Is Spore going to be a piece of Spore?

Image by Andrew Scott via Flickr

Flipping through another Top 10 list of the most anticipated games coming for 2008, and once again I see Spore getting all the love.  Normally I would be behind such a high concept gaming title, but for some reason I have only derision for what could be the GTA4 killer, and a boost to PC Gaming.

The game is set to come out early Sept, which is about time, as it has been winning awards since the 2005 E3.  It will be on the PC, both Mac and Windows, and also on the iPhone. It is slated to be one of the saviours of the PC platform, for its hype and popularity and its reasonable system requirements.

High concept games have always been in the PC gaming space, but they have always been the domain of the niche gamer and the appeal and the success never seems to match the concept

Let's talk about the things the creators and the publishers have done right.....and then why I'm not interested.

What works with Spore is that they sold the concept early, maybe a little too early, but still, they have created an audience.  The game is the brainchild of Will Wright who is most notable for the hugely popular Sims games.  I'm not going to go into all the details of Spore, that's what the website, and Wikipedia is for.  Plus I'm sure if you are reading this you probably have a good idea of what Spore is anyway.

The idea of releasing Creature Creator was a master stroke, as it gave us a taste for elements of the game that a lot of us were sold on.  It was a great idea to demo the game and generate buzz.  The Creature Creator gave the fans a full taste of the games appeal without revealing the true game-play.  This makes it hard to judge the game, but gives you an idea of the games potential and a taste for more.

From my past articles you would understand that I have problems with the movie-blockbuster way games titles are being hyped to us nowadays.  I feel that the potential money to be made on games is making publishers strive for mediocrity in a similar way to the movie industry.

As much as I'm not a Sims fan, I was on board with the Spore concept, even though I saw it as a little ambitious.  The longer it took to make, the more I went off the boil, and more the hype seemed to overshadow the concept.

Personally, I think the Creature Creator should have been the first taste we had of the game, with maybe some announcements a year ago.  After playing with the CC, I was disappointed because over the last few years, the cool picture of what I thought it was going to be was snuffed out by the playschool style of the CC.  The look grabbed the attention of my 4 year daughter, 'nuff said.

As the game-play and the real details of the game began to emerge, I felt that the concept was gone and I was over it.  It seems as though Will and his team have taken his idea and then re-made 10 odd games to suit each level.  Is this to be the evolution of life? Or just the evolution of gaming?  Both great ideas but were they really worth waiting so long for?

If you are still psyched for the game, feel free to have a go at me.  But just as I haven't seen or played the game, either have you.  I'm not picking on the game as a finished product, but it's the hype that is killing it.  We are seeing more and more hype pushing our beloved PC gaming to the edge, and it is killing games like Too Human before they get a chance to live.

Hype has killed Spore for me.

Jason Remnant

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