Dados da Steam coletados em 14/11/2026 20:11 · 1 amostras de jogadores no banco. Projeto independente, sem ligação com a Valve.
Jogando agora
640
Pico 24 h
640
Pico registrado
5.549set/2016 · SteamCharts
Avaliações positivas
92%
Muito positivas · 67.400 análises
Jogadores
Quando o jogo tem mais gente
O mapa de calor aparece quando houver pelo menos 24 horas de dados de jogadores deste jogo.
Mídia
Usuários da Steam
Todas as análises92%Muito positivas · 67.400 análises▲ ≈ 62.008 positivas▼ ≈ 5.392 negativas
Em português93%Muito positivas · 5.190 análises▲ ≈ 4.827 positivas▼ ≈ 363 negativas
Imprensa
- Site oficial
- Tempo para zerar (HowLongToBeat)média de horas até terminar a história e até 100%
- Suporte
- Contrato de licença · Spore EULA 1
Não tem português do Brasil.
| Idioma | Interface | Legendas | Áudio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inglês | ✓ | — | — |
| Alemão | ✓ | — | — |
| Dinamarquês | ✓ | — | — |
| Espanhol (Espanha) | ✓ | — | — |
| Finlandês | ✓ | — | — |
| Francês | ✓ | — | — |
| Holandês | ✓ | — | — |
| Húngaro | ✓ | — | — |
| Italiano | ✓ | — | — |
| Norueguês | ✓ | — | — |
| Polonês | ✓ | — | — |
| Português (Portugal) | ✓ | — | — |
| Russo | ✓ | — | — |
| Sueco | ✓ | — | — |
| Tcheco | ✓ | — | — |
Mínimos
- Sistemas operativos suportados
- Microsoft Windows XP com Service Pack 1 e Vista
- Processador
- Intel Pentium 4 a 2,0 GHz ou equivalente
- Memória
- 512 MB de RAM (768 MB de RAM para o Vista)
- Placa gráfica
- placa gráfica de 128 MB, com suporte para Pixel Shader 2.0
- DirectX
- versão mais recente do DirectX 9.0c ou superior
- Disco rígido
- pelo menos 4 GB de espaço livre em disco, com pelo menos 1 GB adicional para as suas criações
- Chipset integrado Intel, 945GM ou superior
- Processador Pentium D a 2,6 GHz, Core 2 Duo a 1,8 GHz ou equivalente
- 768 MB de RAM
- É NECESSÁRIA LIGAÇÃO À INTERNET, AUTENTICAÇÃO ONLINE E ACORDO DE LICENÇA PARA O UTILIZADOR FINAL PARA PODER JOGAR. PARA ACEDER ÀS FUNCIONALIDADES ONLINE, É NECESSÁRIO REGISTAR-SE ONLINE. SÓ É POSSÍVEL FAZER UM REGISTO POR CADA JOGO. OS TERMOS E CONDIÇÕES DA EA E AS ACTUALIZAÇÕES DE FUNCIONALIDADES ESTÃO DISPONÍVEIS EM . É NECESSÁRIO TER MAIS DE 13 ANOS DE IDADE PARA PODER REGISTAR-SE ONLINE. A EA PODERÁ DEIXAR DE DISPONIBILIZAR FUNCIONALIDADES ONLINE NUM PRAZO DE 30 DIAS APÓS A PUBLICAÇÃO DE AVISO CORRESPONDENTE EM .
Preço em cada país
Maior desconto agora—nenhum país em promoção
Mais barato agora (em reais)≈ R$ 33,63
Cazaquistão · 43% abaixo do Brasil
Cazaquistão · 43% abaixo do BrasilMenor preço visto no BrasilR$ 59,000 promoções registradas
| País | Preço atual | Preço cheio | Desconto | Em reais | vs Brasil | Menor visto |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cazaquistão | ₸ 2.650 | ₸ 2.650 | — | -43% | ₸ 2.650 | |
 Vietnã | ₫ 188.000 | ₫ 188.000 | — | -30% | ₫ 188.000 | |
 Filipinas | ₱ 599,00 | ₱ 599,00 | — | -10% | ₱ 599,00 | |
 Brasil | R$ 59,00 | R$ 59,00 | — | — | R$ 59,00 | |
 Uruguai | $U 429 | $U 429 | — | +1% | $U 429 | |
 Índia | ₹ 999 | ₹ 999 | — | +1% | ₹ 999 | |
 Kuwait | KD 3,35 | KD 3,35 | — | +3% | KD 3,35 | |
 Catar | QR 41,99 | QR 41,99 | — | +10% | QR 41,99 | |
 Indonésia | Rp 239.000 | Rp 239.000 | — | +26% | Rp 239.000 | |
 Chile | CLP$ 13.999 | CLP$ 13.999 | — | +35% | CLP$ 13.999 | |
 China | CN¥ 98,00 | CN¥ 98,00 | — | +40% | CN¥ 98,00 | |
 Ucrânia | ₴ 699 | ₴ 699 | — | +47% | ₴ 699 | |
 Tailândia | ฿ 540,00 | ฿ 540,00 | — | +53% | ฿ 540,00 | |
 Taiwan | NT$ 539 | NT$ 539 | — | +57% | NT$ 539 | |
 Coreia do Sul | ₩ 22.000 | ₩ 22.000 | — | +58% | ₩ 22.000 | |
 Nova Zelândia | NZ$ 29,95 | NZ$ 29,95 | — | +59% | NZ$ 29,95 | |
 Polônia | zł 69,90 | zł 69,90 | — | +68% | zł 69,90 | |
 Arábia Saudita | SR 66,00 | SR 66,00 | — | +68% | SR 66,00 | |
 Hong Kong | HK$ 139,00 | HK$ 139,00 | — | +70% | HK$ 139,00 | |
 Costa Rica | ₡ 8.500 | ₡ 8.500 | — | +80% | ₡ 8.500 | |
 Canadá | CDN$ 26,99 | CDN$ 26,99 | — | +81% | CDN$ 26,99 | |
 Malásia | RM 79,00 | RM 79,00 | — | +85% | RM 79,00 | |
 Singapura | S$ 24,90 | S$ 24,90 | — | +85% | S$ 24,90 | |
 Estados Unidos | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | +91% | US$ 19,99 | |
 Argentina · América Latina (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | +91% | US$ 19,99 | |
 Turquia · Oriente Médio e N. África (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | +91% | US$ 19,99 | |
 Armênia · ex-URSS (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | +91% | US$ 19,99 | |
 Paquistão · Sul da Ásia (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | +91% | US$ 19,99 | |
 Austrália | A$ 29,95 | A$ 29,95 | — | +94% | A$ 29,95 | |
 Colômbia | COL$ 66.990 | COL$ 66.990 | — | +95% | COL$ 66.990 | |
 Peru | S/ 69,95 | S/ 69,95 | — | +97% | S/ 69,95 | |
 África do Sul | R 349,95 | R 349,95 | — | +98% | R 349,95 | |
 Noruega | kr 199,00 | kr 199,00 | — | +99% | kr 199,00 | |
 Zona do euro | € 19,99 | € 19,99 | — | +111% | € 19,99 | |
 México | Mex$ 439,00 | Mex$ 439,00 | — | +127% | Mex$ 439,00 | |
 Reino Unido | £ 17,99 | £ 17,99 | — | +128% | £ 17,99 | |
 Emirados Árabes | AED 109,00 | AED 109,00 | — | +184% | AED 109,00 | |
 Suíça | CHF 24,90 | CHF 24,90 | — | +184% | CHF 24,90 | |
 Israel | ₪ 129,00 | ₪ 129,00 | — | +285% | ₪ 129,00 | |
| Não vendido nestas lojas: Japão, Rússia | ||||||
Do mais barato ao mais caro em reais, pela cotação do dia (só para comparar: o preço cobrado é o da moeda local).
Histórico de preço
Próxima grande promoçãoPromoção de Inverno 2026de 17/12 a 04/01 · em 32 dias
Ainda não há promoções registradas para este jogo aqui. Nas grandes promoções da Steam (verão, inverno, outono e primavera) a maioria dos jogos entra com desconto. As faixas douradas no gráfico marcam as grandes promoções da Steam.
