According to EA rep. Patrick Buechner the Creature Creator is coming in June! There will be two versions - a free one which will have 25% of the available creature parts, and a retail version with all available parts. The free editor will be available at spore.com and included in the new SimCity Box coming also in June. The Creature Creator will function exactly as in the full game and you will be able to take snapshots and make movies in it. Furthermore all creatures that you create will function in Spore when it ships!
Since the SimCity Box is planned for release on the 26th we can expect the editor to be released around that date. The price is not known for certain at this time, but Amazon.com did have it listed at $9.99 before taking it down.
CVG is spawning articles like there’s no tomorrow. This time we get a thourough look at all the phases and their look and feel. The previewer Ed Zitron sounds pretty excited on the outlook of Spore.
As Spore stands, it’s unbelievably beautiful and mesmerising. Will Wright and Maxis may very well have created something with the mass-appeal of the original Sims, with elements to draw in tougher-edged gamers in the Civilization and Space Age modes - though their complexity does remain to be seen.
According to Jeff Karp, EA’s head of North American publishing, there are plans to deliver Spore content for the next 10(!) years.
With “Spore,” EA already has plans internally to develop new content for at least 10 years. These plans include the traditional new levels and building blocks, but also “new ways to play and experience ‘Spore’.”
Exactly in what way is not mentioned; if this includes sequels or just expansion packs, add-ons and downloadable content.
Yesterday the official site posted the following press notice:
Spore is a game that inspires self expression through creativity yet links untold numbers of people together from around the world through sharing their creations online. We have found ways to enhance that experience by allowing players to email a screenshot of their creation to a friend directly from the game or upload a video directly to the web. Spore allows people to connect instantly in ways that have never been done before. Yet, for our incredibly creative team, this still wasn’t enough.
Our procedurally generated systems learn each player’s style and match the content to that specific person. For several months now, a side team has been working on ways to use this same technology to match players to each other, rather than just to the content. Our systems can analyze play style, aesthetic preferences, time spent creating versus playing, and more and then maps that against the data from other players to find a match. The surprising discovery in our focus group testing was that this is most often a love match.
Maxis is currently in discussions with several well-known dating sites to integrate our player matching system into the format of a dating system creating SporeDate. Since this program is being designed for the most dedicated fans, we are bringing the news to you here first. Starting today, we will choose players for our pilot program of SporeDate at random from our list of newsletter subscribers. So if you haven’t signed up, please do so today. We are truly excited to bring this new innovation to light and look forward to seeing you all on SporeDate!
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!
Ian Bogost over at Gamasutra visited the ICE 2008 conference Toronto last week, where he spent some quality time with Spore, playing with the editor and following the reactions of the visitors to its booth. He noticed some unexpected behavior patterns:
I have no doubt that the game will be a success, but I wonder if new players will pick up the box and think, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to create anything good,” or “I’m not the kind of person who toys with life.” And I wonder what marketing strategies and play styles might combat this.
We also get some tiny bits of information on how the editor behaves when performing certain actions. It’s a good read covering the whatif’s and but’s that you always encounter with innovative games leading up to their release. Discuss this further in our forum.
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