On Payments, Figurines and the Creature Editor ³

Did you read the Gamasutra article yesterday? If so you know it had some new info regarding micro-payments in Spore. It turns out we were slightly mislead and EA had to step in to correct a few misunderstanding. This is how it is:

Sharing or “downloading” player created content is a core feature of Spore, not at all something that is part of the Spore Store or even under consideration for additional charge. The entire game is based on players making creatures, buildings, and vehicles which can be accessed from what we call our Sporepedia – a web based collection of all player created assets.

The Spore Store simply gives players the ability to purchase out-of-game merchandise such as t-shirts and posters or any additional game products we might make down the road such as expansion packs. For example, we are working with a company to provide the option for 3D versions of a player’s creature to be made and the Spore Store is where that purchase would originate.

We have also mentioned that we will be providing the Creature Creator tool as a stand alone product in the month or two before the game launches so that players can begin to design their creatures, but we do not have plans to sell individual parts via micro-transactions.

So not only are we free from the micro-payments yoke, but we also learn the planned timeframe for the release of the editor, and that figurines are indeed planned!