Todas as mudanças de preço
| Visto em | País | Preço | Preço cheio | Desconto | Em reais |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Brasil | R$ 59,00 | R$ 59,00 | — | R$ 59,00 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Estados Unidos | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 112,90 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Argentina · América Latina (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 112,90 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | México | Mex$ 439,00 | Mex$ 439,00 | — | ≈ R$ 133,64 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Chile | CLP$ 13.999 | CLP$ 13.999 | — | ≈ R$ 79,69 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Reino Unido | £ 17,99 | £ 17,99 | — | ≈ R$ 134,33 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Zona do euro | € 19,99 | € 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 124,62 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Turquia · Oriente Médio e N. África (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 112,90 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Índia | ₹ 999 | ₹ 999 | — | ≈ R$ 59,86 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Canadá | CDN$ 26,99 | CDN$ 26,99 | — | ≈ R$ 106,91 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Austrália | A$ 29,95 | A$ 29,95 | — | ≈ R$ 114,71 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Nova Zelândia | NZ$ 29,95 | NZ$ 29,95 | — | ≈ R$ 93,53 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Suíça | CHF 24,90 | CHF 24,90 | — | ≈ R$ 167,75 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Noruega | kr 199,00 | kr 199,00 | — | ≈ R$ 117,47 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Polônia | zł 69,90 | zł 69,90 | — | ≈ R$ 98,89 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Ucrânia | ₴ 699 | ₴ 699 | — | ≈ R$ 86,88 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Cazaquistão | ₸ 2.650Mais barato em reais | ₸ 2.650 | — | ≈ R$ 33,63 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Armênia · ex-URSS (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 112,90 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Paquistão · Sul da Ásia (dólar) | US$ 19,99 | US$ 19,99 | — | ≈ R$ 112,90 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | China | CN¥ 98,00 | CN¥ 98,00 | — | ≈ R$ 82,74 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Hong Kong | HK$ 139,00 | HK$ 139,00 | — | ≈ R$ 100,06 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Taiwan | NT$ 539 | NT$ 539 | — | ≈ R$ 92,49 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Coreia do Sul | ₩ 22.000 | ₩ 22.000 | — | ≈ R$ 93,00 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Indonésia | Rp 239.000 | Rp 239.000 | — | ≈ R$ 74,05 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Malásia | RM 79,00 | RM 79,00 | — | ≈ R$ 109,21 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Filipinas | ₱ 599,00 | ₱ 599,00 | — | ≈ R$ 53,00 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Singapura | S$ 24,90 | S$ 24,90 | — | ≈ R$ 109,23 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Tailândia | ฿ 540,00 | ฿ 540,00 | — | ≈ R$ 90,02 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Vietnã | ₫ 188.000 | ₫ 188.000 | — | ≈ R$ 41,27 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Colômbia | COL$ 66.990 | COL$ 66.990 | — | ≈ R$ 115,17 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Peru | S/ 69,95 | S/ 69,95 | — | ≈ R$ 115,99 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Uruguai | $U 429 | $U 429 | — | ≈ R$ 59,54 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Costa Rica | ₡ 8.500 | ₡ 8.500 | — | ≈ R$ 106,04 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | África do Sul | R 349,95 | R 349,95 | — | ≈ R$ 116,82 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Emirados Árabes | AED 109,00 | AED 109,00 | — | ≈ R$ 167,63 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Arábia Saudita | SR 66,00 | SR 66,00 | — | ≈ R$ 99,41 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Catar | QR 41,99 | QR 41,99 | — | ≈ R$ 65,15 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Kuwait | KD 3,35 | KD 3,35 | — | ≈ R$ 60,81 |
| 14/11/2026 20:11 | Israel | ₪ 129,00 | ₪ 129,00 | — | ≈ R$ 227,06 |
Uma linha nova aparece sempre que o preço muda. A linha em destaque é o preço atual de cada país. Valores em reais pela cotação do dia (14/11), só para comparar: o preço cobrado é o da moeda local. Rates By Exchange Rate API
Edições e pacotes
| Opção de compra | Preço no Brasil | Economia do pacote |
|---|---|---|
| SPORE™Jogo | R$ 59,00 | — |
| More SporePacote · 3 itens | R$ 125,67 | R$ 51,33vs. R$ 177,00 separado |
Da mais barata para a mais cara. "Economia do pacote" compara com comprar cada item separado, pelo preço de hoje.
DLCs · preços no Brasil
Este jogo não tem DLCs, ou elas ainda não foram coletadas.
Cartas colecionáveis · cartas, laminadas e insígnias
Conjunto de cartas≈ R$ 2,655 cartas
Conjunto laminado≈ R$ 7,345 cartas
- CellNível 1 · 100 XPInsígnia ↗
- CreatureNível 2 · 200 XPInsígnia ↗
- TribeNível 3 · 300 XPInsígnia ↗
- CivilizationNível 4 · 400 XPInsígnia ↗
- SpaceNível 5 · 500 XPInsígnia ↗
- Space FoilLaminada · Nível 1 · 100 XPInsígnia ↗
Preços do Mercado da Comunidade (menor oferta, em dólar, convertida para reais pela cotação do dia). Clique na imagem para ampliar (setas passam de uma carta para outra). Atualizado em 14/11/2026 20:11.
Itens de perfil · fundos, emoticons e loja de pontos
Fundos e emoticons que caem das cartas (preço do Mercado, convertido para reais) e itens da loja de pontos da Steam (custo em pontos). Clique na imagem para ampliar. Atualizado em 14/11/2026 20:11.
Conquistas · percentual global de jogadores
Este jogo não tem conquistas, ou elas ainda não foram coletadas.
Evolução da nota · análises positivas mês a mês
Desde o lançamento92%73.266 análises
Últimos 30 dias93%325 análises
Melhor mês100%jun/2012
Pior mês67%dez/2010
Linha: % de análises positivas de cada mês (cor pela nota: azul 70%+, amarelo 40–69%, vermelho abaixo). Barras: quantas análises o mês teve. Passe o mouse para ver os números. Fonte: histórico de análises da loja da Steam, atualizado em 14/11/2026 20:11.
Comentários dos jogadores · análises da Steam
- ▲ Recomenda4,6 h jogadas ao escrever22 dez. 2025
Tentei fazer amizade com outra criatura dançando, ela riu de mim, então eu a extingui. 10/10
- ▲ Recomenda5,1 h jogadas ao escrever28 dez. 2025
Eu entro no jogo, começo uma nova campanha, chego até o fim da parte tribal e depois desinstalo. JOGAÇOOO
- ▲ Recomenda6,4 h jogadas ao escrever1 dez. 2025
Cara, é incrivel que esses jogos mais antigos conseguem ser tão bom, capaz até de superar os atuais. Spore é um dos varios jogos antigos que chega nesse nivel, uma pena que não tem suporte para ptbr nessa versão, logico para um jogo de 2008 da pra entender.
- ▲ Recomenda0,2 h jogadas ao escrever18 ago. 2026
Spore é um clássico que eu jogava antes mesmo de sonhar em ter uma conta na Steam
Agora sou adulto. Tenho responsabilidades e acesso ilimitado ao jogo.
Claramente, tudo deu certo.13 acharam útilVer na Steam - ▲ Recomenda5,8 h jogadas ao escrever2 jan. 2026
O melhor jogo pra você jogar até a metade e reiniciar tudo logo depois
- ▼ Não recomenda209,9 h jogadas ao escrever14 abr. 2026
Esse jogo era o melhor. Era no passado porque depois que a EA decidiu que não ia mais fazer integração na nuvem com a Steam para ele eu perdi acesso aos meus mundos que tinham quase 200h de jogo. Senti como que a minha adolescência inteira que eu passei jogando isso tivesse sido jogada no lixo pela desgraça da EA
O jogo é uma obra de arte, mas ele tem seus bugs de fechar sozinho do nada e não se pode mais salvar na nuvem. Então eu não recomendo se apegarem a ele como eu fiz - ▼ Não recomenda17,8 h jogadas ao escrever28 jan. 2026
Tudo que a EA toca é estragado, não da pra jogar online pela steam, o suporte da EA consegue ser mais estupido e ignorante que um BOT. EA é totalmente despreparada para o atendimento ao cliente, suporte e afins. Quando pensarem mais nos players e menos no dinheiro talvez fique melhor. Spore é muito nostalgico e sempre vou amar o jogo, mas a EA sempre acaba com a experiência.
17 acharam útilVer na Steam - ▼ Não recomenda7,9 h jogadas ao escrever17 mar. 2026
Eu tenho ótimas memórias desse jogo na minha infância.
É um jogo muito divertido, bonitinho até hoje.
Infelizmente, a versão na Steam não permite baixar criaturas personalizadas.
E o pior? Tá cheio de bugs. Cheio mesmo. O tipo de bug que te faz perder uma run inteira.
Eu joguei esse jogo bastante no passado. Eu me lembro dos bugs e cheats que dava pra fazer, e essa versão, por algum motivo, está pior.
Esse jogo custava 20 reais, com promoção comprava por 5. A EA aumentou para 80, e depois deixou em 60.
Não deixem te passar a perna, essa versão não vale a pena.11 acharam útilVer na Steam - ▼ Não recomenda1,3 h jogadas ao escrever3 mar. 2026
Recomendo o jogo, mas não comprem da Steam. Você não vai conseguir se conectar aos servidores pra baixar outras criaturas na sporepedia nem nada assim. Compre de outra plataforma ou consiga pelo Hydra mesmo
- ▼ Não recomenda11,2 h jogadas ao escrever18 out. 2026
Não compre aqui, jogo completamente abandonado e esquecido em uma versão completamente bugada, sem tradução nativa e sem suporte pra monitores mordermos com vários bugs e problemas. Eu recomendo baixar a versão pirata que vem completo com tradução e suporte completo, como pode a pirataria ser melhor que o original, deveria ter pedido reembolso, 10 h em um save pra ele corromper e ficar bugado pro jogo não abrir mais. Só tem como jogar ate o período colonial, depois disso todo save buga quando vai pras naves. Jogo muito bom mas a versão da steam é horrivel!!
- ▲ Recomenda15,8 h jogadas ao escrever10 nov. 2026
joguei muito quando era criança e agora comprei. top demais.
