Spore
Onewing

Spore comes out tomorrow.

I don't really have anything else to say. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money to buy it, so once again I miss the initial fresh wave. :-/ Plus, I really need to stay focused for the next ten days for the upcoming gdc.

At least I can enjoy the first post here. :P

OnlineCop
Onewing said:

At least I can enjoy the first post here. :P

Congratulations on being the first to post about Spore!

Jonatan Hedborg

Having played around with it a bit, I have to say it's even shallower than I thought it would be :P A pretty mediocre game that tries to please everyone, but fails miserable at it. Only the first and last stages are any fun imo (the first because it's quick and simple, the last because it's a bit more complex and has some depth)

Matthew Leverton

I have been expecting Spore to be a miserable failure and would be very surprised if it is not.

Onewing
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I have been expecting Spore to be a miserable failure and would be very surprised if it is not.

In terms of gameplay or sales? ;)

I doubt it knocks SimCity 4 off the top place in my charts (yes, I think I'm willing to say SC 4 is my favorite game evar), but I still expect to enjoy Spore.

Albin Engström

Spore failed to entertain me, the first stage was the best but then I just waited for the fun to begin, to bad it never did.

Some people will probably like it thought.

Matthew Leverton
Quote:

In terms of gameplay or sales? ;)

Of course it will sell well. It could be a big bag of poop and people would still buy it.

Onewing

The wink was to imply the question was rhetorical. ;)

OnlineCop
Matthew Leverton said:

It could be a big bag of poop and people would still buy it.

Gee, that's almost woot's philosophy...

Jonny Cook

I've been enjoying it, but I'd probably enjoy it more if it didn't keep on crashing...

People who were expecting hardcore gameplay would certainly be disappointed, since it's definitely a casual game. The game mechanics have also been simplified quite a bit, which could make it seem pretty shallow. But it's still fun though, simply because every part of it is very well designed and very intuitive (well, mostly.) They didn't want to shut anybody out by making it too complex, but I guess when you do that, you kind of inherently shut out the hardcore gamers because it's too simple.

My main gripes with it so far are the lack of hotkeys, controlling the camera in the spaceship can sometimes be annoying in the middle of a dog fight, and that in the space stage, even though you can have allies, you're pretty much alone when it comes to defending your colonies. The turrets are pretty much worthless when it comes to actually killing things so I just have to fly from planet to planet protecting my colonies. And I also don't like that the computer can do things that I can't. How am I supposed to take over a planet with one spaceship? They get to attack me with a dozen. I do get the option to have my allies' spaceships fly with me, but so far I can only have two, and it seems silly that I can't just have some of my own ships come with me like the computer does.

Bob Keane

Two years in the making and it crashes?
[edit]
My roommate just put the Discovery Channel on. They are showing a world 100 million years into the future using Spore creatures. Heh, too bad everyone knows evolution is a myth.

23yrold3yrold
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People who were expecting hardcore gameplay would certainly be disappointed, since it's definitely a casual game.

On what grounds would someone think that Spore was intended for anything but the casual market? :)

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Two years in the making and it crashes?

Hey, World of Warcraft still crashes on my computer ...

Karadoc ~~
Bob Keane said:

Two years in the making and it crashes?

You're saying that on a programming forum!

edit

Bob Keane said:

My roommate just put the Discovery Channel on. They are showing a world 100 million years into the future using Spore creatures. Heh, too bad everyone knows evolution is a myth.

Apparently the 'evolution' in Spore was a myth. You get to design how your creature changes! Perhaps that's what you were talking about...

Jonny Cook
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Apparently the 'evolution' in Spore was a myth. You get to design how your creature changes!

They made it pretty clear that's how it worked the whole time.

Thomas Fjellstrom
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They made it pretty clear that's how it worked the whole time.

At one point it was supposed to sortof automagically evolve your design as time goes on.

Timorg

I just played through to the space age in one sitting, I found all the stages entertaining, but I am a casual gamer, so I am really the target audience.

It did feel like I was playing 'The Sims' with weird creatures, and most of the game play for the 1st half is just pushing the keys 1-4 that match the symbols they are displaying.

