It has taken me far too long to settle down and actually write about SPORE.

I think part of the problem has been time, since I have very little of it – however, a bigger problem has been that I’ve been too lazy to do it.

My friend Alex Vance recently uploaded a series of journal entries elaborating on people who are Not Writers – writers who say they write but do not do so as much as they should, and do not try to get over the minuscule hurdles that stop them from writing and hence differ from Writers, who need to write – who eat, sleep and breathe writing. (It is a good read – check it out sometime.)

I have my own name for these, and it is “writters”. It is a playful, mocking name. I now realize I have been mocking myself.

I’ve been trying to write and not doing it for far too long. (Do or no not – there is no try – I know I know)

So let’s talk about SPORE.

A great many people were expecing a great many things from SPORE, and I suppose it’s only fair that on release the general outcry was “This game is not what it should have been.” Plenty of people were baffled by the lack of complexity and intricacy in the gameplay in comparison to more profound civilization games, such as the aptly titled Civilization – I vividly recall Brenda Brathwaite watching me play SPORE feverishly in the same spot for five hours and ask me what I thought, then say someone told her Civilization IV was far better.

In a sense, they were right. In another, they were not.

I’ve heard SPORE be criticized on a lot of grounds that are all very valid. It’s been called “simple,” “stacked all wrong,” “disappointing at times,” “not quite an amazing game,” and, most importantly, “toy.” It is one hundred percent true that SPORE is not so much an immersive journey towards the Win Condition as it is an individual experience of endless possibilities–which is pretty much what most every one of Will Wright’s games have been. I think, however, that many people mistakenly believe the SPORE experience is simple out of a lack of insight into its design.

SPORE was an accident, is what I’ve concluded after a great deal of thinking, playing and speculating. It was a very exotic road trip stop on the way to a bigger finale. Will Wright has been one of my heroes for a great many years and I’ve taken a great deal of time scrutinizing his game design pattern and determining how it functions. I have come to believe that SPORE is an excellent game in what it seeks to achieve. Where it faltered and did not receive notable victory was in accomplishing people’s expectations for it.

The following is my theory.

Will Wright has been working on SimEverything for a long while now. It’s a fairly well-known fact that Will Wright wants to encompass the universe in a large simulation tool and allow players to possess and manipulate a tiny, yet massively complex system of simulacra that mimic every fathomable, fashionable part of the Earth.

During this time, he developed this evolutionary system that he believed would be a part of SimEverything.

He did not make SimEverything.

I can’t say how many people I’ve spoken to who express their frustration at SPORE for not being SimEverything. I partly blame EA/Maxis’s advertising campaign for over-hyping the game and trying to have too much of a hand in development (that we will touch on later), but I think a great deal of the issue was people’s misinterpretation of what Will Wright meant when he changed the name of his project from SimEverything to SPORE. In an interview, years ago, I recall him saying something along the lines of “I wanted to call it SimEverything.” I’ve had a hunch for a while now that in Will-Wright-Speak this means “I wanted to make SimEverything, but what I got was SPORE instead.” I knew, from the moment SPORE‘s name was announced, that I was not going to be playing SimEverything. But that was okay. I was okay with that. I just wanted to see what this was about.

Anyone who knows Will Wright as more than just “that game developer that made SimCity and The Sims” knows there is much more to Will than meets the eye (he is a robot in disguise). I recall an extensive and fascinating TED talk (and here it is for your viewing pleasure) where Will stood at the front of the room (while wearing an inexplicable gear on the cast on his arm) and explained SPORE, as he had many times before, and then went beyond SPORE and spoke in depth about his motivations behind the game, his experience in Montessori school that led him to find an interest in toys that teach valuable lessons and ideas through play and his own attempt to build a kind of toy that could enable the same spark of understanding and learning.

To sum it all up, my theory? SPORE is not SimEverything. It is a game meant to explore and educate on principles and theories behind the evolutionary process.

spore (n) a small, usually single-celled asexual reproductive body produced by many nonflowering plants and fungi and some bacteria.