- ▲ Recomenda39,7 h jogadas ao escrever8 nov. 2026
Como que um jogo de 2008 consegue continuar sendo tão bom assim?? Cadê o Remake???
- ▲ Recomenda11,4 h jogadas ao escrever3 nov. 2026
DOMINEI O UNIVERSO (mas o jogo é muito rapido e dps fica sem nada p fzr, a não ser dominar o universo dnv)
- ▲ Recomenda24,8 h jogadas ao escrever31 out. 2026
Um clássico. As possibilidades são infinitas. A frente do seu tempo. Tinha que ter um remake dessa obra prima. Quando joguei pela primeira vez, tinha um notebookzinho fuleiro, mas fiquei animadão por achar um jogo que não travasse naquela lata.
- ▼ Não recomenda12,8 h jogadas ao escrever29 out. 2026
Era meu sonho jogar Spore desde que sou criança, mas nunca tive um pc para jogar, montei meu primeiro pc para eu jogar, spore foi um dos primeiros jogos que eu peguei, jogo incrível e divertido, mas tive um problema constante, do jogo crashar, ou o save todo ser apagado repentinamente, o login da Ea não funcionando. Até dá para suportar quando crasha, mas perdi 2 saves já onde já estava entre as era das cavernas e civilização. Bom jogo, mas tenho este problema constantemente.
Análises mais úteis do último ano (positivas e negativas) e as mais recentes, em português e, quando faltam, em inglês. A Steam não tem nota neutra: cada análise recomenda ou não o jogo. Atualizado em 14/11/2026 20:11.
Jogos parecidos
Universe Sandbox96% · 28.293 análisesR$ 99,99×Deck: Incompatível
Kerbal Space Program95% · 122.138 análisesR$ 119,99!Deck: Jogável
No Man's Sky84% · 319.913 análisesR$ 162,00✓Deck: Verificado
Oxygen Not Included96% · 136.369 análisesR$ 41,39✓Deck: Verificado
SpaceEngine96% · 16.291 análisesR$ 86,99×Deck: Incompatível
Two Point Museum95% · 10.008 análisesR$ 98,91✓Deck: Verificado
The Planet Crafter96% · 70.052 análisesR$ 66,59✓Deck: Verificado
Space Haven85% · 10.448 análisesR$ 44,99✓Deck: Verificado
Os jogos que a própria Steam considera parecidos (o "Mais como este" da loja). Preços do Brasil.
Comunidade · estimativas do SteamSpy
Donos estimados2.000.000 a 5.000.000
Tempo médio de jogo18,0 h
Mediana6,2 h
Média nas últimas 2 semanas0,1 h
Pico de jogadores ontem608
Tags mais votadas pelos jogadores
Idiomas
English, Czech, Danish, German, Spanish - Spain, Finnish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese - Portugal
Estimativas do SteamSpy, atualizadas em 14/11/2026 20:11. Donos é uma faixa aproximada, não um número exato. O tempo de jogo só aparece quando o SteamSpy tem esse dado (hoje ele vem zerado para quase todos os jogos).
Últimas notícias e notas de atualização
| Data | Título |
|---|---|
| 01/11/2026 | Энтузиаст под ником WoodyWizard выпустил масштабную модификацию SporeCoop для Spore Galactic Adventures. Проект добавляет в симулятор эволюции полноценный сетевой кооператив для группы от 2 до 4 человек. Модификация позволяет пройти всю цепочку развития в едином мире - от одноклеточного организма в первичном бульоне до космической экспансии. Для каждого этапа автор реализовал уникальные совместные механики. На стадии Клетка игроки делят общий водоем и могут спасти оглушенного товарища за 10 секунд, подплыв вплотную. На этапе Существо пользователи объединяются в стаю, получают бонус в 25% к урону при совместной охоте, делятся здоровьем и спасают союзников от гибели. Переход между фазами развития и открытие редактора происходят после голосования всех участников. На этапе Племя поселение делится между участниками, каждый из которых управляет собственной группой со своим вождем. Совместное нападение с двух сторон дает 50% прибавку к урону, а парные выступления ускоряют заключение союзов. На стадии Цивилизация игроки руководят отдельными городами и техникой, выбирая военное, экономическое или религиозное направление. Осада одного мегаполиса силами двух союзников проходит в 1.5 раза быстрее, а применение супероружия требует общего согласия. Космический этап получил расширение A galaxy together с поддержкой личных территорий в одной галактике. Участники сессии видят корабли партнеров на глобальной карте, могут мгновенно перемещаться к союзникам, защищать колонии от рейдов и торговать пряностью с двойной экспортной наценкой. Модификация генерирует контракты для двух кораблей, синхронизирует отношения с империями под управлением искусственного интеллекта и позволяет совместно достичь галактического ядра ради артефакта Жезл жизни. Также доступен режим соперничества с раздельной казной и космическими войнами между игроками. Модификация интегрирована прямо в интерфейс игры: пункт сетевого режима появляется в главном меню, а окно лобби открывается по нажатию клавиши F9. Система сохранений переносит копию мира хоста в отдельный слот гостя без перезаписи личного прогресса. Каждый участник управляет существами, постройками и техникой из собственного каталога Мои творения, которые передаются остальным игрокам по сети. Проект совместим с актуальными версиями Spore Galactic Adventures в магазинах Steam и GOG на Windows 11 и Linux. Разработчик выпустил серию обновлений вплоть до версии 0.7.3.3, устранив более 150 ошибок синхронизации, сбоев физики клеток и вылетов. В дальнейшие планы входит упрощение подключения через интернет без использования виртуальных локальных сетей и расширение механики соперничества на все фазы эволюции. |
| 14/06/2026 | Spore is the greatest game that never was. Clear as day, I remember the wonder the pitch instilled in me as a young'un. It was to be a true simulation like The Sims, not just of daily life, but of the history of all life— life as everything from a unicellular amoeba to a spacefaring alien of my own design, all realized in exacting detail... Read more. |
| 20/11/2025 | Spore might be one of the highest-profile disappointments in all of PC gaming , but it's also a game I have a huge soft spot for. It was the first game I ever begged my parents to preorder for me (for my birthday at the ripe age of 8), and I adored it endlessly back when I had no concept of what anyone else expected it to be. These days, I find myself longing instead for the evolution sim Spore promised to be rather than the minigame mishmash it ended up as, but maybe all I need is a set of fresh eyes. Lucky me, there's at least one newcomer to the game somewhere out there... Read more. |
| 01/10/2024 | Spore was a pretty big deal back in the day, a life-sim RTS from famed Sims studio Maxis that gave players the opportunity to guide the evolution of a species from primordial soup to interstellar exploration. It was huge, ambitious, and unique, and alas, it was not great: The ideas behind it were bold, but the actual gameplay was pretty flat. We said in a 2018 retrospective that "in many ways, Spore was No Man’s Sky before No Man’s Sky"—minus the redemption arc... Read more. |
| 23/12/2023 | Spore is unequivocally the greatest god game I've ever played, and I'll say it with my whole simulation-loving heart. Maxis, the genius developer behind The Sims, created its unique real-time strategy game back in 2008 when I was practically still an evolving little microscopic organism myself. As a child obsessed with The Sims and Zoo Tycoon, it wasn't long before I lost hundreds of hours to Spore that could've been spent playing outside. I'm now ready to lose even more, over a decade later. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: This Spore dragon a player created was so complex it couldn't be saved |
| 12/04/2021 | Save on DLC and the base game until April 19th. SALE PAGE  |
| 19/01/2021 | Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Spore is several games in one, none of which are particularly impressive on their own. It’s life sim meets strategy, where you grow a tiny organism with a little snappy mouth into a horrible monstrosity you made look like a penis because you’re hilarious. Eventually that penis will become a spacefaring species trying to traverse and spread throughout the galaxy. (more…) |
| 24/01/2020 | Five of the Best is a weekly series about the parts of games we overlook. We've discussed a diverse bunch: crowds, hubs, potions, mountains, hands... They're the things we take for granted while we play but then, years later, find lodged in our brains. It's only then we begin to appreciate how important they were. So let's celebrate them. Today... Character creators! How long do you spend in them? Do you pick a premade face and just breeze through? Do you pick a template, tinker a bit and then settle? Or do you adjust absolutely everything, take all evening and it still doesn't look right? I feel your pain. Read more |
| 01/11/2018 | In Reinstall , we revisit a game from the past and see what kind of experience it gives us now. It's not a re-review, more just a snapshot of what it's like to play this game now. Back in 2008, Spore was a source of daft community character creation joy, incredibly uneven ambition and a massive row about the digital rights management software EA insisted on using at launch. In many ways, Spore was No Man’s Sky before No Man’s Sky. There are two Spore experiences I remember clearly from 2008. One was waddling around on land for the first time after graduating from the Cell stage to the Creature stage, and the other was the row about DRM. But the experience of actually playing any of it has faded and been replaced by the sense that it was one of those games that just didn’t really seem to go anywhere. Booting it up a decade later (or rather, booting it up on Steam, trying to coax it into recognising my EA login so I can access other people’s creations, then realising that system seems hideously broken on Steam so booting it up on Origin instead) that feeling of aimlessness returned, as well as a new awareness of the jarring switches between game stages, and how the space segment at the end dwarfs the other modes. Life itself I should clarify that aimlessness: the game itself gives you tasks—go here, eat this, conquer that. But in three of the first four stages Spore struggles to cede control to the player and let them make meaningful decisions. You begin in the Cell stage which is the most enjoyable phase of the game. As a single-celled organism, you propel yourself around with your flagellum, using your mouth to chow down meaty nuggets or green snacks according to your preselected diet. As you bob along, you can pick up different upgrades which you can affix to your wobbly bod by spending the DNA you’ve accumulated through surviving. Spikes are useful for attack or defence, extra flagella give you speed, electric nodes let you zap other creatures and so on. It’s essentially a browser or mobile phone game with an element of strategic avatar building. As you eat more, your avatar grows. The bullies of the tidal pool fill the screen at first, but after a few snacks you’re the one bullying them. Chomp several more meals and your perspective has expanded so far you can’t even see them. But lest you get too confident, the backdrop offers a glimpse of truly monstrous creatures which await you at the next level. Next are the Creature and Tribal stages. The Creature stage is where you jam legs on your pondlife and push it out onto solid ground. The Tribal stage is just the Creature stage with tools and clothes. I’m fond of the Creature stage, but only because I like putting insect legs and growths on my creation. This is the part where you get to sculpt your lifeform. I had one species which was just a mess of knees and one which was a relatively successful impression of a bird (if you didn’t look at it closely). But to progress in the game you need to pick