BREAKING NEWS: Will Wright announces NEW game!!!!

[guuz 15]

Will Wright wows GDC with new Sim
Will Wright gives a sneak preview of his upcoming game Spore, delighting those present.

SAN FRANCISCO--On the final day of the Game Developers Conference, Will Wright's Future of Content presentation contained a special treat for the bursting-beyond-capacity audience.

The treat was an extended demonstration of his next game, called Spore--a sim that allows the players to control life on all conceivable scales--an emergent and beautiful simulation game that ranges from the cellular level all the way to the galactic level.

The game allows the player to begin with developing a creature as a cellular entity and eventually creating a creature with more sophisticated brain functions, which will change the nature of the game to a more RTS-type game (he cited a particular favorite of his, Populous), where players will control herds of creatures. Once you upgrade the hut around which the creatures centralize, the game changes into what he called a simple version of SimCity where the player manages technology and interacts with other cities that have sprung up around the world.

He demonstrated how the player can eventually purchase a UFO to travel between planets--and eventually star systems--to populate, conquer, or simply observe. Particularly impressive was the game's emergent gameplay and seemingly infinite possibilities for playing creatively--two qualities that define Will Wright's celebrity status in game design.

His demonstration of Spore was framed through a design lens, as is the custom at GDC. The hub of the game, he asserted, was its compression. Since all the creature meshes, textures, animations, and behaviors are procedural (based on a set of algorithmic rules), this allows for an enormous quantity of player-created content, which he emphasized as another key element of the game's design that he has always fought for--the encouragement (in Spore's case, perhaps the necessity) of player creativity.

More so than in other games, he explained, he wanted to create a sense of both ownership (of the unique creatures and civilizations the player creates) as well as mastery (over the interface, which becomes more complex as the game's scale increases). The goal is to give the player simple tools to make them feel like they have tremendous leverage on the nature of the game itself. The game, then, becomes what he called a creative amplifier for what the player has done.

Because of the compressed nature of the content, he went on, it allows for the generation of enormous content libraries. Moreover, the small content is easily portable. Players can interact with creatures, buildings, societies, planets, and star systems that other players have created.

Wright's presentation indicated that the passion that went into the design of Spore spoke to particularly inspirational television shows and toys from his childhood: Star Trek, Care Bears, War of the Worlds, Kid Pix, Pac-Man, Legos, and erector sets, to name only a few. Seemingly, Spore's emergent editors are the embodiment of the toys, and the content and gameplay the embodiment of the films. It made it seem almost as if he had been waiting his whole life to design this game.

When he fantasized about Spore years ago, Wright admitted, My own imagination was my biggest bottleneck. He encouraged designers with ideas for games that are far outside the box not to give up on those ideas, but instead to cultivate them and revisit them later, when the time, the team, and the technology might be right. The demonstration of the stellar zoo that is Spore might have given hope to a new generation of game designers.

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[Duke87 1,070]

Sounds... very... boring.....

Look, I like SimCity, but it's not the Sim aspect of it that apeals. it's that you're virtually building cities, which is cool. I really have no interest in building animals. if Will Wright wants to sell me another game, I recommend a new version of SimTower, or a new Streets of Simcity. Hell, maybe even a sequel to Marble Drop! But not this.....

[Djohaal 121]

Looks like they robbed my idea of sorts... Back in july I wrote a whole bunch of ideas for a sim galaxy thing where you would do basically that, control a whole galaxy from the planet and life level... Yet will's concept seems a bit more wide, let's see how nice it'll get, and how laggy...
Actually it seems interesting, my idea for a game would become reallity, even if I didn't even talk to them, lol

[Equinox 1,218]

This is sweet!  It's like a kickass version of SimEarth! 

[DuskTrooper 316]

Interesting...
BUT...I'm still a SC person. I really hope they have some info on SC5 coming up.

[MrCinatit 30]

this sounds like quite an exciting idea - and quite a revolutionary one.

wondering exactly how much freedom we will have in creating these little creatures - in other words, their looks, their ideology, the types of environment they can live in, etc. i'm looking forward to hearing a lot more about this.

[Superstar 69]

Sounds really interesting, I'll be keeping my eyes open

[Djohaal 121]

If my memory is right, this was a meeting of several game developers, where they were demonstrating ideas for the next genaration gaming... Will and Peter Molyneux (Populous's and black and white's creator) seem to have adopted the same freeform filosophy (sp?), yet my eggs are in Peter's basket, the attention lionhead gives to detail in their games (BNW, Fable, BNW2) is quite superior than maxis's... Not to mention they are free from the EA plauge (EA is only publishing the game, lionhead studios is independant)

[ert90 8]

Sounds . . . interesting.

I'll wait for more info to make my official judgement.

[JohnB 66]

Sounds very interesting. I actually like this idea a lot.  Do they have any screenshots of it yet?

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

I'll need some more information, but the concept is pretty cool.

I hope I can create a super-intelligent species of llamas that travel across galaxies.

[frogface 354]

sounds alright, would have prefered an SC5 or expansion pack but I guess you cant really expect him to work on the same game for this long, hes got to move onto new ideas. lets just hope this isnt dragged on as long as the sims series  

[your_adress_here 11]

This sounds...interesting...

