite cool, later on not so much.

[Sergius]

I don't understand this logic. If my old video shows, let's say, the cell stage up to the civilization stage, but a much newer one shows only the last two stages, I can get away with removing the stages that weren't in the newer video saying "well, that was before, and this is now" after the fact?

I'd think that when you are presented new material, the public isn't expected to just assume that the older stuff shown has been removed.

[Neonivek]

I'd think that when you are presented new material, the public isn't expected to just assume that the older stuff shown has been removed

That is where all the videos, discussions, and announcements come in.

The utter delusions of the "public" to hold onto the first video even when everything else contradicts it. Is what hyped Spore.