I am really interested in where the games missions are going to send me next. I am also interested to see what the hidden achievements are.

If you search for 'Timorg' in the friend finder, you should find me.
This is the creatures that own 'New Arden' :)
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/596300

Jonny Cook

I found a quote on Wikipedia which does a pretty good job summing up what many peoples reactions might be: "while Spore is an amazing product, it's just not quite an amazing game."

Not quite sure to what extent I agree with that yet. It's definitely a massive game and will require me to play it a bit more before I'm really able to judge it properly. Spores kind of like... the M Theory. Well... no, it actually isn't...

Oh, and also, I remember Will Wright saying that the first 4 stages were just one big tutorial which paves the way for the space stage, which is really the main game. But that's another problem for me. The stages should be more integrated. I think it would have been cooler if instead of being separate games, as you moved through the stages new gameplay would be added on to the old, rather than replacing it. I'd like to be able to get out of my space ship and run around! On the other hand, I can definitely see how doing that would be a very big design/technical challenge. Probably the reason they could get away with having so many freaking planets is because each planet doesn't have very much state.

[edit]
If Spore had the same modding capabilities as Oblivion it would be much better. For instance, why aren't there any penalties for dying? That alone would make the game a lot more fun. It would make each stage last longer, and I'd be forced to adapt and use strategy. As it is right now, you can just brute force your way through everything.

Bob Keane

No, no, no. Evolution itself is a myth. Sara Palin is quoted as saying recently:

Quote:

God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

She is a Republican, and they are never wrong.

Thomas Fjellstrom
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She is a Republican, and they are never wrong

Except when they are. Which is most of the time ;)

CGamesPlay

Spore for the DS looks cute, and I think I will pick it up sometime. The download and play demo was pretty boring, but I saw a beta version at PAX, and it seems like it could be fun.

Jonny Cook
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God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

That is the most intelligent thing I have ever heard. :o

Dennis

I'm playing Spore for three days now and I like it very much. It's not a very challenging game (on difficulty: Normal) and indeed the options for interaction with the world in the first four of five phases (cellular, creature, tribe, civilization, space) are not very many but the real fun part of the game is the process of creating your creatures, vehicles, buildings and the presentation of the game is done very well, graphics, animations, sounds, music all fit together nicely.

Timorg: I could not find you via the built-in "search buddy" function but from http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Timorg I could add you as a buddy.
I can be found as http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Baumvieh (two friends of mine who I know from RL also had trouble finding me in-game but from that page it worked).
You have to be logged in on that page with your Spore account or else you'll get a Page-Error.

Here are my creatures so far (Tallik, Hornokko, Apig):
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/596320http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/596319http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/596318

MiquelFire

Mine is at http://www.spore.com/view/profile/MiquelFire

Real creative with my names, aren't I? ::)

ReyBrujo

Some of the most important reviews are found already around. The game is bashed because it is pretty limited once you recover from the shock of all the stuff you can create (gameplay wise is just a sim), and there is no online multiplaying (I think there is an offline multiplayer where you download the civilization from another player and play against it, but you may destroy everything and the other player does not even know you attacked him). I like the idea, but doubt many will understand the beauty of it.

Kitty Cat
Matthew Leverton

What kind of DRM does it have? I've read conflicting reports...

Goalie Ca
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God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

Unfortunately, totally wrong. Dinosaurs were horses for jesus.. and he ate them leaving nothing left to make oil. Oil is made from swamp bio-mass that died after the great flood.

MiquelFire

While I don't like on-line based DRM for single player games, I just remember there was one that needed an internet connection like every 10 days. I think the current one only does the on-line thing when you install, then every time you do something on-line. For a dial-up user (or a user who doesn't have an always on connection for some other reason), that's much better, and if that's what I heard the first time I heard about Spore's DRM, I wouldn't of cared too much about it.

I got DSL mid-August, so I don't care either way about it be on-line or not now, but I still hate DRM being installed and slowing down my computer.

[edit] At some point during play, I heard my hardware insert/remove sounds start to go crazy at some point. I can only assume it was DRM related. I know some DRM protected games trigger those sounds once in a while, but normally during startup and shutdown.