[DaMaster_architect 0]

whoa! this sounds cool! maybe th

[the_new_simman 5]

This does sound cool. I guess. I will have to wait and see as more screenshots and information come out about this game before I judge it though.

Hopefully SC5 will be announced at E3! Hopefully...

[Djohaal 121]

A bigger review can be found here

[mayormommy 8]

I have to say I was lukewarm on this when I read the first article guuz posted , but after hearing more details from J.O.'s link I think it's sounds great. And maybe Will Wright can take what's he's learned about these smaller data files and use it to make SC5 better!

[Arphaxad Locus 0]

This has to be a thousand times better than Sim City 5.
Think about it.
It's Sim Earth 2, plus Sim Life 2, PLUS Sim City 5, plus the whole controlling life on the intergalactic level thing, plus on the cellular level, all with hopefully good graphics.
Whooo boy, can't wait until E3 when more information will be revealed...

edit: plus sim mars for that matter

[The Evil Octopus Man 25]

This sounds stupid.  I sure as hell hope that this isn't SimCity 5.

[guuz 15]

pictures!!!!

[ADG 0]

Make sure to read this:

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html


It's not the game itself that is interesting, but the engine behind the game sounds awsome if it's true what he says

Could probably become useable in many other games in the future

[ADG 0]

But it does sound like they stole my 1-2 year old idea (or at least parts of it) about being able to create life and let it 'evolve', though my idea is more deep while their idea is more wide

This game doesn't seem to be much useable for MP, while my game works nice in MP

[LightWarriorK 4]

It's not that new of a game concept....

There was an old Super Nintendo game (side-scroller, mostly action) called E.V.O.: The Search for Eden (I think that's right), where you played an organism that went around living, eating, and fighting and earning evolution points until you evolved a new feature.  While an innovative concept, it wasn't that fun and I didn't play long enough to see how high it could go.  I assume you could evolve into humans and even beyond.

 

I'm guessing that Spore will be better..... but like a lot of other innovative items coming in the near future, I'm reserving judgement until I get more information.  (The only exception to this is the new GCN Zelda game!)

 

Anyways, I'll be keeping an eye on Spore

[Djohaal 121]

Date: 3/15/2005 3:42:04 AM
Author: The Evil Octopus Man
This sounds stupid. I sure as hell hope that this isn't SimCity 5.

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Are you illiterate?

The pics look awesome, yet the graphics are a bit kiddish, I hope that we can also define the archteture of our people... (what Is probably what will happen)
Lightwarrior: Yes, I used to spend hours in that game... The most interesting part is that you are able to save your prime designs and return to see them later... But mainly, the game's flexibility was awesome, I remember evolving a horned turtle, a shark-jawed soft skinned fish and etc... the combinations were infinite... You can even become human, but that's not mandatory to finish the game (yet the human deleivers craploads of firepower)

[confused04 14]

To the dismay of most people here....

 

I CAN'T WAIT!!!! *Spasm* *convulse* *foam*

 

This has EVERYTHING I am interested in, ranging from Biology/Evolution, to Architecture to Sci-Fi and the Civilization like stuff.  I would pay premium $$$ for this game.  Whats better... it will run so much more smoothly since many of the processes have been confined to simple equations... thus to my knowledge, better performance.  Imagine.... a game where you don't have to worry about humongous lag times or low frame rates (for those who can't afford top of the line computers).

 

[The Evil Octopus Man 25]

Date: 3/15/2005 10:55:07 AM
Author: J.O.

Date: 3/15/2005 3:42:04 AM

Author: The Evil Octopus Man

This sounds stupid. I sure as hell hope that this isn't SimCity 5.

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Are you illiterate?

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Yes I am, so what?

Am I not allowed to say that I think this game is a really dumb idea and that I hope this isn't/doesn't take the place of SimCity 5?

[the_new_simman 5]

As I said in my earlier post, I will wait to see some of the graphics and more interviews about the game before I judge it. But, after reading GameSpy's interview I must say that Spore seems like it will have a very interesting and deeply involved gameplay.

[atomische 1]

So, we can create protozoa that evolve into Care Bears who become evil galactic overlords?

Yay!

[AJHAINC 0]

From what I've read and seen of this Spore I don't think its right to compare it to SimCity. This game is on a HUGE, VAST scale compared to Simcity. Don't get me wrong, Simcity is still a great game and should be continued but I highly doubt that this game is the replacement of Simcity. The Gamespy article says that you will be able to customize the architecture in the game to fit whatever you want. From what I read, the whole basic premise of the game is for the user to have complete control over what is created. It looks very, very interesting.

Click this link to go to the Gamespy Article
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html

[Djohaal 121]

Hmm, on the first page of the gamespy review I think we found what happened with our simcity maxoids...
I just read it all, and Spore is not another godgame game... it is The Game (at least in my opinion)... According to that we can truly play on every degree of the game... I'm looking forward to that UFO, lol... We can think of ourselves as helpers on the inspiration for Spore's technology, since simcity has grown into what it is due to the massive ammount of custom content simtropolis and other sites created... Will probably is captalizing this idea, but I hope that the race exchange they are planning won't get as messy as simcity.com's exchange