The name somewhat gives it away, in a sense. Will Wright is rather predictable when it comes to nomenclature. He names things for what they are – SimCity was the simulation of a city, SimAnt the emulation of an ant colony. SPORE as a name does not give the impression of being a game about terraforming planets and the intricate struggles of civilizations. Oddly enough, the all-caps plays into it well: SPORE is a game that begins with a miniscule cell which then grows to gargantuan proportions. First, it’s a spore, then it’s a Spore, then it’s a SPORE - first a cell, then a creature, then a civilization. Eventually, the irony of the title speaks for itself – the smallest thing in the organic realm earns the all-importance of all-caps. Now, let’s continue onto more concrete evidence and less philosophical theorizing that nobody believes anyway.

The magic of SPORE theme lies in its presentation and game design. While naysayers argue that SPORE lacks the depth and complexity of so many other games it “emulates”, I believe these “copycat stages” are simplistic because they’re leading the player memetically through a select few key elements in order to bring a larger point into perspective. And that point is the following: as the player builds and evolves their creature from very early on, they’ll find certain traits and attributes earned from body parts and accessories will not help them continue the level they’re playing on. It may be as simple as “I need more firepower”, leading the player to sacrifice a couple of pretty feathers on their creature’s forehead in order to give them a wicked, curved beak. The point is, necessary traits for survival are lost and necessary traits are enhanced to guarantee survival. This is the very core principle of Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest.

While yes, essentially a lot of the basics of evolution are somewhat sidestepped in SPORE such as common ancestry, several generations of dominant and recessive genes, etc. etc. the point is that SPORE still ultimately communicates that important idea behind natural selection, where something ends up determining when parts and features “work” and when they “don’t work”.

If the core of the game had been better communicated, this simplicity could have been overlooked. The point of SPORE is that it is not another Civilization game, it is an evolution game.

Unfortunately, in order for the game to adhere more appropriately to a new target market, as per requested by EA (my theory, at least) much of the game’s reliance on evolution to determine ability to survive was dumbed down to a points addition system, where having enough points in one of three basic “skills” (fighting, trading, charming) would allow you to survive by relying on that “skill”. This was a theme followed through the whole game, but was unfortunately so underenforced in order to allow players freedom that it didn’t end up appearing to be a strong mechanic. For a wider target market, however, it worked just right to keep the game accessible.

SPORE‘s original overtones of scientific simulation were, at some point and for some reason, abandoned in favor or a more toony, playful presentation where the end path to any and all creature evolutions is an intelligent civilization with fairly universal social customs and engineering developments (essentially they all have tanks, planes and boats, regardless of whether they’re a race of flying reptilians or plant fish). This is clearly not an accurate representation of how evolution actually works, not to mention that giving the player complete freedom to build their creature however they like strangely has a kind of Creationist conext behind it. SPORE‘s dev team referred to their approach towards explaining evolution as a “creativolution” presentation. Indeed, even from watching the television ad for SPORE, one would get the feeling that the game steers players into believing a Creationist approach to the way the universe was created.

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How does this tie into my theory about SPORE‘s design purposes, then?

The intermarriage between Creationism and Evolution that’s presented by SPORE results in being both another market move by attempting to avoid the flak from insane individuals who want to force their religion into you and your Subway Sandwich and also being a clever point about the existence of a common ground between religion and evolution. After all, as my mother once said (and I can’t believe I’m quoting my mother in reference to a video game controversy) “God works in mysterious ways – who’s to say God didn’t intend for us all to eventually evolve into what we are now?” Hence, another nick in Will Wright’s initial plans, made for the sake of audience.

SPORE did have its flaws that cannot be ignored, perhaps most notably that the endgame is so difficult to get to that most people didn’t even know it was there (not to mention that the godforsaken Grox are the most irritating, unforgiving and relentless enemy I have ever faced). To be fair, Will has never been one for endgame scenarios, and SPORE reflects that, not really giving you a clear indicator of what it expects from you.  The Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues that came packaged with SPORE‘s installation did not help matters, bringing outrage from the community as EA and Maxis struggled to save their game from scurvy-ridden pirates.

