Spore: Unintelligent Design

One of the things that surprised me when reading the initial reviews of Spore (e.g. the gamespot Spore review) was how short the early cell-based, oceanic and land creature phases of the game were said to be. Indeed, the reviews found these early stages, despite their shortness, to be "not very interesting and [to wear] out its welcome quickly."

When the game was first announced several years ago it was exactly those early stages that seemed most interesting and most unique - the later two Civilization-like and Master of Orion-like phases sounded much more traditional and less unique. OK, I realize that as a scientist my interests may not be quite in tune with Joe Sixpack, but I'm pretty sure that you can make an interesting and informative game out of those cellular, oceanic and animal stages. After all, people bought and played Railroad Tycoon.

It now appears that the early stages were indeed going to be far more unique and innovative (cellular automata are indeed cool), but that some of the developers got cold feet and forced the rest to stick to more traditional gameplay. Read the story of the dumbing down of Spore at Pharyngula.

[Update 11/04/08: Carl Zimmer has quick piece up at The Loom on perceived scientific problems with Spore. This is not to say all games must adhere to strict scientific accuracy, merely that adopting features of reality might make for a more interesting and varied game. After all, almost every game these day uses the Havok engine to do some simple physics. At the very least realism aids immersion.]