body parts according to their stat bonuses. I went on a charm offensive rather than killing my neighbours. For that you buy every body part that offers level three or four in social skills; special hooves for dancing, hands for posing, a mouth for singing. Then you take your gang over to another nest site, mirror the skill they’ve performed and make friends. It is charming at first and then horribly repetitive. The Tribal phase is the one I truly hated this time around. It’s shallow, it’s dull, it overstays its welcome, the customisations it brings are charmless, and the switch in camera perspective means your creatures are now these distant, tiny shapes it’s impossible to connect with. By the time I made it to the Space stage the idea of grinding missions for cash to expand my empire was exhausting The Civ phase is a pared down version of Civilisation. And when I say ‘pared down’, I don’t mean the way a bulky, unwieldy log can be refined into a sleek occasional table. I mean Maxis whittled a grand oak tree down to a toothpick and expected players to climb it. To escape the Civ stage I (a species denoted by blue blobs on the map) had to conquer or convert cities of another species (denoted by an almost identical shade of blue). It was teeth-grindingly irksome. All of this then deposits you into the space exploration bit of the game. It’s certainly the most fleshed out and gamey bit of Spore, but that’s only in comparison to the game’s procession of prior game-lite offerings. This section comprises fetch quests which underpin basic diplomacy and economics systems. You can build your empire and progress towards an endgame of sorts if you want to. I tapped out once my fledgling empire had reached four planets. Broad strokes Spore was an ambitious project with a big budget and big names attached to it. Its TV advert asked “How will you create the universe?” and posited something called ‘creatiolutionism’. I confess I love that term but only because it’s a word as brilliantly stupid as ‘drivatar’ or ‘webinar’. Creatiolutionism helps explain a lot of what’s wrong with Spore. It can’t make up its mind whether it’s a god game or a science game. It can’t decide if it’s a Pac-Man-esque gobblefest or an RTS about roving musicians or maybe even a half-remembered dream about a space-based 4X. It’s too complicated and requires too many playstyle shifts for casual players and it’s too shallow and tutorial-y for those at the hardcore end. Oh, and EA scuppered any last hopes of it being used in schools by a) only making the Creature Creator bit free, b) not making good on the science side, and c) releasing the thing in September and thus giving schools in regions like North America and Europe no time to consider using it that year anyway. At the time of release it did at least have a thriving community element. It also led to interesting conversations about why it hadn’t worked. If you’re curious, Margaret Robertson’s thorough 2009 GDC talk on the subject is now available online. But going back a decade on, the game has that sad dead feeling you get when only a smattering of a community (or its traces) remain. The Cell stage holds up the best, I’d say, and the Creature Creation stuff is still delightfully easy to use, even if the aesthetic is a tad dated. But there’s no flow and no sense that you are curating a species in a meaningful way. I’d say that was true in 2008, but the feeling has only gotten worse over time. Going from playstyle to playstyle is disruptive and, even though it often feels like you’re stuck in a permanent tutorial, Spore’s interface is actually bad at teaching you what it wants. Natural selection It also can’t help but fall even shorter because of the games and game series both new and old which it would need to compete with when you play it now. If you want a casual game with a sense of a civilisation advancing through time, 2010 brought Doodle God. If you want to marvel at the microscopic and the unfathomably enormous, David O'Reilly released Everything in 2017. No Man’s Sky has been exploring the subject of procedural generation on a massive scale since 2016. Pokémon continues to excel in cultivating a bond between the player and their creatures across evolutionary states. And on the analogue side, if you just like jamming eyes and legs into things, Hasbro has been churning out Mr Potato Head appendages since the early ’50s. I find myself really wanting Spore to be good, even now. I want it to let me flow along a creatiolutionist path, taking some bizarre creation into space and getting giddy on the wonder of the universe. But Spore is a slog. By the time I made it to the Space stage the idea of grinding missions for cash to expand my empire was exhausting, and my interest in restarting as a new species lasted exactly as long as it took to return to the Tribal stage. |
| 20/03/2018 | Will Wright led creation of SimCity and later The Sims, then he made the very ambitious evolution-themed simulation Spore. He's someone who thinks rather big. And he's unveiled a new game called Proxi, the mobile version of which is due late 2018 (no other platforms are named). It's a simulation based around creating an artificial intelligence from your memories and then building a world out of them. Here's Wright's lofty pitch: Read more… |
| 21/03/2017 | Save 75% on the SPORE series during this week's Midweek Madness*! *Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time |
| 19/10/2016 | <p><img src="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/16/sep/spore1.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>Trees that grow from seeds you plant? Easy. 18 quintillion planets? Whatever. If you want to talk about videogames’ most ambitious endeavors, there’s only one contender for the top spot. <a href="https://www.rockpaprshotgun.com/tag/spore/">Spore</a>, released in 2008, let players control a species they created from single cell organism all the way through to becoming space explorers. That included designing everything from the huts you lived in during the tribe stage, to the spaceships you used to careen around the galaxy near the game’s conclusion. Most importantly, it let you craft exactly what kind of weirdo you’d be taking to the stars, whether six-limbed, beady-eyed monstrosities or <a href="https://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/75/39275.page;jsessionid=F6ED0EA9F3BDBA6BF2EDF4BB357DA294#1375688">fleshky daleks</a> or <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=homer+simpson+spore&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=911&tbm=isch&imgil=QZOb4BiXscRyIM%253A%253BbybARNK35VyZiM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.youtube.com%25252Fwatch%25253Fv%2525253DZIXVqD34eiA&source=iu&pf=m&fir=QZOb4BiXscRyIM%253A%252CbybARNK35VyZiM%252C_&usg=__ev3c-tRW_po1ltoLZ_hKq6YmYp4%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjTvurLiIrPAhXGCcAKHUAZDK8QyjcIJw&ei=Xb_WV5OcB8aTgAbAsrD4Cg#imgrc=JMrXcAyut15JSM%3A">Homer Simpson</a>, and then it populated your world with everyone else’s creations automatically, so that each planet was filled with delightful, handmade surprises.</p> <p>Spore was a marvel. It’s crying out for a sequel.</p> <p> … [<a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/19/spore-2-sequel/">visit site to read more</a>]</p> |
| 22/09/2016 | Mirror's Edge Catalyst was good, but not quite as good as we all hoped it would be: As close to a definitive version of a Mirror's Edge game as we're likely to get, Samuel wrote in his review , despite retaining some of the first game's issues. If you don't happen to be familiar with those issues, you might want to point yourself at GOG, which now has Mirror's Edge and two other not-exactly-recent EA releases, all of them currently on sale. That means the original Mirror's Edge for $10, the Spore Collection for $12, and The Saboteur for $10. Mirror's Edge is probably the marquee game in the list, but Spore is the real deal: The regular price of Mirror's Edge and The Saboteur is the same on GOG as it is on Origin, but GOG's Spore Collection normally lists for $30, while the combined cost of the Spore titles on Origin (which doesn't offer them in a bundle) is a whopping $70. GOG's listing may be a sign that EA's prices are about to change, but unless and until that happens, if you want to buy Spore, you'll probably want to do it on GOG. The only downside, at least when compared to classic GOG releases, is that the bundled extras are very spare. Mirror's Edge includes two wallpapers and two avatars, while Spore and Saboteur have nothing. (The manuals are listed as included goodies but I tend to view them as something that's included because they're part of the game. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.) Still, sale prices and DRM-free are nothing to sneeze at. All three games are available now, and will remain on sale until September 29. |
| 06/09/2016 | Save 75% on SPORE™ during this week's Midweek Madness*! From Single Cell to Galactic God, evolve your creature in a universe of your own creations. Play through Spore's five evolutionary stages: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. Each stage has its own unique style, challenges, and goals. *Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time |
| 13/07/2016 | Every game is ambitious. It s not easy to turn a beautiful idea into a finished, playable game as developers have said time and again, sometimes it feels almost impossible. As miraculous as finishing any game might be, not all games are created equal. Some stretch the boundaries of technology to their breaking point. Others take a leap into the unknown with new design schools, often so effectively that years later, it s hard to remember them ever having to be invented. Think, for example, of Monkey Island s Three Trials structure, as used by almost every adventure afterwards. Or its sequel s Four Map Pieces , as later picked up by BioWare. And sometimes, both art and science combine to push the envelope and we get something truly, impossibly special. Here are our picks for the top 20 ignoring the very early games that had to prove computers could handle gaming at all. For more on some of the most monumental games ever to grace the PC, check out our feature on the most important PC games . King's Quest (1983) For the longest time, adventure games were where people looked to see the latest innovations. King s Quest set that bar early on, jumping from simple text and pictures to 3D environments, huge worlds, and a fairytale land of mystery to both wander and wonder at. Admittedly, the last part was helped by some dreadful puzzles. King s Quest was originally commissioned by IBM as the showpiece for its long-forgotten PCJr system, but the series would go on to demonstrate just about every major technological advancement for the mainstream: ADLIB sound, VGA graphics, full speech, and high resolution. 