Onewing

Onewing's Profile

Well, I went ahead and bought last night around 1:30am. :p

I've played through the first two stages. You can see my creature's evolution as I changed the name (adding a roman numeral) each time I changed a part. Yes, the evo part is definitely one of the game's major intriguing features.

I actually enjoyed the first stage, moreso than the abhorringly long second stage. The first stage is short enough to establish a degree of entertainment. The second stage was largely uneventful and felt like playing a barbie game. Yes, the game is a overall, a sim (which is what I wanted), but this stage felt like a horrible mesh of sim and action, failing at both. I did, however, get a good laugh when a gigantic moogle (that I had created months ago) came barreling out of nowhere and gobbled me up. Also, seeing giraffes getting sucked up by spaceships was amusing. The rest of the time I was just waiting to advance.

However, this is just my first run through, I'm willing to give it another try to see how it differs from the first experience. I started the tribal stage and it looks like it's going to be a bit more fun (already enjoyed outfitting my characters). I kind of wish some of the races were in tribal stage during the second stage, to give a better since of "your the prey".

I'll probably play some more tonight, but now I should at least try to be productive. ;D

Dennis

The copy protection is like this: You type in your serial number, game connects to verify it later(when you register a spore account in the game), done. After that you don't even have to have the DVD in the drive anymore to play.
There was some trouble registering the account on the first two days, which was either due to major server problems which are fixed now or the servers were not even switched on at that time(the game was released three days earlier in Europe on the 4th of September).

Whether or not this "three times activation and after that call EA" thing is true I do not know. I don't see a need to reinstall the game three times. :P
I assume that this three time activation limit will be lifted in the future, it is likely just some method to prevent software piracy during launch until they break even from sales.
Wasn't there some other game for which just that happened in the past? Bioshock? I don't remember.

I've added everyone who posted their Spore account here to my buddy list. :)
My latest achievement in the game is that I've killed one of those epic creatures in creature stage (got it stuck inside some trees and then slowly poisened it to death).

Matthew Leverton

Well, I don't blame people for complaining. My experience with copy protection is that it doesn't always work and it's only marginally successful in preventing "friendly" copies. I don't know that they cancel each other out, but I do know that there would be enough sales of a good non-DRM game to recoup its development costs.

I don't have a problem with online games requiring or limiting the number of accounts per serial number. That is a sufficiently good and non-intrusive protection scheme. Why don't they just limit it to that?

Who cares if somebody pirates the game and plays it offline? If the game is so good, everybody will want to buy it for the online community. People will pay just for access to an online community if it affects game play. You could give away Spore, and make plenty of money just on that alone.

The "three installations" is even more stupid, if true.

FrankyR

Here's my profile: http://www.spore.com/view/profile/OMcNebbertford

I'm enjoying the game so far (just started the tribal stage), but is definitely pretty shallow. I agree that they could have done more to tie the game together. In the creature stage they seemed more interested in letting you encounter as many different types of creatures as possible than actually creating an interesting/realistic world. I think I would have much preferred that they went with choosing fewer different types of creatures to populate the world but giving each species more than one nest.

edit:

Matthew said:

My experience with copy protection is that it doesn't always work and it's only marginally successful in preventing "friendly" copies.

I've had horrible experiences with copy-protection in the past. Years ago when the family computer was a 660mHz Compaq it was a regular occurrence for games that me or my brother legally bought to not work. We would install the game and when we attempted to start it, the splash screen came up for a few seconds and then quit without any message. This happened with about 5-6 different games purchased during the lifespan of that machine. I had to get 'fixed' exes for most of the games we bought.

Jonny Cook

Yeah, it seems silly that they're using this elaborate copy protection scheme and it gets cracked the first day it's released. ::) I really respect Bethesda for not using any copy protection on Oblivion. I downloaded it off of bittorrent, but I think someday I'm going to buy it just to support them.

GameCreator

Do you respect them enough to pay them the amount the game was worth when you started playing it?

