Monday 15 December 2008

Pic of the day: Establishing bases toward the center of the galaxy.

Spore, looking back

I am probably going to play the game occasionally in the future too. I like terraforming planets. I used to do that in the Mars scenario in Civilization II, my favorite scenario by far. Then again I used it as an aid to falling asleep, so don't put too much store in it. Even so, I do enjoy it. A little.

The reviews for this game were generally much better than what players actually think. The concept of the game is amazing, using the creative abilities of the players to populate the galaxy with weird and wonderful creatures. The game is probably going to be remembered for this.

Unfortunately, Spore will also be remembered for another thing: The restrictive, paranoid and occasionally computer-damaging copy protection. After having built the game from the bottom up to depend on the players freely sharing their work, it is particularly jarring to turn around and treat the same players as thieves and scoundrels until proven otherwise, to the point of installing spyware on their computers without clear warning. A backlash of pure hate is hitting Electronic Arts (finally) and more and more gamers are just plain boycotting the company. I was surprised to realize that most of my Sims 2 friends are not planning to get Sims 3, and a good number of them cites the intrusive Securom DRM as the main reason.

The concept of sharing content is anyway something that is better suited for open source software. Hopefully we will eventually get games for Linux of a similar complexity and quality, though this is still far away today.

For now, there are still around 49,950 star systems left in my galaxy to colonize or buy out. (Or conquer, but I don't do that.) Or was that 499,950? I keep forgetting. In any case, the point is that it is more than I could do in a lifetime. Then again, the same holds true for one single neighborhood in Sims 2. And by and large, the sims seem more likely to hold my interest. Not a bad word about eyestalks and extra heads, but the human angle is not to be underestimated either.