Despite the success of The Sims and The Sims 2, both titles seem to be games that people either "get" or not. The life simulation and house-building aspects of the game, combined with its "choose your own goals" emphasis served to confuse some gamers.
As someone who enjoyed The Sims and its make-your-own-fun style game play, I had been looking forward to Spore for years. Will Wright's "Sim Everything" was based on an exciting concept, with the promise of a truly revolutionary game experience.
Unfortunately, the end result leaves something to be desired (and not in ways you may first expect).
Spore does get several things right. The much-lauded creature (and building and vehicle) creator almost makes this game worthwhile in and of itself. It is just unfortunate that the positioning or size of parts has no impact at all on game play; rather, these are purely cosmetic elements. Each part contains a certain value and grants an ability, but beyond that, everything is cosmetic.
Terraforming planets, conquering opponents' planets through trade and engaging in wars with other empires can be quite addictive, despite the limitations. These elements represent the good side of Spore; the stuff that truly makes this game enjoyable much of the time.
Then, of course, there's the bad. I could spend a great deal of time discussing Spore's illusion of freedom and depth as well as its fundamentally repetitive and limited nature. However, there are two significant aspects of the game that have yet to receive sufficient coverage among the larger gaming media outlets. One of the more prominent of these issues is digital rights management (DRM).
DRM has played a significant role in the online music industry over recent years (much to the annoyance of consumers), but it has now developed into a major challenge for the game industry as well.
When Spore launched, customers discovered that EA only allowed a maximum of three installs of the game and one account per game. Just as recent trends suggested that some publishers were easing up on DRM restrictions, EA had clamped down harder than anyone expected.
The significant DRM restrictions applied to Spore not only caused anger among fans, but also triggered lawsuits (related to embedded "spy" software bundled with the game) as well as major reactions from angry gamers. Amazon.com's user rating system for Spore was hijacked by such gamers and the result was a skewed star rating for the game, which may easily have had a direct impact on thousands of potential customers. At the very least, the enormous negative attention was not helpful.
After the uproar, EA announced some significant changes to Spore's DRM. Firstly, Spore can now be installed and reinstalled any number of times on up to five computers. And secondly, the game will now allow multiple user accounts per individual install.
Being a great-but-flawed game is one thing, but applying severe DRM restrictions is something else. The controversy surrounding Spore's DRM is something the company did not need. I am personally surprised that so few major gaming media outlets have addressed this story when interviewing EA staff as well.
The third issue—the ugly—relates specifically to Spore's stability and performance.
Customer complaints about crashes and bugs seem to be minimal for Windows XP-based systems, but Vista and OS X users are a different story. The Mac audience in particular has been left out in the cold when it comes to support and assistance when resolving technical problems.
I am running Spore on an iMac and initially I had no problems at all with stability. The game ran smoothly and without error. However, when I reached a certain point in the space stage, the game would crash without fail. There was no real explanation for this. Reinstalling the game seemed to help, but only momentarily. Once the game's first patch was applied, Spore began crashing immediately upon start up.
If my issues with Spore were unique or rare, I would be inclined to think that there was something wrong with my system. All you have to do, though, is browse your way through the Mac-related topics at EA's official Spore forum. There are endless complaints from Mac users, but what is most interesting is the fact that while most complaints revolve around the game crashing, each Mac user seems to experience this problem at a different point in the game.
So far, EA's response to this problem has been poor. The company has offered some minimal support, but nothing concrete. Spore's first patch was designed in part to eliminate these problems, but in fact, the patch has apparently made the crashing issues worse for some gamers.
As a fan of Maxis and particularly as a fan of The Sims, I anticipated a great experience with Spore. But it seems that the infamous instability and bug-ridden legacy of The Sims is still present, at least to some extent, in Spore. And yet again, Mac customers are not a priority.
My experience with Spore and the simple fact that I have not been able to get it to run correctly (despite trying every single fix suggested by EA, as well as updating with a patch that only made the problem worse), I am starting to wonder whether or not I will bother with The Sims 3. I am just as interested in this game as I was in Spore, but my disappointment with both Spore as a product (at least on a technical level) as well as EA's lackluster response is leading to major second thoughts.
