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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Oh, you meant the prototype of the *main game* -- not that I know of.

[Cheater‽]

Will Wright wouldn't have had to deal with Maxis's decisions if he was INDIE.

[muku]

Will Wright wouldn't have had to deal with Maxis's decisions if he was INDIE.

Then again, he could never have made this game. Unless he's filthy rich (which he might be).

And here I was, thinking Chris Hecker was one of the good guys. Oh, how cruel it is to be deceived

[isaac]

This explanation of "Chris Hecker ruined the game" makes sense to me, having watched an interview with him where he basically straight out says that herbivores exist to be eaten by carnivores, which is why they used the flaccid dancing minigame. Which to me demonstrated a sheer lack of interest in the real behaviors of animals. So much lost potential for stealth and herd gameplay.

I guess they got freaked out by the fact that a serious sci-fi game would never ship as many units as the Sims, unless they got rid of all the serious sci-fi.

[FARTRON]

One day, in the future...

Spore: The Director's Cut

[Chris Whitman]

Yeah, I was really curious why Spore, with its incredibly long development time, was so... average.

I found it pretty amusing for a few hours of play -- because I'm a sucker for bright colours and moving objects, I guess -- but the gameplay was just so vacuous. It seemed like every single section could be beaten with a bit of mindless clicking around. Like a lot of modern games, I really got the impression that the choices I made didn't really matter.

The parts where you design creatures and buildings were by far the most fun, but none of your designs really had any impact on the game besides giving you some minor bonuses.

I often find it acceptable to have a few glaring errors in an otherwise excellent game. What I really can't stand is this trend of extremely polished, totally empty games. I guess that's what I get for trying to buy non-indie games?

[increpare]

Makes for mildly upsetting reading.  Why couldn't WW stand up for himself as the main designer though?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Supposedly Hecker got a lot of Maxis's higher-ups to agree with him. Besides, WW strikes me as an introvert, and they tend to be shy and not assertive enough.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Will Wright wouldn't have had to deal with Maxis's decisions if he was INDIE.

Then again, he could never have made this game. Unless he's filthy rich (which he might be).

And here I was, thinking Chris Hecker was one of the good guys. Oh, how cruel it is to be deceived

WW is actually quite rich through royalties from The Sims (which was the best-selling PC game of all time), rich enough to have opened his own hobbyist robotics laboratory, but not nearly rich enough to fund a major game all by himself. He could easily fund a lower-end game though, but he couldn't pay for the 100+ employees and four-year development time that Spore had.

[skaldicpoet9]

Interesting article on how Chris Heckler ruined Spore against the wishes of Will Wright. According to that there was a battle between Heckler's side (cute, casual) and Wright's (focus on the theme or idea of the game, like the Powers of 10 thing), and Wright lost.

Wow, that severely saddens me. I had the same thoughts as I like Cake when I first started playing Spore. It seems to me like they really just focused a lot on the ability to create and not enough on the actual gameplay. The separate gameplay modes seem rather paltry in comparison to the respective genres they represent. However, I think the game would probably be too cluttered if the other modes were allowed to get too unwieldy but I think that they could have squeezed a little more depth out of them though.

What I really can't stand is this trend of extremely polished, totally empty games.

You and me both. The emphasis that a lot of developers put on the icing is sickening. I'd rather play something that looks like shit smeared on a bathroom stall then have to play something that is like a slick looking sports car that doesn't have anything under the hood.

[joshg]

Haven't played Spore yet, but all this talk of how the Spore "science" team was directing the game reminds me very strongly of this:

The Perils of Bottom-Up Game Design

This is an old, old No Twinkie article from Ernest Adams about the crash-and-burn gameplay failure that was SimTower.  SimTower was essentially an elevator simulation that was shoehorned into a game, and it showed.

Now, it's possible that the science-heavy approach still could've made a fun game.  But I can also totally see this failing to come together as a coherent gameplay experience despite sticking to the science geek appeal they built up expectation for.

Full disclaimer: I am a friggin' science geek (quite possibly a science teacher in the near future) and would've loved to see this be both a highly fun and highly scientifically-accurate game.

[Melly]

More reminders as to why I won't work on any large game companies anywhere in the foreseeable future.

[Hajo]

This is an old, old No Twinkie article from Ernest Adams about the crash-and-burn gameplay failure that was SimTower.  SimTower was essentially an elevator simulation that was shoehorned into a game, and it showed.

It's maybe not been much more than an people generator and elevation simulator, but it did that rather well. "Failure" is a bit harsh. The design idea wasn't fully exploited, but the part that they did was quite well implemented.

[joshg]

This is an old, old No Twinkie article from Ernest Adams about the crash-and-burn gameplay failure that was SimTower.  SimTower was essentially an elevator simulation that was shoehorned into a game, and it showed.

It's maybe not been much more than an people generator and elevation simulator, but it did that rather well. "Failure" is a bit harsh. The design idea wasn't fully exploited, but the part that they did was quite well implemented.

Ok.  I was just speaking from second-hand experience anyway; I don't remember hearing a lot of great things about it, but I never got around to trying it.

I was more of a SimFarm / SimAnt / SimEarth-with-sentient-robots kind of guy at the time.  Dang, now I want to play SimFarm again ...