3D didn t work out so well, but until that point, King s Quest was where many players went to get their glimpse of the ever-advancing future. Commander Keen (1990) If you want to experience pure hell, try the average 80s PC platform game. Long before making Doom, the team that would be id Software wanted to prove that the PC could handle experiences that played as smoothly as dedicated consoles. Commander Keen wasn t just a fluid experience by the standards of the time, but a fast one, with pogo-jumping, shooting and big levels to explore. Looking back, it s hard to appreciate what a development it was, but we re talking an era where games like the original Duke Nukem (or Nukum either way, the one who wore a pink suit and watched Oprah) were constantly being held up as the PC s answer to Mario. Commander Keen didn t qualify either, but it paved the way for many sequels and the formation of id itself. A bit of bonus ambition: before making Keen, id tried to convince Nintendo to let it port Super Mario Bros. 3 to the PC by building a working demo (in their off hours in a single week, no less). Nintendo said no thanks, but you can see footage of the demo here . Maniac Mansion (1987) If you made a game like Maniac Mansion right now, people would still rightly call it ambitious. A choice of seven characters, each with their own skills. A non-linear adventure with five different endings depending on choices and characters. Real time elements, like ringing the doorbell and having a character come downstairs to check on it. Puzzles involving multiple characters in different rooms of the house or simply the option to do things like put a kid in an empty swimming pool and then fill it back up. And on top of all of this, Maniac Mansion brought the world the SCUMM system (Script Creation Utility For Maniac Mansion) that would define about half the adventure game market for the next decade. All of this, in 1987. Few adventures have ever done so much. Ultima Underworld (1993) Like most of the games on this list, Ultima Underworld is a fusion between ambitious technology and ambitious design the design side specifically being to take one single dungeon and try to breathe life into it. To add nuance to its different races, there to be talked to instead of just beaten up. The Stygian Abyss wasn t just a battlefield. It was a fallen community. A place to live in. The experience of being thrown into a dungeon and just expected to survive. What really sold it though, if your PC could run it, was the technology. Before even Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld offered a full 3D environment complete with slopes, lighting effects and more, in a bit of technology that could only have been more impressive if well, the viewing window had been a bit bigger. Underworld 2 greatly increased the scope of the game, visiting other worlds and making it a bit easier to see, but what the first one managed remains a technological victory worthy of any heroic age. Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1993) Get used to seeing the word Ultima. Ultima VII came out in 1993, and still games like Divinity: Original Sin measure themselves against its success. Its biggest success was creating a living world, where peasants went home at night, weather blasted the world, your companions had to be fed, and, yes, where you could get some flour and water, mix it into dough, stick it in an oven, and get your own deliciously crispy bread. On top of this was an incredibly mature story that continued the series love of more advanced storytelling than most games of the era (previous ones having tackled racism, the perversion of good, and the quest for a hero worth being called one) with a complex tale of good intentions subverted by an otherworldly being of pure, but incredibly smug malevolence. Ultima Online (1997) Last time! Where Ultima VII brought a living world to single-player RPGs, Ultima Online brought it to multiplayer. It wasn t the first MUD or MMO, but most of them followed the Diku model popularised by Everquest: go forth, slay. Ultima Online wanted to create an actual world, where players would gather resources, craft houses, become shopkeepers and more, with hero just one of the many careers available. It wasn t without its problems, the first of them being the discovery that given a world to explore and exploit, players will typically turn it into a survival of the fittest Hell. But, its scope, its potential, and the joy of it when it worked created an epic experience that s still running today, and stories like the assassination of Lord British that will never cease to amuse. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) The second of the Elder Scrolls games asked one hell of a question: could you make a world with over 750,000 characters and a map the size of Britain actually feel like a world? We re putting this one here instead of Elite, partly to ring the changes, but mostly because few procedural games have pulled it off so well enough political relationships, guilds, interesting stuff to discover, and cool mechanics like being able to get turned into a werewolf or vampire. It s not that difficult to create raw space. Daggerfall s own predecessor Arena offered even more. Its sequel, Morrowind, did what most games tend to, and hand-crafted a far smaller area in intricate detail. But for a moment with Daggerfall, we had a game that showed you could be epic, procedural and interesting, without simplifying everything down to the ASCII style of Rogue or putting all the impetus on the player to pretend that there was more going on behind the surface than was ever going to meet the eye. Duke Nukem 3D (1996) While another case of a game that s not aged all that well, Duke Nukem 3D was the game that took FPS action out of military bases and sewers and relocated it to city streets, cinemas, and other more realistic locations. That plus a complicated scripting system to blow them all up, clever tricks to fake a 3D engine (even though it was only 2.5, much like Doom) and endless imagination took Duke from being a moderate shareware star to the highest tiers of game characters. No wonder the world was willing to wait so long for Duke Nukem Forever. Even if it wasn t worth it, in the end. Outcast (1999) The PC has never really had its own Legend of Zelda. Action. Exploration. A whole new world to explore. Outcast is arguably the closest its come. A graphical powerhouse of a game that immediately impressed with its freedom, with the AI of its characters, with the glorious effects in everything from jumping into water, to your personal scanner rippling gridmarks across the scenery. There was only one problem. It was all done with voxels at a time when 3D cards were finally allowing for decent polygonal worlds, putting all the work on CPUs that couldn t handle it. If you could play it, Outcast was an unforgettable experience. Too bad for most people it was one that had to wait until the GOG version that finally made it run, long after its prime. Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001) It s easy to dismiss the sheer effort that goes into creating a city. After all, we ve walked, run, driven and carjacked around so many. GTA 3 wasn t even the first, with racing games in particular having set the pace. But could you get out of the racing cars and ramble? Enjoy a pumping gangster soundtrack? Run around with automatic weapons and go on missions with a huge cast of crazy characters? Just sit back and listen to an hour of talk radio? Nope. GTA III was magic, and so many sequels on, it s still raising the bar for what virtual cities can and should be. Give or take a few terrible cock jokes, anyway. EVE Online (2003) Ultima Online intended to let players call the shots. It didn t quite work. With EVE Online however, CCP had the courage to actually let it happen, creating one of the most talked about online games of the last few years. Tales of empires at war, of con artistry on a scale that would make Count Lustig blink, the epic sagas of backstabbings and betrayals that no other game can match. CCP likes to describe EVE using the phrase EVE is Real , and while there may not be any starships flying distant galaxies under your favourite forum s command, they still have a point. Civilization (1991) All of human history in a single game? There s not much more to be said, really. As achievements go, the only bigger one would be making it one of the greatest games of all time. Not to cast aspersions on the likes of Elite for creating a universe in slightly fewer bytes than the average person would make in a toothpaste and peperami footlong, but the thing about space is that it is mostly empty. Just saying. The world however, in as many ways as you can imagine? That s ambition, even if using it educationally does mostly teach people never, ever to mess with Gandhi. Deus Ex (2000) Real world. Real conspiracies. Where do we even begin? Deus Ex not only set out to create some of the most realistic real-world locations we d ever seen (not a tautology the games before hadn t exactly done a great job most of the time), but also turn them into nothing short of a psychopath s toolbox. Multiple paths and solutions. Characters who reacted to your decisions. Tiny decisions determining who lives and who dies. All wrapped in some of the best writing and wrapping the PC had known up to this point. There s a reason why so many years on, it s the original Deus Ex that still stands out as both one of the greatest games ever, and the template of a dream for future immersive simulators to study at the feet of as they try to surpass it. Dwarf Fortress (2006) Simulations don t get any deeper than this. Literally, or figuratively. Dwarf Fortress or to give it its full title, SLAVES TO ARMOK: GOOD OF BLOOD, CHAPTER II: DWARF FORTRESS is an ASCII gem best summed up by its creator saying in 2011 that we shouldn t expect version 1.0 for at least twenty years. That s what you get in a game so crazily detailed that a cat can go into a tavern, pick up spilled alcohol on its paws, wash itself off, and get drunk. This was never intended behaviour, just the sum of smaller sub-routines coming together and making their own reality. In retrospect, that twenty years to complete doesn t sound so much at all. Half-Life 2 (2004) In a way, Half-Life 2 s most ambitious part isn t even in the game. Valve had an idea for a new store, called Steam . You might have heard of it. Half-Life 2 was, if not its Trojan horse, then its vanguard. You wanted to play the best FPS ever made at the time? Then you got it through Steam. And that worked out pretty well. Even if you ignore Steam, Half-Life 2 reinvented the shooter with its focus on physics, with every chapter introducing new mechanics and new exciting concepts like the gravity gun or playing point-defense with turrets. It also created a continuous world like no other, putting the final nail into the coffin of games that didn t prize a sense of presence as well as place in their shooter campaigns. Much copied, but still rarely bettered, Half-Life 2 set out to be both the best shooter around, and its next great leap forwards. Planetside (2003) Some games just shouldn t be possible. Even knowing the technology that powers them, the epic battles of the Planetside series have always had a degree of magic to them. For the handful of players lucky enough to have a system and connection that could handle it, heading out into one of Planetside s huge battles is a defining moment in games. For the rest, it says a lot that it still felt just as impressive when Planetside 2 rolled along only a couple of years ago. 5v5? 