Spore is a PC game released in 2008, developed by Maxis and published by EA. Over a decade later, the game is still spoken of regularly. It was a truly different play experience from anything that came before it, carving out a new market for it’s own genre of game. That being said, there are just as many people who remember this game negatively rather than positively for a number of reasons that we’ll take a look at today.
The game is a simulator like no other. Players take control of a life form through a series of stages, guiding it to success in hostile environments. You begin as a single celled organism, and must evolve your form to gain dominance in the oceans by acquiring new body features and fully customising your little cell. Eventually, you will evolve legs and enter the creature stage by taking shaky steps onto steps. Here you must carve out a spot for yourselves and other members of your species, continually evolving by collecting a huge selection of body parts to swap and choose from in order to make your perfect creature. When you’ve conquered the land and assembled a pack, your creature’s brain expands past that of a primal beast and you enter the tribal stage. This stage centres around charming or conquering other tribes so that they unite under your banner, until your species claims control of the entire planet. After this, you must unite the whole planet under a single leader as part of the civilisation stage, building vehicles and buildings to flesh out your cities and help you gain and maintain total control. One the unification is complete, the game enters its final stage: the space stage. The longest stage of all, this section has you piloting a ship around an entire galaxy, meeting alien life forms and terraforming new planets. It is an incredibly unique and ambitious game, which is why it leaves such a bad taste in some player’s mouths.
The first time this game was shown off, it took audience’s breaths away. Described as six games seamlessly joined together, it was so far ahead of its time that people couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing. Complete player customisation and freedom with a whole universe to discover, as well as the power to share everything you create with your friends. Early demos looked fantastic, with organic creature customisation and random universes so that each player could have their own unique experience. Will Wright, the game designer behind The Sims, led the project and seemed incredibly excited about its potential. Sadly, fans were left dissappointed when the game was finally released, as it wasn’t quite what they had hoped for.
Electronic Arts, or EA, is well known in the gaming industry. I recently wrote about how their mismanagement of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 had fans in an uproar, but this is not an isolated incident. EA are famous for making poor quality games that aim to squeeze every penny and cent from their players. On top of that, it is the only company to have every won Consumerist’s coveted ‘Worst Company in America’ award two years in a row. In a not unexpected but upsetting turn, it seemed that EA had cut a lot of the advertised content from Spore, releasing instead a shell of the game that had been promised. It was a fun shell that was enjoyed by many, but for those that had been following the game’s development it was a painful breach of their trust.
To this day, Spore is a mediocre game. It’s half finished concepts have kept me entertained for hours, but there is definitely something lacking in the experience. Due to the negativity surrounding the games release, the online servers have been disconnected and the franchise has been cancelled, meaning you can no longer play with friends and there is no plans to continue the series in the future. A true shame, Spore could have been a genre defining game that kept player’s captivated for years. Due to corporate mismanagement and false advertising, this wasn’t the case. That being said, there are a lot of people out there who were inspired by Spore. If EA doesn’t plan on releasing a new version, I can almost guarantee that the idea will be taken up by a new studio in the future and I wish them the best of luck with it.
All images from the Spore Steam Page.
