Spore

[B.Ob.]

Maxis Talks Spore

 

IGN: That sounds great to me, but then again I play games all the time. How do you think a more casual gamer will respond to that sort of game design complexity?

 

Lucy Bradshaw: Well, for one, you're guided. You have little contextual tutorials, you've got missions. For the more creator-types [of players], once you get to space you open up the last of our editors, and that's really the planet editor. You can sculpt and terraform your planets, you can create a sanctuary planet or a zoo planet, collecting some of your favorite things can housing them on a particular star system. You can explore the galaxy for different astronomical points of interest. We've given that explorer and creator things to do. In a game like our, frankly, there are those that are going to want to succeed at that, and they're going to go for the badges and player achievements.

 

For others, and this was very much the case with Sims players, a lot of them were builders. I don't think there's a person who played The Sims who doesn't know kaching or motherlode, which are the two money cheats [laughs]. Cheating should be fun and should enable that set of players to have some fun with the creativity that we've added to it. One of my favorite things is building colonies, setting up different vehicles and buildings, going into the city planner and creating my own national anthem with our music editor, doing generative music.

[B.Ob.]

Spore: Hands-on Preview

 

There are five stages or levels to Spore and we’ve played them all on the PC, as well as playing on the DS and Mobile versions of the game – though the latter failed to make as much of an impression, to be frank.