Spore Designer: Play at Each Stage Was Shallow, “Team Was Making Five Games at Once”

Spore designer Soren Johnson dissects the game on its fifth year anniversary.

Posted By | On 01st, Oct. 2013

Spore
It’s the fifth year of Spore, Will Wright’s last big game for Maxis, and what better way to celebrate then through a post mortem of the game by designer Soren Johnson? Writing on his blog, Johnson took the time to explain what went wrong with the game, which was that the team was trying to create five distinct play phases for Spore and in essence, were working on five games at once.

“Spore’s biggest issues was that the play at each stage was fairly shallow because the team was making five games at once. (At one point, Will described each of the game’s five stages as light versions of classics – cell is like Pac-Man, creature is Diablo, tribe is Populous, civilization is Civilization, and space is Masters of Orion.) However, making five different games at once is a bad idea; making one good game is usually hard enough.

“Each of the five stages had different controls, different interfaces, different nouns, different verbs, different goals, and so on. Some effort was made, of course, to share ideas and elements across stages; however, the compromises involved often watered down what was supposed to make each stage distinct in the first place.

“For example, each stage required a friendly means of engaging with other entities; in the creature stage, this mechanic became dancing for other creatures to make friends while, in the civilization stage, this mechanic translated into attacking other cities with music instead of bullets.

“Neither mechanic was the best idea for its own individual stage, and the justification was high-level consistency. Thus, the powers of ten idea put the team in a state of perpetual compromise where every major decision had to be considered according to its effect across all five stages.”

Spore was more remembered for the controversial DRM it introduced that landed publisher EA in plenty of hot water, and till this day, it’s not quite the classic it could’ve been. What are your thoughts on the game? Do you have fond memories of Spore? Let us know in the comments below.


Tagged With: , , , ,

Amazing Articles You Might Want To Check Out!

Share Your Thoughts Below  (Always follow our comments policy!)



Keep On Reading!

Ubisoft Says it Has “Started an Exploration Phase on the Rayman Brand”

Ubisoft Says it Has “Started an Exploration Phase on the Rayman Brand”

Following recent reports that a Rayman remake is in the works, Ubisoft has stated that it has started explorin...

EA Sports FC 25, Astro Bot Were the US’ Bestselling Games in September

EA Sports FC 25, Astro Bot Were the US’ Bestselling Games in September

Other new releases such as The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and others...

PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch All Saw Sharp Year-on-Year Declines in US Sales in September

PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch All Saw Sharp Year-on-Year Declines in US Sales in September

Hardware spending in the US fell by 44 percent year-on-year to $251 million, which is the lowest it has been f...

Guilty Gear Strive Balance Update Coming October 31st

Guilty Gear Strive Balance Update Coming October 31st

All 28 characters have received adjustments, from buffs and cancels into other techniques for increased combo ...

Fallout: London Crosses 1 Million Downloads

Fallout: London Crosses 1 Million Downloads

The total conversion for Fallout 4 recently received a massive update, which restores missing dialogue and fix...

The Rogue Prince of Persia is Now Steam Deck Verified

The Rogue Prince of Persia is Now Steam Deck Verified

Evil Empire warns that Steam Deck players "may experience occasional drops in frame rate" in some sections of ...