{"id":710,"date":"2014-11-17T15:03:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T21:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/?p=710"},"modified":"2014-11-17T15:03:14","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T21:03:14","slug":"how-spore-could-have-been-a-much-better-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/how-spore-could-have-been-a-much-better-game\/","title":{"rendered":"How Spore Could Have Been A Much Better Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Spore<\/em><\/strong>, by <a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Will_Wright_(game_designer)');\"  href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Will_Wright_(game_designer)\">Will Wright<\/a>, was a very disappointing game for many people. Hyped for <a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/downloads\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Sporebox.jpg');\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Sporebox.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-712\" src=\"http:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Sporebox.jpg\" alt=\"Sporebox\" width=\"256\" height=\"355\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Sporebox.jpg 256w, https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Sporebox-216x300.jpg 216w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 256px) 100vw, 256px\" \/><\/a>years, this god-game from a genius designer was supposed to be everything that previous sim\/playbox games were not. It was none of those things.<\/p>\n<p>I realized this morning what could have made this game so much better: rather than letting you control the design and evolution of a single species, which battles it out with neighboring species in tribal battles where extermination is rewarded (just like <em>Civilization<\/em> and countless other games), Wright should have gone the opposite way.<\/p>\n<p>What if, instead of following the usual path of playing one civ\/species, your job was to try to create the most diverse biological and ecological planet you could? It would be a fascinating balancing act, trying to introduce new species without eliminating the old ones. \u00a0You might get extra points for introducing a predator but make sure the predator doesn&#8217;t eliminate its food source too quickly, or both might die off&#8230; The number of interesting combinations could be nearly infinite, in contrast to the almost endless but essentially boring superficial\u00a0choices you have in <em>Spore<\/em> to customize your species&#8217; looks\u00a0(which\u00a0have almost no impact on gameplay).<\/p>\n<p>Of course Will Wright is probably most famous for <em>SimCity<\/em>, a truly excellent game even with its faults, but not many know he also made a game called <em>SimEarth,<\/em> which was very interesting but essentially a simulation that was difficult to interact with, in great deal because the game was too far ahead of its time. Maybe processing power is still not quite there to do a full simulation, but surely it&#8217;s hundreds or even thousands of times faster now as when SimEarth was around, taxing the 25Mhz 68040 processor of my Mac Quadra 630.<\/p>\n<p>I hope Will Wright plays <a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/www.bay12games.com\/dwarves\/');\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.bay12games.com\/dwarves\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Dwarf Fortress<\/em><\/a>, the most interesting sandbox world I&#8217;ve seen so far, and takes some inspiration from it, so that he can return to SimEarth and Spore and make a truly interesting biological\/evolutionary game with endless gameplay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spore, by Will Wright, was a very disappointing game for many people. Hyped for years, this god-game from a genius designer was supposed to be everything that previous sim\/playbox games were not. It was none of those things. I realized &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/how-spore-could-have-been-a-much-better-game\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juggleware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}