Posts Tagged ‘spore’
Will Wright’s latest studio working on 3 unannounced projects
In early April we let you know that Will Wright, the guy behind The Sims, Spore and co-founder of Maxis, would be departing the studio he helped build to focus on his newest studio Stupid Fun Club. At the time we had no idea exactly what the studio would work on first and not much has changed since. Although today we now at least know that Stupid Fun Club is working on something.
Mr. Wright himself recently sat down with VentureBeat to let us know that Stupid Fun Club is working on three separate projects which could come to life in “six months to a year”. He elaborated by saying that these projects range from the internet to toys but didn’t say much further.
So, within the next 6-12 months we should be seeing more of Stupid Fun Club.
Chris Hecker beings work on SpyParty
It’s no secret that EA/Maxis’ Spore was a hit with some of the game’s success being attributed to Maxi developer Chris Hecker.
Unfortunately, Maxis recently let Hecker in an effort to downsize the company but that hasn’t stopped him from quickly moving onto a new project which he calls SpyParty. In this game, there will be 2 players, the Spy and the Sniper. The Spy’s job is to move around the party undetected while completely various objectives while the Sniper’s job is to find the Spy and take him out.
Unfortunately, there is no word on when this game will his store shelves, if ever, but we are definitely anticipating any further information regarding SpyParty.
via bigdownload
Ubisoft to go head-to-head with piracy this year
Piracy has been an issue for a long time. Even before Napster was made mainstream people were recording songs off the radio and selling bootleg copies. Well, the game industry is no different and one company in particular has been hurtin’ especially bad; Ubisoft.
It seems that the publisher is so fed up with piracy that they have plans to combat the issue with their own firepower. Yves Guillemot, head of Ubisoft, speaks of the piracy problem:
“Altogether on console, the piracy is low. On the PC the piracy is quite a lot. We are working on a tool that would allow us to decrease that on the PC starting next year and probably one game this year.”
So what do they have cookin’ over at Ubisoft? Let’s hope they aren’t getting ideas from EA as we saw how well that was recieved with Spore.
Spore Hero Arena debut trailer
Spore patch 5 now live, asymmetry available
The new Spore patch is now live, and comes with a number of changes, including asymmetry being implemented into the game. If you already have Spore, you just need to launch the game and the software should patch.
Don’t forget that you need the EA Download Manager to make the patch possible, though. Here’s the full changelog:
Spore Improvements:
- Asymmetry is now available for creatures! Details on new Asymmetry features for Creatures and Vehicles can be found here.
- This patch fixes several crashes in Space Game.
- Many tuning improvements to Space Game, including reduced disaster rates at all levels of difficulty, adjustments to Hard Mode, increased limits on concurrent trade routes, as well as changes to tool unlocks for the Knights.
- Creator Lineage appears correctly for all creation types shared after this patch is installed.
- Cheat is included that permits Creators to export creatures in Collada format for use in Maya. Creators must acknowledge and accept a Tools EULA to perform this operation. An additional cheat has been provided to enable highest quality textures to appear on vehicles, where it is supported by user hardware.
- Fixed a problem where creations would go missing if a user quits the game in any way while downloads are in progress.
- Fixed a bug where achievements were disappearing.
- Fixed a bug where some Sporepedia cards had corrupted backgrounds.
- Fixed a problem in Space where some Grox planets were unreachable.
- YouTube movies now publish as public
Galatic Adventure Improvements:
- This patch must be installed again after installing Galactic Adventures, even if you have installed this patch previously.
- You can now place the avatar, NPCs, and handheld objects on top of air, land, and sea vehicles in the Adventure Creator. Get more info here.
- Improvements are made to the Adventure Creator, including right-click camera behavior, and User Interface enhancements.
- In EP1 open gates were not working correctly when they were disguised
- Some customer-reported crashes in Galactic Adventures have been fixed.
Read (Spore)
EA announces Spore Hero, Spore Hero Arena
No, EA isn’t teaming up with Activision to merge Spore with Guitar Hero but they are releasing a special edition of the game for the Wii and Nintendo DS entitled Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena.
According to Kotaku both games will focus on the Creature mode of the original Spore where players will create their own creature and take them on all sorts of adventures, battling other creatures and traveling the galaxy:
“When Maxis first considered bringing Spore to console players, the Nintendo platforms jumped out as a perfect fit. Whether it is the stylus-driven action of the Nintendo DS or playful controllers of the Wii, the massive Nintendo audience is the ideal home for Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena,” said Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis. “Nintendo fans will love the humor, ability to create their own Hero, fun game play and immersive storylines we’re creating for these two games.”
Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena are due out for the Wii and Nintendo DS sometime this fall.
More than 100 million Spore creations created
EA has recently announced that there have been over 100 million created using the Spore Creature Creator to date which includes creatures, buildings, and vehicles.
Also included in the press release was the announcement that the 100 millionth creator will receive a NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT video card, Spore and the Galactic Adventures expansion pack.
Upon reading this announcement I took the time to flip through EA’s Sporepedia and picked out some creations that caught my eye, included above.
Spore Galactic Adventures will hit store shelves on June 23rd for both PC and Mac.
Spore: Galactic Adventures details emerge
Remember Spore? The game that everyone thought was going to change the way we looked at the gaming industry in general? Yeah, well EA has finally taken the time to reveal some details regarding the game’s Galactic Adventures expansion that was first announced back in January.
