SPORE
When you first hear people talk about SPORE, you don't quite believe them as it seems to incorporate a universe as we know it, in ALL terms of complexity.
Then I watched the video and I nearly damned myself for not having the money to pull off a software like that and I am not only talking about launching it on any platform possible.
SPORE is THE Resonancedesign game for one main reason: User created content!
What Will Wright realised, after hundreds of fan-developed tools for the Sims started appearing and adding thousands of objects and characters to the game, is that games are not necessarily about the scenarios and stories designed by game designers, but about the experience and situations gamers create by themselves. How else can you describe the phenomenon of people spending days and months creating MODs (user designed characters and stories mapped on existing game engines) and the survival of MUDs (text-based multi-user role-playing-games). The simple answer is, if you give the player the tools to create their own world, you will create a level of immersion, that even the best gran-tourismo-i-see-dust-flying-off-my-car's-tires designs can't challenge.
The commercial side-effects are indeed positive as well. As Will Wright put's it "the most expensive asset in games is the content". Given mainly user created content, this can cut down the budget impressively. Second, with all the stories and blogging content that users will create (as the Sims already has shown), you are given an advertising network for free.
SPORE so far looks like the essence of this new concept of decentralised production and user-created content. At it's core is a single simple yet complex tool, an editor for creatures and objects. The world itself is a structure of procedural modules, which flexibly react to the content produced. Procedural programming is nothing new per se, but to the extend it has been done in SPORE makes the game, put in gamers terms, real Next-Gen.
It's the game for the blogging, MODing and tagging age. It has the designer step back behind the screen and become a framework and tool designer. Philosophically it is the least egoistic or egocentric game so far and I dearly hope it will be seen as more than a game in terms of it's unique structure. It's a small step for a game, but it's an essential step that has been overdue at least for the last 5-10 years.
All we can do now is sit back and wait for it's launch.
Watch the video(1 hour)
Then I watched the video and I nearly damned myself for not having the money to pull off a software like that and I am not only talking about launching it on any platform possible.
SPORE is THE Resonancedesign game for one main reason: User created content!
What Will Wright realised, after hundreds of fan-developed tools for the Sims started appearing and adding thousands of objects and characters to the game, is that games are not necessarily about the scenarios and stories designed by game designers, but about the experience and situations gamers create by themselves. How else can you describe the phenomenon of people spending days and months creating MODs (user designed characters and stories mapped on existing game engines) and the survival of MUDs (text-based multi-user role-playing-games). The simple answer is, if you give the player the tools to create their own world, you will create a level of immersion, that even the best gran-tourismo-i-see-dust-flying-off-my-car's-tires designs can't challenge.
The commercial side-effects are indeed positive as well. As Will Wright put's it "the most expensive asset in games is the content". Given mainly user created content, this can cut down the budget impressively. Second, with all the stories and blogging content that users will create (as the Sims already has shown), you are given an advertising network for free.
SPORE so far looks like the essence of this new concept of decentralised production and user-created content. At it's core is a single simple yet complex tool, an editor for creatures and objects. The world itself is a structure of procedural modules, which flexibly react to the content produced. Procedural programming is nothing new per se, but to the extend it has been done in SPORE makes the game, put in gamers terms, real Next-Gen.
It's the game for the blogging, MODing and tagging age. It has the designer step back behind the screen and become a framework and tool designer. Philosophically it is the least egoistic or egocentric game so far and I dearly hope it will be seen as more than a game in terms of it's unique structure. It's a small step for a game, but it's an essential step that has been overdue at least for the last 5-10 years.
All we can do now is sit back and wait for it's launch.
Watch the video(1 hour)
posted by Uncle Unvoid | 6/16/2006 12:29:00 pm
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