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Spore Producer: 'It Was Hard To Say, 'This Is Good Enough!'
by Chris Remo
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September 8, 2008
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Yesterday saw the release of Spore, Will Wright's long-in-development evolution sim first revealed during GDC 2005. An ambitious project, it has seen considerable investment by publisher Electronic Arts -- and great commercial success is expected of it.
But despite the fact that the game's development was something of an unknown quantity, hinging on uncommon procedural, dynamic systems, senior producer Morgan Roarty tells Gamasutra the game is "pretty close" to Will Wright's original vision, even if actually getting it out the door required the team to eventually say, "This is good enough!"
"I think if you actually go back and look at the GDC '05 [demo], we're not that far off," Roarty says. He points out that some early elements that were displayed, such as an underwater stage, ended up being cut from the final game. Other features, such as the Sporepedia in-game content catalog, were conceived later. "We're talking about maybe doing a side by side montage" of the original demo and the shipping product, he notes.
Despite the fairly on-target final result, the team had to take a considerably different path than is typical within the traditionally deadline-driven publisher. "EA's classical process is you do a technical design where you figure out all the parts you gotta build, figure out how much rough time it's gonna take," he explains. "Spore was always challenging, because there was always one more thing, and it was just easy to fill in and add. [It was] this iterative process as we went."
That "one more thing" mentality meant that, at a certain point, the team had to recognize that development could not continue indefinitely. "EA's been very patient with the game," Roarty says. "As strange as it might sound, it definitely is a game that could continue. If there wasn't a time we needed to ship it, we could continue to make it. ...It was hard to say, 'No no no, that's it! We gotta stop! This is good enough!"
One of the challenges during the development process, which was notoriously extended, was finding team members who were actually capable of working within the demands of Spore's unusual structure, which relies on user-generated content. "A procedural animator doesn't exist in the EA knowledge [base]," Roarty laughs. "Traditional animators are like, 'What? I don't get to see what I'm animating? I have to animate in this weird tool? Animate hypothetically?'"
That meant that team growth was less explosive than one might expect -- it ended up with a total of 92 developers, 14 of whom are testers. "The outside perception is that we're this huge team working on it for three years," Roarty says. "It started really small, and we were careful where we added. It was a good team, really passionate."
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see: http://www.amazon.com/review/RK9RKIUMYF757/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RK9RKIUMYF757
Aparts from that I think the 3 times activation is a bad thing, Steam shows a better way.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/08/1613250
@Jon Lee: I also will probably not bat an eye at this until a less DRM version comes along, but I'm not holding my breath. Even Mass Effect when it was released through Steam wasn't free from SecuRom. Actually, for the most part I only care about the creature creator; I hear the actual gameplay is far to basic for most gamers (or at least those used to Civilization like me).
Afterall, won't the prospect of not being able to play this game 5 years down the road drive a number of potential purchasers of this game to pirate it to avoid such restrictions? And how will this stop people who enjoy cracking encryption from putting in just a little bit more effort so that all the usual suspects can just pirate the game as usual?
The whole "DRM doesn't stop piracy, so don't use it" argument is flawed. It's not designed to stop piracy, only to discourage it. If you leave your car unlocked you stand a much greater chance of something being stolen, but that doesn't mean that chance is gone if you lock it, it is only reduced. If they didn't implement any kind of DRM, why, I would think that they WANTED me to share it with everyone.
So if you want to complain about the DRM, please bring legitimate, first-hand experiences to the table, instead of more of the same juvenile crap that I find all too often on Amazon.com and elsewhere.
Back on the topic, I haven't had the time to try the game, but one of my friends did and he loved it. Not too much strategy involved, but he liked exploring different ways to evolve his species. No comments on the DRM.
Personally, I don't think I'll like the game that much based on game reviews I've read. I've also seen rumors that the game installs a "hack" onto your computer. Now, I know ways to find and get rid of these "hacks" but I don't think it's a very equitable way to do things. Thus, I don't see myself buying it, barring immense changes to the game or immense peer pressure.
I do find it entertaining (and disappointing) that people are discussing the DRM rather than the game itself. However, your own comments are somewhat contradictory.
I don't think the issue with DRM is the concept: after all, loss of sales due to piracy is a legitimate concern. The issue is the way in which this DRM is implemented.
It's akin to the way legitimate DVDs are often crammed with advisory warnings, anti-piracy warnings and commercial adverts, none of which can be skipped. The legitimate purchaser is therefore effectively penalised for buying the DVD, while someone watching the illegal copy can start watching the movie straight away.
Game DRM often takes the form of system-level hooks into your computer, and/or the reporting of information back to the company. This has three aspects:
1) You don't have any control over the DRM's functionality - or how it impacts your other applications. Starforce is infamous for breaking other applications such as Daemon Tools and it's also been implicated in causing CD-writing issues, thanks to the way it hooks into the drivers
2) You have no control or visibility of the information being submitted back to the company
3) DRM software will often refuse to operate if it detects the presence of software believed to be potential piracy vectors. Daemon Tools is one such example - personally, I generally use it to mount Linux disk images when experimenting with OS virtualisation, though I've also (possibly ironically) used it to mount stuff like the ISO images of Command and Conquer which EA gave away for free.
4) You often have no way to remove the DRM software once it's installed, even if the game is removed.
I.e. the very "hack" you've noted is the same DRM issue as everyone else is complaining about!
Back to the game: time will tell if it's any good or not - at least once the shiny factor has worn off. Ars Technica had a good review, where the conclusion is that the balance for some areas need tweaking, and some of the elements look to have been deliberately truncated to allow for future expansion packs...
In some cases the DRM is the only cause a game doesn't work, for example Escape from Butcherbay doesn't work in Vista because of the DRM, install a "fixed" executable and you'll be able to play the game without any issues.
DRM is a problem when it gets in people's way to enjoy the game they "bought". There are quite some DRM systems people tollerate, for example Steam or GameTap. They don't get in the way (much), so people tollerate it. I still don't like those system (not really fond of some party being able to kill my whole game collection with a single flip of a switch).
But in the end DRM doesn't solve the problem, it only creates new problems.
But who knows, content creation sometimes is nice...
But then comes DRM: No, I will not play spore certainly now that I discovered that it has DRM, I hate DRM, it fucks my system, and I do have pirated games that I have pirated just because the legal version has some sort of DRM annoying thing (in fact that particular game is Mass Effect, I installed a legal borrowed copy and my computer got unstable and get to crash, then I got a pirated and instaled it, and I am happy with it)