In Galactic Adventure players will take the rank of Space Captain as they adventure the galaxy (ironic huh?) unlocking and collecting 30 new “game-changing items and accessories”.
And what’s a game without some sort of achievements, right? Players will be given a Creature Card, that showcases their ranking and accomplishments.
Yep, that’s all we have to go by for now, no release date or pricing.
Read (Examiner)
Spore API Released
To further spread the joys of Spore, developer EA Maxis has released the data and documentation that will allow users to create web applications that make use of user-created content from the game.
The API has already seen quite a few projects being created, including a fun aquarium using creatures from the game, embeddable Flash programs that display statistics and more.
To make the release of the API that much more awesome, Maxis is running a contest where it will award three application designers with various prizes.
Spore Galactic Adventures Announced
Electronic Arts today confirmed that the first full expansion to Sporewill be dubbed Galactic Adventures. Already revealed by online retailers, no details were offered on the space-centered add-on, though a rough release window of Spring 2009 was noted. Retailers had previously pegged the game for release in March.
The publisher is expected to reveal more information on the add-on, as well as other Spore titles, in an upcoming 2009 Spore lineupevent later this month.
Spore #1 Most Pirated Title
While many were complaining about the rather harsh DRM methods implemented to keep people from pirating Spore, somewhere near two million people were doing just that. According to download data collected from peer-to-peer downloading program BitTorrent, Spore was downloaded over 1,700,000 times this year.
Sadly for Maxis not only do the number of pirated downloads approach the total number of copies sold (over two million), The Sims 2 is second on the list, Unfortunately many surmise that the vast amount of Spore piracy is due to the DRM they instituted on the extremely anticipated game.
While many question the future of PC gaming given the extremely high rates of piracy for these and other games, the continued success of World of Warcraft and other MMOs shows that the future of PC gaming is likely in that genre, given that the constant online access includes whatever DRM measures are necessary.
EA Slapped With Two More DRM Lawsuits
The DRM saga continues, as Electronic Arts has been slapped with two more lawsuits related to its use of SecuROM DRM technology, this time in relation to The Sims 2 Bon Voyage and Spore Creature Creator.
One Richard Eldridge of Pennsylvania is suing the publisher over undisclosed installation of the DRM software after installing a demo version of Spore Creator Creator. Here’s a bit from his suit:
The inclusion of undisclosed, secretly installed DRM protection measures with a program that was freely distributed constitutes a major violation of computer owners’ absolute right to control what does and what does not get loaded onto their computers, and how their computers shall be used…
The other suit, filed by Dianna Cortez of Missouri, cites EA for “immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous” conduct for installing the DRM which caused problems on the user’s computer.
Hopefully, this will lead to nonsense-DRM being phased out, making place for smarter software and maybe a DRM-less future.
Obama, Palin in Spore
Seeing as how today is election day in the US, Maxis and EA jointly announced that Barack Obama and Sarah Palin will make appearances in Spore.
The presidential candidates (and their ever-lovable sidekicks) will appear in Spore as spaceships. Players can get the politician-shaped spaceships in their game by subscribing to the Election 08 Sporecast.
"Who knows, you just might see Obama firing ‘YesYouCannons’ around the galaxy, or witness firsthand John McCain being ‘mavericky,’" reads a note from EA.
Mercenaries 3 Coming
Following word that Obama and Palin are coming to Mercenaries 2 as playable characters, EA publishing COO John Peasants expressed hope in the franchise, revealed that “there will be a Mercenaries 3, and if I can have anything to do with it, there will be a Mercenaries 10.”
The sequel, which was not so well-received by the critics as the original, has sold 1.9 million copies since it hit stores. The franchise joins the growing list of titles that will get sequels, including Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge.
Peasants also expressed his belief in the Spore franchise, promising that both expansion packs and business models are coming for the evolution simulator.
Scientists Dismiss Spore
One of the things that Spore was designed to be is a fun way to learn science. Will Wright himself views 
games as great tools for teaching otherwise complicated ideas and concepts. While there were aesthetic changes to the game, as it was being developed to make it simpler, what wasn’t apparent was that the team at Maxis decided to cut out a lot of the scientific elements from the game as well. The game is so scientifically unrealistic that it is being criticized by a group of scientists for its inaccuracy. The team of scientist gave Spore a review from a scientific point of view, naturally, grading the game based on its scientific accuracy in each of the five stages, the conclusion being that Spore fails scientifically.
“The bottom line: In spite of its marketing, Spore clearly has little in common with science, especially evolution. That’s a pity, because with very minor tweaks, the game could live up to its promise. Gregory and Eldredge’s critique provides several good ideas, such as incurring a developmental cost for making radical body-plan changes. Another easy improvement would be to weave relevant science into the fabric of the existing game. In the game Civilization, for example, you learn a great deal about the history of ancient cultures through a series of pop-up mini-articles. When you stick a limb on your creature, wouldn’t it be nice to have an optional pop-up window that explains the real (and fascinating) science behind limb evolution?”
The group also concluded by saying that Spore could accomplish a great deal as a scientific teaching tool if it were tweaked through patches or expansion. Before Maxis does that, however, I’d like them to release a patch, or expansion, which gives Spore deeper game play.