12v12? That s all well and good. But an explosive, expanding, all-access battlefield where the war never stops? That s military action with a little sorcery mixed into the formula, even today. Spore (2008) It failed. Yes, we know. It failed. But this is ambitious games we re talking about, and few games shot higher than Spore. Leading a tiny organism through every stage of life. Constructing it using the surprisingly powerful and fun editor. Sending it out to meet other players aliens in a great throbbing galaxy full of freshly created life. That may have been the point where the charm ran out, but the open-ended action and procedural generation and early focus on user generated content that led up to that point still stands out as a technological, if not gaming success. Crysis (2007) "But can it run Crysis?" was a relevant joke among PC gamers for at least three years for good reason: well after 2007, Crytek's shooter could still bring CPUs and graphics cards to their knees. Crysis took Half-Life 2's early use of physics and applied it to a dense, free-roaming world. Being able to shoot a tree, watch it fall over, and then shoot the trunk into smaller pieces was revelatory players gladly gave up framerate in favor of insane graphics and physics processing. Cutting edge AI and the systems-driven sandbox gave Crysis the depth to match its insane graphics, and no shooter since has managed quite the same combination of wow and substance. DayZ (2012) From its beginnings as a popular mod, DayZ spawned one of the most popular genres in gaming today. The framework for this multiplayer zombie survival game was Arma 2, up until that point one of the most ambitious simulation games and a bastion for fidelity and scale on PC. DayZ built upon Arma 2 s ambition, borrowing and later adapting its 225 km2 terrain, Chernarus, which was created from satellite-modeled slices of the Czech Republic. The month that DayZ caught on, creator Dean Hall was already laying out incredible plans about features he wanted to add, as he told us in an interview . Underground structures. Dog companions. Realistic disease systems. A couple months later we were hearing about destructible terrain and player cities. Part of Hall s stated approach was to experiment with big, bad ideas, but the reality of implementing them quickly in Arma s Real Virtuality engine for DayZ proved to be a massive challenge. Outside of these early technical roadblocks, as a multiplayer game DayZ was uniquely trusting. The systems that DayZ inherited from Arma granted it some depth, and being dropped into a massive, hostile environment with no instruction empowered players to tell their own stories, often through surprising, weird interactions with other survivors. Our 2012 mod of the year remains in Early Access after arriving on Steam as a standalone game on December 2013. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) It s amazing to think that in just three games, CD Projekt Red has gone from unknown studio to absolute top-tier RPG developer. The Witcher 3 is their masterpiece, from the hand-crafted world to the sheer number of characters and plots. It s a game that excels on every level, from scripting subtle enough for a character to break off combat when they hear your name, to the global nature of some of the most amazing graphics and scenery in any PC game ever, and the sheer artistry of just about every major quest or aside. You never know what s coming next, from the teary humanity of the Bloody Baron s agonising storyline , to a gaggle of Witchers drinking too much, dressing up in drag, and drunk-dialling wizards across the whole continent. Star Citizen (20XX?) No, it s not out yet. It doesn t matter. Chris Roberts play to create the ultimate space game already qualifies. Elite style action combined with a dedicated, AAA Wing Commander-style campaign starring Mark Hamill. First person action aboard ships. Deep space exploration. A persistent universe allowing for company, or the solitude of the stars. A crowd-funded budget of $117,259,371 and counting, with players happily putting down real money for in-game ships and unlocking features like pets and modular ship designs and new AI characters to scatter around on planetside environments. If it s not the greatest game ever, expect literal, physical riots. |
| 13/12/2014 | Today's Deal: Save 75% on SPORE™ !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time |
| 04/06/2014 | Today's Deal: Save 75% on SPORE™ !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time |
| 02/05/2014 | <p><img alt="" src="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/14/apr/mars.jpg" /></p> <p><em><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/06/soren-song-civilization-iv-designer-founds-mohawk-games/">Mohawk Games</a> is an excellent name for a company. And so it is that former <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/3900/">Civilization IV</a> lead designer and <a href="http://www.spore.com/ftl">Spore</a> man Soren Johnson approaches me sporting the company haircut. It’s a recent trim job for the old headshrub, he tells me, but he wears it well. However, the brain beneath the mohawk – the mind behind some of strategy gaming’s greatest greats – is the real main attraction here. Johnson’s goal is to design “core strategy games” in conjunction with Civ V art director Dorian Newcomb and in partnership with <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/Galactic-Civilizations-III/">Galactic Civilizations</a> (no relation) developer <a href="https://www.stardock.com/">Stardock</a>. </em></p> <p><em>First on the docket? A still unnamed Mars economy RTS with no units and 13 different resource types. Is it madness? Probably, but it’s the good kind, the kind that drives a man to shave off most of his hair before a business conference, the kind that sounds wicked fun when people exchange fireside tales of their favorite matches.</em></p> <p><em>Go below for a discussion with both men about how the game works, boardgame influences, how videogames might be able to replicate boardgaming’s face-to-face appeal, designing strategy that’s extremely complex but also accessible, release plans, and heaps more.</em></p> <p> … [<a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/02/soren-johnson-mars-interview/">visit site to read more</a>]</p> |
| 20/11/2013 | This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills . When Paul Weir gave a talk at GDC 2011 about GRAMPS, the generative audio system he designed for Eidos Montreal’s Thief, the games press took notice. Not so much of the contents, though, or indeed the subject, just Thief. Here, finally, was a chance to get something on this oh so secretive game. Maybe, while prattling on about ‘sounds’ and stuff, he’d toss them a headline or two, get ‘em some clicks. Suspecting as much, Weir recommended to his audience that anyone just there for Thief nooz should probably leave the room. Some people did. We can often seem deaf to game audio in the same way we’re blind to animation. Maybe it’s because the best examples of both are so natural and chameleonic that they blend into a game’s broader objectives. Maybe it has to be Halo ostentatious or Amon Tobin trendy just to prick up our ears; or make the screen flash pretty colours. Or maybe Brian Eno has to be involved, as we’ll come to in a minute. (more…) |
| 06/11/2013 | Soren Johnson is a clever man. He was a programmer on Civilization 3, the lead designer on Civilization IV, and then he moved over to Maxis to work on Spore. Now he’s building himself a new home by founding Mohawk Games, a studio dedicated to creating “core strategy games”. (more…) |
| 18/04/2013 | Today's Deal: Save 75% on SPORE ! Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! |
| 21/03/2013 | <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpd7xsr68jpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpd7xsr68jpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_0 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a>On November 6, 2012 a profoundly simple game called <em>Curiosity</em> was officially launched on iPhones, inviting people to chisel away at a massive cube composed of millions of blocks.</p> <p>Players from around the world started poking at the cube. There was a stupendous prize inside that would take players, working in unison, ages to unlock. Presumably to alleviate boredom, <em>Curiosity</em> gamers tried to make their mark, by chipping out the shape of some letters or a simple picture.</p> <p>According to an official time stamp on Twitter, in the wee hours of November 5, some players had actually already downloaded into the game. They were cracking blocks. And on day -1, what did they etch into that massive blank block?</p> <p>A penis.</p> <p>Why are people doing this? Oh, this called for investigative report, of course! This article, which is all about the results of that investigation, is, obviously, <strong>NSFW...</strong> <!-- %JUMP:More »% --></p> <div class="twitter-embed"> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" align="center"> <p>And of course no game is complete without dicks. (22cans' Curiosity, out now for ios!) <a href="http://t.co/FYeqPqA0" title="http://twitter.com/randyzero/status/265677768153509889/photo/1">twitter.com/randyzero/stat…</a></p> — Randy O'Connor (@randyzero) <a href="https://twitter.com/randyzero/status/265677768153509889">November 6, 2012</a></blockquote> <object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uwCEBEAKh6o"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uwCEBEAKh6o" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: uwCEBEAKh6o --> <em>Minecraft</em> (45 blocks long, 27 high, and 13 blocks wide)</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: Ik1gsLzAEfg --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ik1gsLzAEfg"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ik1gsLzAEfg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: Ik1gsLzAEfg --> <em>Call of Duty</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: Xcy1VsCt5xY --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xcy1VsCt5xY"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xcy1VsCt5xY" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: Xcy1VsCt5xY --> <em>LittleBigPlanet</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: GVuzmADOGDw --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GVuzmADOGDw"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GVuzmADOGDw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: GVuzmADOGDw --> <em>Trials Evolution</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpj510ybkpng/medium.png" width="300" class="image_2 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /> <em>ModNation Racers</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: 3Lr4JA_fWdM --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3Lr4JA_fWdM"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3Lr4JA_fWdM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: 3Lr4JA_fWdM --> <em>Halo Reach</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpj577r40jpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpj577r40jpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_3 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a> <em>Skyrim</em> (From gamer Papidamelo's "XXL Penis Flaccid Cut and Uncut Nude Male" mod, downloaded about 6,000 times since its creation in February 2012 and the rare example in these mods of a male modder suggesting they're adding a penis to a game because they find them attractive "Not everyone playing skyrim is str8," he's written on mod message board.)