Kitty Cat
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Whether or not this "three times activation and after that call EA" thing is true I do not know. I don't see a need to reinstall the game three times. :P

Yeah, hard drive crashes and/or OS reinstalls and/or buying a new system never happen. :P Besides, pirates will break the need for any activation. What does a limit of 3 before needing to call accomplish?

Quote:

I assume that this three time activation limit will be lifted in the future, it is likely just some method to prevent software piracy during launch until they break even from sales.

Except that the game got leaked out onto torrent sites before it even launched (so I hear). :P

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Do you respect them enough to pay them the amount the game was worth when you started playing it?

Respect is to be earned, not granted upon request. I got a copy of Oblivion first, found the game enjoyable, and knew the game had no copy protection beyond a simple CD check. They thus earned my respect enough for me to buy a copy, and I did.

So far, I have not bought the Shivering Isle expansion due to the copy protection they added on to it (even if I wanted to, I couldn't.. it breaks in Wine).

MiquelFire

I'm thinking EA servers are suffering from too many people playing Spore because I want to add FrankR as a buddy, but it's not responding... which means the on-line features may be broken in the game when I get to play some tonight.

AngelChild

Spore.

Now with 890 (and growing) 1-star ratings on amazon.com thanks to its DRM.

Wow :o

Dennis

Ok, I accept the role of devils advocate here:

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Yeah, hard drive crashes and/or OS reinstalls and/or buying a new system never happen.

I would say the probability for your hard drive to crash three times in a row or you replacing your whole system three times in a row in the period of time that you play the game is almost zero.

Quote:

Besides, pirates will break the need for any activation. What does a limit of 3 before needing to call accomplish?

It will prevent many people(the target audience: casual gamers) who are not that literate with computers and 'fixes' from spreading the game wildly without paying for it.

Quote:

Except that the game got leaked out onto torrent sites before it even launched (so I hear).

EA is huge. Huge companies usually have a very slow decision making process. I'm sure the limit will be lifted in the future. Their line of reasoning for not doing it now after the game is available as a torrent could be that they hope that their main target audience does not know about torrents. Another reason might be that it does not hurt them now to keep the limit. Lifting it now would probably even hurt them, because people could then (kind of) legally buy a single copy somewhere and spread it to everyone they know without even needing to get a 'fix'.

additional information about activation:
Also note that the three times thing is only affecting 'activation'. You can still play the game without the online features if you decide not to activate it(I was forced to play it like that the first two days while the servers were not working). Basically when you do that, you only have the content (around 1000 creatures) provided by Maxis with the initial install.

Even then, you can still add new content to the game (not as convenient as from directly using the ingame online features) by grabbing the creature PNG files from the Sporepedia with an ordinary browser. All creature stats and appearance are directly coded into the PNG file and when you copy those files into a certain folder of your Spore installation, they will be used by the game.

Kitty Cat
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I would say the probability for your hard drive to crash three times in a row or you replacing your whole system three times in a row in the period of time that you play the game is almost zero.

I've had three computers (a 400 or 600 mhz cyrix, a 1.1ghz athlon, and now an athlon x2 4200+) and probably about 4 or 5 hard drives (they don't seem to like me much) in the past 6 years. I imagine with a game such as Spore, if it's a game you like now, it's a game you'll like at least for nostalgic purposes in a couple decades. How would that '3 activations' rule apply then? Note that even if they 'likely will' or they've said they may remove the activation limit, the fact is they haven't yet and aren't under an obligation to do so.

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It will prevent many people(the target audience: casual gamers) who are not that literate with computers and 'fixes' from spreading the game wildly without paying for it.

What kind of spreading would not-that-literate casual gamers do? Sharing their DVDs? Yeah, it destroyed gaming when casual CD sharing was possible..

Quote:

Lifting it now would probably even hurt them, because people could then (kind of) legally buy a single copy somewhere and spread it to everyone they know without even needing to get a 'fix'.