Evolution's tough.
As someone who enjoyed The Sims and its make-your-own-fun style game play, I had been looking forward to Spore for years. Will Wright's "Sim Everything" was based on an exciting concept, with the promise of a truly revolutionary game experience.
Unfortunately, the end result leaves something to be desired (and not in ways you may first expect).
Spore does get several things right. The much-lauded creature (and building and vehicle) creator almost makes this game worthwhile in and of itself. It is just unfortunate that the positioning or size of parts has no impact at all on game play; rather, these are purely cosmetic elements. Each part contains a certain value and grants an ability, but beyond that, everything is cosmetic.
Terraforming planets, conquering opponents' planets through trade and engaging in wars with other empires can be quite addictive, despite the limitations. These elements represent the good side of Spore; the stuff that truly makes this game enjoyable much of the time.
Then, of course, there's the bad. I could spend a great deal of time discussing Spore's illusion of freedom and depth as well as its fundamentally repetitive and limited nature. However, there are two significant aspects of the game that have yet to receive sufficient coverage among the larger gaming media outlets. One of the more prominent of these issues is digital rights management (DRM).
DRM has played a significant role in the online music industry over recent years (much to the annoyance of consumers), but it has now developed into a major challenge for the game industry as well.
When Spore launched, customers discovered that EA only allowed a maximum of three installs of the game and one account per game. Just as recent trends suggested that some publishers were easing up on DRM restrictions, EA had clamped down harder than anyone expected.
The significant DRM restrictions applied to Spore not only caused anger among fans, but also triggered lawsuits (related to embedded "spy" software bundled with the game) as well as major reactions from angry gamers. Amazon.com's user rating system for Spore was hijacked by such gamers and the result was a skewed star rating for the game, which may easily have had a direct impact on thousands of potential customers. At the very least, the enormous negative attention was not helpful.
After the uproar, EA announced some significant changes to Spore's DRM. Firstly, Spore can now be installed and reinstalled any number of times on up to five computers. And secondly, the game will now allow multiple user accounts per individual install.
Being a great-but-flawed game is one thing, but applying severe DRM restrictions is something else. The controversy surrounding Spore's DRM is something the company did not need. I am personally surprised that so few major gaming media outlets have addressed this story when interviewing EA staff as well.
The third issue—the ugly—relates specifically to Spore's stability and performance.
Customer complaints about crashes and bugs seem to be minimal for Windows XP-based systems, but Vista and OS X users are a different story. The Mac audience in particular has been left out in the cold when it comes to support and assistance when resolving technical problems.
I am running Spore on an iMac and initially I had no problems at all with stability. The game ran smoothly and without error. However, when I reached a certain point in the space stage, the game would crash without fail. There was no real explanation for this. Reinstalling the game seemed to help, but only momentarily. Once the game's first patch was applied, Spore began crashing immediately upon start up.
If my issues with Spore were unique or rare, I would be inclined to think that there was something wrong with my system. All you have to do, though, is browse your way through the Mac-related topics at EA's official Spore forum. There are endless complaints from Mac users, but what is most interesting is the fact that while most complaints revolve around the game crashing, each Mac user seems to experience this problem at a different point in the game.
So far, EA's response to this problem has been poor. The company has offered some minimal support, but nothing concrete. Spore's first patch was designed in part to eliminate these problems, but in fact, the patch has apparently made the crashing issues worse for some gamers.
As a fan of Maxis and particularly as a fan of The Sims, I anticipated a great experience with Spore. But it seems that the infamous instability and bug-ridden legacy of The Sims is still present, at least to some extent, in Spore. And yet again, Mac customers are not a priority.
My experience with Spore and the simple fact that I have not been able to get it to run correctly (despite trying every single fix suggested by EA, as well as updating with a patch that only made the problem worse), I am starting to wonder whether or not I will bother with The Sims 3. I am just as interested in this game as I was in Spore, but my disappointment with both Spore as a product (at least on a technical level) as well as EA's lackluster response is leading to major second thoughts.