</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: SUBk4qrfX0g --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SUBk4qrfX0g"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SUBk4qrfX0g" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: SUBk4qrfX0g --> <em>Garry's Mod</em></p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: q0zKPdGQUNQ --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q0zKPdGQUNQ"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q0zKPdGQUNQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: q0zKPdGQUNQ --> <em>Scribblenauts</em> (Well, ok, not really… but they <em>tried</em>.)</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p>Even if you think it's not possible to draw a penis in a game, people have done it.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: 26f-KW7I8OM --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/26f-KW7I8OM"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/26f-KW7I8OM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: 26f-KW7I8OM --> <em>Grand Theft Auto IV</em>? Penis-bike.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: mbSfUOuTF0w --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mbSfUOuTF0w"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mbSfUOuTF0w" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: mbSfUOuTF0w --> <em>Battlefield 3</em>? Gamer Oli Gill drew this one with virtual C4.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <center>***</center> <p>Why is this?</p> <p>For the last six months I've not come up with a good answer. I've been asking. I've asked game designers. I've asked gamers. I've asked scientists. I haven't been investigating this constantly. There are, truth be told, better things a reporter can do with their time than to keep asking why people seem to love drawing dicks.</p> <p>Nevertheless, I did inquire. A bunch.</p> <div class="modfont" style="float: right; width: 190px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 25px; line-height: 0.85em; font-size: 1.85em; color: black; padding: 16px;">Game designer Frank Lantz: "You might as well use the question ‘Why do people draw dongs?' as a proxy for ‘Why are we here?'"</div> <p>"There are many different possible explanatory frameworks for considering this question: Freudian, Marxist, Feminist, Deconstructionist, Evolutionary-Psychologist, Existentialist, etc," game designer and head of New York University's game studies program, Frank Lantz, told me last fall when I began to interrogate the matter.</p> <p>"You might as well use the question ‘Why do people draw dongs?' as a proxy for ‘Why are we here?' 'What is the good life?' ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?' or any other Big Philosophical Question."</p> <p>We probably all have good guesses, right? People draw penises because they think it'll shock people or because it's one of society's few visual taboos and because they're not that hard to draw.</p> <p>I live in New York City, and if you keep your eyes open for them, as I have, you'll spot penis graffiti all over the place.</p> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpp2a762mjpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpp2a762mjpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_4 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a> Around the corner from the office.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpp28aivgjpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpp28aivgjpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_5 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a>On the C-train.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p>It's part of our culture.</p> <p><!-- videoId: fzuvQXDUybE --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fzuvQXDUybE"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fzuvQXDUybE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: fzuvQXDUybE --> In the 2007 movie <em>Superbad</em> Jonah Hill's character confesses that he spent his childhood drawing pictures of penises.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpyxh70g5jpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_6 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." />But you can go back way further than 2007 to chart this societal obsession. You can go back to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant">massive chalk drawing</a> on a hill in England, circa the early 1600s. (Image <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6485576">via Google Earth</a>)</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p>Or go all the way back to the oldest petroglyph ever discovered on Earth. We're talking about the oldest rock carving by a person <em>anywhere</em>. Carved, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032228">scientists say</a>, supposedly about 10,000 years ago.</p> <p><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gpyxi273hjpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_7 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." />Here's a sketch that illustrates the carving's elements, <a href="http://io9.com/5887633/one-of-humanitys-earliest-drawings-was-depicted-with-an-enormous-phallus">via our friends at io9</a>.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <center>***</center> <p>As prepared as you may be to see someone draw a penis in any and every game, it can still be jarring to see, say, Sonic the Hedgehog replaced with one.</p> <p>But of course you can:</p> <p><!-- videoId: RsM2ZbQtulM --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RsM2ZbQtulM"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RsM2ZbQtulM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: RsM2ZbQtulM --> The creator of this bit of outsider art is a YouTube user named Daku Neko, who makes a lot of mods that replace characters with, well, not always penises. You've seen Sonic replaced with a penis. Daku Neko also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMPjvfqfZp8">replaced Sonic</a> with the <em>Wind Waker</em> version of <em>Zelda</em> hero Link… and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSn2yK-dPZY">with the Pokemon Lucario. Each of those videos is about a 50th as popular as the Sonic-as-penis one.</a></p> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSn2yK-dPZY"></a> <p>I recently reached out to Daku Neko to find out why he does this stuff. No response yet, though my message to him may simply not have reached his residence. According to Skype contact info, he resides in "fuckville." He'd announced the mod on YouTube with the line: "FUCKING PENISES EVERYWHERE." So much for making that the headline of this piece.</p> <p><em><strong>UPDATE:</strong> I heard from Daku Neko, who writes: "Why did i make a penis mod for Sonic Generations? BECAUSE I'M BAT-SHIT INSANE!"</em></p> <p>That question of "why would you do this" is often met with a "why not"? But it also seems to act almost as a universal challenge, as if we as a society have agreed that there's one thing that is potentially creatable in any game and that everyone has a shot at making it. And that something is, it seems, a penis.</p> <p>That's the message I feel I'm getting from gamer "illegalmonkey", who posted a helpful video on YouTube showing how to make a penis in the character editor of fighting game <em>Soul Calibur V</em>.</p> <p><!-- videoId: 0D4E9XddX5M --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0D4E9XddX5M"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0D4E9XddX5M" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: 0D4E9XddX5M --> "Why make this video you ask?" Illegalmonkey asked of illegalmonkey in the description below the video. "Why, to showcase the character creation tool in Soul Calibur 5 of course!! And c'mon, let's face it. If Namco didn't want us to make shit like this they wouldn't have given us the tools to do so, so exactly!"</p> <p>That <em>Minecraft</em> penis higher up in this article was built by a YouTube user called MinecraftManifestTV, who also built the self-professed <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odr5kz1P8UU&list=UUjLJ7njc5-aGpPs4GW-bbZw&index=13">largest wheatfield</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AXrsR_iXf0&list=UUjLJ7njc5-aGpPs4GW-bbZw&index=10">largest diamond</a> in the game.</p> <div class="modfont" style="float: right; width: 190px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 25px; line-height: 0.85em; font-size: 1.85em; color: black; padding: 16px;">Gamer illegalmonkey: "If Namco didn't want us to make shit like this they wouldn't have given us the tools to do so, so exactly!"</div> <p>He's by no means the only creator of penises in <em>Minecraft</em>. Still, it seems, that he got some flak for making them and felt the need to offer the following defense below his video: "Just because I made a penis in minecraft it doesn't mean I'm gay. I have been dating the same girl for almost 3 years now. As for me not 'having a life', Minecraft is a hobby of mine. I want to make minecraft videos for a living, so I need to put my time and effort into it. I already have a fulltime job, and go to college. I would call that a life. I built this for the sake of having the title of "first functional minecraft penis" built. I obviously don't need this, and there is no purpose for it. I just seen it as a fun challenge. Subscribe if you want to see more."</p> <p><em>Minecraft</em> may be today's premiere video game for drawing penises, but before that game there was <em>Spore</em>. The ambitious evolution simulator included a malleable creature creator that enabled people to make adorable or horrifying creatures in virtually any shape that you'd normally be able to mush clay into.</p> <p>The creature creator was released before the game, which means that before there was <em>Spore</em> there were already <em>Spore</em> penises.</p> <p>"I do know that I was very pleasantly surprised by the awesome creatures the <em>Something Awful</em> forums produced when we released the creature editor ahead of the game," game designer Chris Hecker, who helped make <em>Spore</em> told me last year. <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/d/comedy-goldmine/goons-spore-creature.php?page=8">Here's a batch of those creations</a>. "They were incredibly creative, and sure, there were a few dongs, but for the most part the creatures were amazing and intricate and thoughtful, even the Sporn ones!"</p> <p><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gq0wb31kzjpg/medium.jpg" width="300" class="image_8 v10_medium" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." />An example of a <em>Spore</em> "dong."</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><em>Something Awful</em> users didn't have the monopoly on <em>Spore</em> penises.</p> <p>There are plenty:</p> <p><!-- videoId: rI7Cfh5ToIc --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rI7Cfh5ToIc"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rI7Cfh5ToIc" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: rI7Cfh5ToIc --> .</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: 26NjZ7vjGsE --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/26NjZ7vjGsE"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/26NjZ7vjGsE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: 26NjZ7vjGsE --> .</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p><!-- videoId: QH_DjJx24jw --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QH_DjJx24jw"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QH_DjJx24jw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: QH_DjJx24jw --> Here's a how-two.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <p>And there's this one which more than 400,000 people have looked at on YouTube:</p> <p><!