As opposed to now, where someone legally bought it, and is spreading it around with the needed 'fix' built-in to people he doesn't know. And who's to say the people that got a copy that way would have even bought it in the first place, or that being able to try out that free copy doesn't convince them to buy it? Plus, how many people aren't buying it due to the copy protections they added? Hint: I'm not even considering getting the game. I have not bought any game that requires Steam. I have not bought Oblivion's Shivering Isle expansion due to its copy protection (which Oblivion didn't have and still became a top-selling popular title; oh the irony).

This article is about "saving PC gaming", to which I think "PC gaming is dying" is a bit overblown, but the actual content of the article is still interesting and worth reading.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=994

ReyBrujo

Ars review: rent. And Bioshock used to have this kind of DRM, but was removed after the public backslash.

Matthew Leverton
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It will prevent many people(the target audience: casual gamers) who are not that literate with computers and 'fixes' from spreading the game wildly without paying for it.

Everybody knows somebody who can do it for them. I've had to remove protection from games for my nephews because it didn't work with their computer!

Spore, like any other game, should just limit the number of online accounts associated with a single purchase. That alone is enough to prevent widespread piracy for any game that has good online play.

Jonny Cook
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Spore, like any other game, should just limit the number of online accounts associated with a single purchase. That alone is enough to prevent widespread piracy for any game that has good online play.

Exactly. If people needed to buy the game in order to be able to get and share the user created content, that alone should be incentive enough for them to do it.

BAF

Hell, even the ancient idealogy from StarCraft works... only one instance of a serial number can be online at a time.

Jonny Cook

Yay! My legal copy of Spore arrived!
::)

BAF

Yves's illegal copy has arrived as well.

Onewing

Just entered Space stage. :):):)

Wow, it was like, "welcome to the game." Tribal and civilization stage were ok, but of course, I could just actually play a game of civilization IV to fill that gap. When I had the power to seemlessly travel into space, I got the goosebumps. ;D I flew to my volcanic moon and looked at my starting city on my home planet (while trying to dodge debris). Awesome.

We'll see how long this lifted excitement lasts...

:D

Mokkan

Apparently a lot of people are making genital monsters (lolol giant penis). Silly people.

Neil Black

There are people who aren't? Losers.

Timorg

I just discovered it doesn't automatically save the game when you exit, you manually have to save, I just lost a heap of play time (all the way up to the space stage) for one of my planets. :(

Jonny Cook
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I just discovered it doesn't automatically save the game when you exit, you manually have to save, I just lost a heap of play time (all the way up to the space stage) for one of my planets.

It warns you.

It also doesn't automatically save your game when it crashes after you've been playing for a few hours.

Timorg

I don't recall seeing a warning, but possibly. It has saved my creatures, and buildings and all that, so I can just restart at the beginning of the space age with them. So its not really an issue.

MiquelFire

Yea, you need to save yourself once in a while. CTRL+S FTW!

I lost a planet as a result of a crash. And I get a creature that now exists only in Sporepidia, and nothing else (though he did start as a cell creature)

NOTE: There are things you get for starting at the cell stage instead of just starting at the space stage.

Dennis

I've discovered a few bugs as well:

  • creatures can get stuck in the world (my chief in the tribal phase got stuck and starved to death as a result but even when he got reborn he was still stuck in the world and by that useless)

  • epic creatures are stupid and can not find a way around obstacles, which makes it very easy to kill them in the creature phase by luring them into a group of trees and then poisening them to death (this could be wanted behavior but it feels wrong)

  • shared creatures seem to get mixed up as Maxis content sometimes so that it becomes impossible to comment on them "no comments allowed on Maxis created content"

  • buddies can not always be found by the in-game search function

Fortunately the only crash I had thus far did occur when I exited the game normally after saving.

BAF

No comments allowed on Maxis created content? wtf...

ReyBrujo

Where are the content rules? All created content belongs to EA, right?

Jonatan Hedborg

I would assume that, yes. Anything else would be odd really...

m c

Spore is good but then it gets boring as all hell after about 2 minutes in space, for me at least.

I got it the morning it was released on usenet, and played it for a few hours at uni. I made a race of cockmonglers, or so I called them, and made joke buildings / vehicles, and it was pretty fun for the first parts.

I heard several people saying that they would pay money for it, and then changing their mind after about 2 hours.

