Ken’s Blog

I read this great blog entry by one of the guys behind Gal Civ II and Sins. I’ve always been annoyed by the different hoops that legitimate game consumers like me have to go through to play games that are technically geared towards me but wrapped in whatever the current mode du jour is on the DRM from.

Check it out here: http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming

While you’re at it, check out Penny Arcade’s latest series…brings back memories…

The basic jist of Brad’s blog: they don’t bother with DRM because they know their customers hate it and as long as they’re able to turn a profit on the games they make (which they do), they’re good to go. Piracy is never going away…the guys cracking your games are always going to be smarter than you because a lot of them come out of the engineer factories in Eastern Europe and China where they eat, sleep and shit code. Plus, they’ve got more incentive than you really have to get the crack done. Ego trumps cash flow any day.

It’s sort of like when you see those sports games in stadiums where people sit on rooftops and in parking structures to see the game without paying the $$ to get in the stadium where the franchises have set prices to rival movie theatres. Captive audiences pay the price but who’s fault is that?

Basic economic principles (borne out by centuries of historical evidence) is that lower prices net you larger sales volumes at, usually, slimmer profits. If you sold a game for $70 (nowadays, this isn’t unusual on the console side), you’ve set a barrier for a lot of people for whom $70 is several meals. So, you’ve got to ask yourself. Who are you selling to? Do you want the mass market to buy your game? Have you considered selling it for $30? You’re guaranteed, assuming the game’s good of course, an increase in sales with the lower price.

Here’s an idea…the next time you’re releasing a game, sell it on your online store for a discount during the first couple weeks…offer a 40% discount for those people who buy in the first few weeks. See how much more it sells. Assuming you’re not hampering the experiment with lacking marketing or just a bug ridden game, I’m sure you’ll see more purchases than you’d have seen just selling the game at retail prices.

kn

Thought I’d lighten the mood a bit. I got my copy of Spore (Galactic Edition, of course…anyone who knows me knows I love Special/Collector’s/Limited/etc editions even if the tchochkes are silly…sometimes though: GTA IV’s limited edition came in a safety deposit box…awesome).

What a game. Quick overview: you’re given a “limitless” galaxy to work with and have five phases of life/civilization: cell, creature, tribe, city, space. While there are similarities between tribe and city phases (with space including the city game to a limited extent), each phase plays out as essentially its own game. The interface is point and click for the most part but you can use the WASD keys to move around and some various shortcuts but most of the time, you’ll likely be left- or right-clicking.

Once you’ve successfully completed a phase, you can start a new game later at that phase, skipping previous phases if you want. So, if you really like the city and space phases, you can just start there.

From a pure gameplay perspective, each individual phase is fun but I can’t help but feel the gameplay is limited. I understand that the whole goal is to advance you creature/race to the next phase and you can linger in a phase without advancing if you want. But, the things you can do in each phase will always be limited enough that you won’t want to.

For instance, at the tribe phase, there are nine structures you can build (corresponding to three structures per behavior category: weapons buildings for aggro, music buildings for social, and food buildings–like a fishing hook building for fishing–for gathering/economic). You get six or seven (can’t remember) slots in your village so you’ve got to pick and choose what you want. This combined with a cap of maybe 12-14 on the number of villagers you can have means this is the sampler platter for an Age of Empires-type game.

Honestly, I can’t say it’s all bad since I’m sure they (Maxis) wrestled with scope and how much playtime to allow in each phase before you really should move on.

Despite this, though, the game is fun and is really easy to pick up and get going. This is definitely a game that kids and families even could have some fun with. I remember hearing Wil Wright talk about how he wanted this to be all about freedom and the ability to play how you want to play. I think he really hit the nail on the head with this one. You can be an aggro/militaristic race or you can be a social/religious race. And, the choices you make early on in the evolution of your species will impact your race’s direction in later phases.

Of course, you have to talk about the creature creator/vehicle and building customizer. This is a very intuitive tool and it’s really fun playing around with the various things you can attach to a creature or object. On the creature side, you can unlock items various ways in the early phases (killing a creature and consuming its DNA, accomplishing goals, etc.). Counting the slots available, the possible permutations for any creature is staggering: for each of the six body parts, there are something like 24 parts. There are literally millions of ways you can create a creature.

Via Spore.com, you can subscribe to Sporecasts which basically mean your Spore game sessions will pull from other people’s published pools of creatures (by default, you’re subscribed to Maxis’ Sporecast for the creatures in the game). This is a really great feature which I could see being used in other types of games (imagine being able to subscribe to a cast of characters for a boxing/fighting game or modded creatures for an RPG or FPS).

All in all, is this worth the purchase? Definitely, if you’re into sim games and such, you’ll have a great time. Is the Galactic Edition worthwhile? Only if you’re a fan. It comes with an art book and a DVD with the National Geographic documentary that recently aired, actually, on cable. The hard case is interesting and keeps everything together but unless you’re a nut like me, you’ll probably do just fine with the regular edition.

I literally laughed out loud when I first saw another creature being teleported up into a UFO. Too funny. The humor mixed in with the openness of the game really make a game I love to play. Because of the myriad of creatures and styles of play, you can bet this has a lot of replayability. I wonder if I can conquer the galaxy as a blob with eyes and a mouth and that’s it…I’ll find out tonight!

Ken’s Rating: 90%

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Title: Spore (Galactic Edition reviewed)

Dev\Pub: Maxis \ Electronic Arts

Released: September 8, 2008

Web: http://www.spore.com

Platform: Windows and Mac (both on the same DVD!)

Chances of Success: 100%

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UPDATE: For those of you interested in game development, check out the Spore team’s prototypes page: http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes

You can download prototypes the team put together to test concepts and ideas when building Spore.