Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingdom really beat Spore to the punch by a margin of many many years. Beyond that, they offer even more dynamic and open ended character customization. Beyond that, they did it on completely inferior hardware with a microscopic fraction of the processing power and storage capabilities of current gen hardware.

Spore looks nice, and it looks fun, but it just kills me that while the gaming press simply ignored Graffiti Kingdom and called it a minor novelty, these same people are going nuts championing Spore and calling it innovative. What a world what a world!

Anyway, Graffiti Kingdom rocks! Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

The parts where the discussion talked about the impact of Spore/sandpit games was an interesting diversion.

Me too, with my wife, but she _does_ like the Creature Creator. Her latest creation, Buttwing, does exactly what it says on the tin.

P.

But gamers are wondering: Is there any game there?

some people basically wanted a FUNCTIONAL god thing. The idea of you as a designer, trying to make a perfect speedy leg formation.

I’m one such person, though optimizing legs is not much fun. I want to recognize a beast’s niche by its sihouette (as in the design philosophy of TF2) and have a lot of niches to choose from, or evolve into (as opposed to all beasts being mid-size lumps). That would probably be like climbing two Everests, so maybe I’ll have to wait.

Personally I have no idea what sort of game Spore is going to be. I fear that its either going to be the sims, or one of those 6/10 every-stage-is-a-shallow-impersonation-of-a-different-genre games.

I was stunned by the creature creator for the first few hours. Its certainly a neat toy, but I don’t really feel any desire to go back to it now. Personally I would have swapped some of the gloss and accessibility for something a bit more freeform & mechanical. Hopefully it will be more meaningful once its integrated into the full game.

I was disappointed to learn that building editor, for instance, won’t have any mechanical impact on the game. I’d rather the bells and whistles were essentially integrated into the game play. I worry that it will be something that I play with a few times and then just bypass after that so you can get on with playing the “real” game.

If the core of WoW are all those zillions of people who play rpgs and love fantasy role playing.
And the core of Sims was all the people in aol chatrooms who wanted a better representation of themselves [whilst still chatting to their online chums].
Who will the core players of Spore be?

I wonder how many players will move beyond the content creators and into the actual game, especially since Spore is a RTS/4X more than anything.