Vanneto

The space stage is the most exciting IMO. Destroying / improving / colonizing planets. But I keep getting attacked by a hostile race. That makes it not-fun. >:(

m c

Maybe I was just tired of it then.

I tend to be quite an elitist when it comes to video games. :-X

Onewing
Quote:

But I keep getting attacked by a hostile race. That makes it not-fun.

This is what absolutely perplexes me about the game. When I got to the Space Race I was so excited because it starts all mysterious. However, within 30 minutes, you make contact with several different empires (not mysterious at all), one of which probably won't like you. Then they attack you and you have to defend...with one single spaceship? Why can't I set up better defenses? Those turrets are worthless. You have to deal with them yourself.

I thought, "maybe I'm playing the game wrong?" (a bad sign), but browsed forums to see many people having the same problems. I finally just annihlated my interrogaters (easy as pie to take out an entire empire with a single spaceship ::) (hint - just laser the city hall until it blows up)) and now I have some peace to explore and enjoy aspects of a single star system.

In SC4, I'm still enjoying it after years because there are still moments where I go "I've never seen that before!" In Spore, you've seen everything within a few hours. Yeah, new races are infinite, but they might as well be different colored dots, as they don't do anything of interest. ::)

I saw a tool that might allow me to walk around on the planet outside of my spaceship. I'm going to get this tool and see if it improves the game any.

Vanneto

I will try to annihilate them! Then maybe I can enjoy the game somewhat.

ReyBrujo
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Then they attack you and you have to defend...with one single spaceship? Why can't I set up better defenses? Those turrets are worthless. You have to deal with them yourself.

Didn't Independence Day, War of the Worlds and so many other Hollywood movies teach you anything? The opponent will always be stronger, and will destroy you during the first meeting. You need to find the one creature that will turn everything around, the hero. Make him captain of the only ship you have (hopefully you have called him Conan, Pickard, Luke, Indiana or some other easy name), and he will beat them up. Eventually, he will expand outside Spore, first your Direct X version, then your Windows system, the PC, your router, your ISP, Internet and finally the world, making Wright the king of the world.

Matt Smith
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Where are the content rules? All created content belongs to EA, right?
I would assume that, yes. Anything else would be odd really...

A very dodgy legal position for them to take. Copyright belongs to the creator of a work. EULAs are not a legal contract so you at no stage legally assign copyright to EA. If they publish your work without seeking your permission then in theory they are liable for whatever damages you feel entitled to. You could take into court quotations like

Thomas Vu - Producer said:

"In the industry a lot of people are looking at this game because development costs are definitely going up.

"If you imagine making something like a really cool creature can take a developer two weeks to do from scratch, but this system means somebody can make something just as compelling in two hours," he said. "This will definitely cut costs."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7562528.stm

Jonatan Hedborg
Quote:

A very dodgy legal position for them to take

How so? They have made all the resources, the player just puts it together. Seems a bit like trying to enforce a copyright on a thing you've built in Lego. It's a matter of definition I guess, but imo there is not enough work involved on the player's side to claim that they made it.

Timorg

If they allowed you to create your own textures, and parts, then it would be really hairy. But with how it is, how can you prove that you made the creature 1st. There is really only a limited number of possible designs, and 2.6 million creatures. How different does a creature have to be before its considered a whole new creature and not a derivative of someone else's.

Kitty Cat
Onewing

Guess who won a free copy of the Galatic Edition at the EA booth during the Austin GDC. ;D

Now I'm going to return my copy and get my money back. Totally worth having the game for free. ;)

ReyBrujo

Do they refund purchases just because? I thought only for bad copies!

Onewing

Walmart will take just about anything! ;)

Anyway, just noticed a new patch for Spore, fixing some issues that I had real problems with (mainly regarding gameplay). It seems kind of silly the amount they changed, especially since it's only been 11 days since release. Almost like they had the patch ready beforehand in case everybody said the game sucked. Probably some upper exec in EA thought he knew game development or something. ;D

Jonny Cook

Hey, I think you're on to something! What they probably did was develop a different set of patches for each way people could have reacted to the game. I think it's brilliant.

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