In the end, SPORE failed where it should have succeeded – the ideas behind it were all right, but I believe much of Will’s original vision had to be scrapped in order to avoid controversy after controversy that would have plagued the game had they released what he intended. And where were the land missions? Where were the plant design suites for players? Put in expansion packs for later release, in order to squeeze a couple of more cents out of the franchise before it fizzled out.

Several aspects of the unfortunate nature of today’s politically correct world, the overwhelming pirate culture and simply a few ill-placed choices on the accessibility of the game for a wider target market all contributed to SPORE not being the commercial success it could have, should have been.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s keep our seats and wait for SimEverything. Will tried, but he is, after all, like us…

…a robot in disguise.

tl;dr: You jerk, read my critique.

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In other news, I was reading the blog for Braid (which I can only assume must be written by Jonathan Blow) when I came across this post, which pointed me to a sound byte of two annoyingly-voiced teenagers griping and a Youtube video of David Lynch being David Lynch (beware explicit language).

No disrespect to either Jonathan Blow or David Lynch, but I was really rather disgusted by their obstinacy.

Here’s what I had to say–and say it I did on the blog post comments.

I think it’s absurd to believe in-game advertising cannot be beneficial and should be removed entirely. Developing a game is expensive. Making a game is expensive. You have to pay people, you have to pay budget costs, you have to pay engines, you have to pay publishers and production costs, you have to pay shipping and distribution. And in the end, how much does your game sell for? Sixty bucks. Fifty. Forty. Ten. Then it’s pirated. Sold as Used in Gamestop. Less money made by the developer. Revenue lost. No profits. Studio closes down. Endgame.

Any money a game can make before it’s actually shipped that is not a debt can be incredibly beneficial for the developer, allowing them to produce more of the same quality work they produced with that first “added” game. As long as the ads are not blatant and a hindrance to gameplay, I can’t really complain. Yes, they seem to destroy the essence of a game at times. But would you rather have something pure or would you rather see your favorite studio shut its doors permanently? I want to see my game developer favorites stay afloat.

You can’t escape advertising. You can’t ban it. It’s everywhere. On your clothes. On your car. On the street. Billboards, shop signs, logos. TV shows, radio programs, music and jingles. Your mom’s stories. Your best friend’s opinion on what game you should play. It’s an AD. It’s selling the qualities of a work in order to obtain the exchange of money. Going out and posting about a game on a forum–it’s an AD. News about a revolutionary game called Braid–it’s a fucking AD.

You NEED ads. You need to advertise. Sometimes games would never see the numbers they raked in without ads, have you thought of that? Some extremely beneficial TV shows like 60 minutes get an absurd amount of revenue from ads.

If the main character in a game is drinking from a Coke can, are you seriously going to complain?

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Weekly I’ll check my news to see what’s been uploaded to the PSN Store. I’ll download most any little demo that comes out–Sam and Max, World in Conflict; you name it, I want to try the beta. I love to be able to see how the mechanics of a game work, and what the premise and definition behind it are before the studio actually gets around to releasing it.

The trouble is, most companies do still see it as an advertising tactic in order to get people excited and buy the product. The only time you hear the word “testing” related to demos is when it’s been grafted to the words “beta” or “alpha”. Which is fine, I suppose–but why don’t we see much beta and alpha on consoles, now that we have such intricate systems as 24Connect, XBLive and PSN? We’re seeing some examples–Playstation Home has had a private beta for a while, though we’ve still been waiting on the public one. I’m sure there’s other games that are being considered for alpha and beta release. But I want to see more of it–demos shouldn’t just be a “sneak preview” factor, but an experiment to see how the gaming community reacts to the dynamics being presented to them. Look at the Burnout Paradise example, and the different things EA tried (including amping the online multiplayer–for a demo of a game, of all things).

There should be more attempts to exploit the tool provided by releasing demos–or beta tests, if you want–and seeing the public’s response to the premise and mechanics.

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