-- videoId: ddRGxtIs5VU --><object width="425" height="349"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ddRGxtIs5VU"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ddRGxtIs5VU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="333" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"> </embed> </object><!-- /videoId: ddRGxtIs5VU --> "I do think the "push the boundaries" instinct is important to how games work for people, too," Hecker said, but he doubts that gamers are any more drawn to drawing penises than, say, kids who scribble on school binders or people who are sitting in bathroom stalls with a writing instrument at hand.</p> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <center>***</center> <p>The late game designer Jeff Freeman noticed all this dick-drawing and coined a wonderful phrase: "<a href="%20http://rubenfield.com/?p=91">Time to cock</a>," or, "The amount of time it takes a player to use player-created-content tools to create a penis. Measured in microseconds."</p> <div class="modfont" style="float: right; width: 190px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 25px; line-height: 0.85em; font-size: 1.85em; color: black; padding: 16px;">The late game designer Jeff Freeman noticed all this dick-drawing and coined a wonderful phrase: "Time to cock."</div> <p>Freeman's phrase is funny. It's also perfect, because it encapsulates the sense of gamers racing to draw these penises within contraints seemingly not made to permit this action. That they do draw them isn't just a marvel of misbehavior but often a milestone of ingenuity.</p> <p>The online "urban dictionary" <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=time%20to%20cock">traces</a> the "time to cock" notion back to the late-90's massively multiplayer online game <em>Ultima Online</em>. Supposedly someone realized that you could take fish in the game and lay them on the ground in a pattern for others to see. The pattern they chose was a penis.</p> <p>"Every time we've given people the ability to arrange things of their own-bread, ships-inevitably people want to leave a mark that people recognize," <em>Ultima</em>'s lead creator Richard Garriott recently told me when he recently visited our offices in New York. That mark they leave, he said, is "not just something like ‘Killroy was here,' but something that was purposefully shocking or affronting. And if you're going to draw a purposefully affronting and shocking thing, a stick and balls is a pretty good easy basis to create a reaction."</p> <p>Like Hecker and others in gaming, Garriott doesn't think this tendency to draw penises is unique to gamers. He also doesn't think it always has to be shocking. In come cultures, it's not.</p> <p>"People's proclivity when brought into a new world to want to mark their new territory most commonly with things with a phallic nature, I actually do think this is something that transcends games," he said. He cited primitive art and its three common variations: beautifully symmetric objects made with skill, such as spear tips; images of big-breasted women or phalluses.</p> <p>The globe-trotting game developer told me that he and his wife recently made a trip to the nation of Bhutan, country that had been isolated from Western culture for a long time. He recalled them attending a fertility ritual. "It is interesting to note that in all of the country of Bhutan, this is the decoration," he added, handing me a color print-out of the following:</p> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gq6tmmd9sjpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gq6tmmd9sjpg/xlarge.jpg" width="640" class="image_9 wide v10_wide" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a></p> <p>"This is what we found all over the doors of people's houses…</p> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gq6tlyg56jpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gq6tlyg56jpg/xlarge.jpg" width="640" class="image_10 wide v10_wide" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a></p> <p>"Painted on the sides of buildings…"</p> <p><a rel="lytebox" href="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gqarm7zs1jpg/original.jpg"><img src="http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18i6gqarm7zs1jpg/xlarge.jpg" width="640" class="image_11 wide v10_wide" alt="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." title="Why Do People Love To Draw Dicks in Games? An Investigative Report." /></a></p> <p>"All through downtown areas is the cult of the ejaculating phallus. No one was shy about it. It wasn't considered obscene in any shape or form. It is clearly something that is universal that transcends games."</p> <center>***</center> <p>I sought scientific expertise to find out why people do this stuff. The response I got from psychiatrists and psychologists amounted to "good question" and "I've never seen a study about it."</p> <p>Author Tom Hickman's book "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis" ("a blow-by-blow account") is full of fascinating and uproarious details that even explain where words like "dick" and "cock" come from, but it too fails to fully explain this obsession.</p> <p>"I am not sure I know the answer to your question but have some suggestions," the bio-psychologist <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/nigel-barber-phd">Nigel Barber</a> recently told me over e-mail.</p> <p>He rattled off some ideas, which I do think help. "Male genitals are covered in most societies even if people wear no other clothes," he offered, "Implication is that genital display is potentially rude or offensive."</p> <p>And in the animal kingdom? "In squirrel monkeys and other species, the erect penis is part of an aggressive threat display. Mandrills also said to have automimicry of genitals in facial display according to early German ethologistWolfgang Wickler. Possibly applies to humans?"</p> <p>Jesse Bering, author of "<a href="http://www.jessebering.com/">Why is the Penis Shaped like That?</a>" gamely tossed around some ideas: "First, I'd be willing to bet that nearly all such phallic graffiti were by male hands. I can't imagine girls/women scribbling naughty images of penises to the extent that boys/men seem preoccupied with doing so. If one wants to get a bit Freudian, perhaps it's a way of making public what one isn't allowed to show in public otherwise, a sort of symbolic "unzipping" which may bring some catharsis. It's exhibitionism but not quite exhibitionism, if you catch my drift."</p> <p>"My first instinct is say that the dick joke never goes out of style — especially for adolescent males," <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/nando-pelusi-phd">Nando Pelusi</a> told me. He is a contributing editor at <em>Psychology Today</em> and a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavior therapy was willing to take a swing at this too.</p> <p>Why not?</p> <p>"Pubertal male primates show their genitalia only after status has been achieved through either brute strength or brains," he said. "In fact genitalia get attacked directly by male primates defending their territory from intruders, because the penis is the locus of competition. Status, for humans and other primates, means access to mates, a very competitive thing.</p> <div class="modfont" style="float: right; width: 190px; margin: 10px 0px 10px 25px; line-height: 0.85em; font-size: 1.85em; color: black; padding: 16px;">Psychologist Nando Pelusi: "Few people are indifferent to an erect penis, because it is either a challenge, or come-on, or declaration of status."</div> <p>"In an anonymous context, like most graffiti in the modern world, a drawing of a dick is a proximate way of signaling in a manner that is not easily ignored something that most males wouldn't do publicly (at least from an evolutionarily relevant point of view) because it would get called out or punished.</p> <p>"Usually, penises get covered or sheathed, otherwise males tend to feel very self-conscious; I think that shame evolved as adaptation to social forces that had real consequences for most of human history where punishment and group cohesion could mean life or death, especially for males establishing their status, so graffiti is usually done secretly and anonymously. Few people are indifferent to an erect penis, because it is either a challenge, or come-on, or declaration of status. Males do most graffiti, and pubertal males are most interested in their newfound obsessions; anything relating to status, making your mark — sometimes literally.</p> <p>"Males compete for females, and the erect penis is a flag that gets unfurled only when you're very confident — unless it's done with a crayon late at night (what we might call the "pussy's" way out)."</p> <p>Sound right?</p> <center>***</center> <p>As much as gamers draw penises in games; game developers, officially, don't. We may see breasts a fair amount in games. But penises? It's <a href="http://kotaku.com/5154550/gta-iv-the-lost-and-damned-also-adds-full-frontal-nudity">shocking and rare</a> when a developer puts one in there on purpose.</p> <p>Nevertheless, everyone's got a good anecdote about penis-drawing in games. Since I started telling some colleagues I was looking into this, they'd regularly send me screenshots and videos of the new penises in new games. Developers would always have a laugh about this, too, even though, yes, companies <a href="http://kotaku.com/5958430/nintendo-created-a-penis+drawing-inferno">responsibly try</a> to make sure that penis content isn't shown to innocent eyes.</p> <p>Here's a final anecdote for you, from Jeremiah Slaczka, creative director at <a href="http://www.5thcell.com/">5TH Cell</a>, where, among other games, they created a kid-friendly DS adventure called <em>Drawn to Life</em>. The game let players draw their own lead character and parts of the game world.</p> <p>"We did a promotion for <em>Drawn to Life</em>, a flash contest where you use the same drawing tool that's in the DS game to make a hero character," he told me a few months ago. "We'd then include that character in the final game as a template you could choose if you wanted. This is a contest, you have to draw something, then fill out an entry form then submit it to us.</p> <p>"One third of the submissions were penis characters of varying artistic quality.</p> <p>"Not only did they draw it—have a laugh and then close the window—they had to fill out a form and then know they'd have to submit the work and their info (probably fake) to win a contest which they knew they'd never win.</p> <p>"It's THAT compelling."</p> <p>His theory?</p> <p>"Its' pushing boundries in its simplest form, like ‘I know I'm not supposed to, but since nothing is stopping me I will. In grade school we did it on paper. we don't, because there's no rule stopping us. But inside a game, there is. They know. They want to break the rule."</p> <p><small>The original headline for this story was: "The Irrepressible Ingenuity Of People Who Draw Dicks In Video Games"</small></p> |
| 04/03/2013 | Following a struggle with the tech folks following a fault in the SimCity press servers, the lost city of Fahey's Folly —aka the SimCity on the Edge of Forever—was found once again. In celebration, I unleashed red-hot dino fury. Since I'll be using my own Origin account and retail servers for our upcoming SimCity review, Fahey's Folly didn't have long to live anyway. I think destruction by a Spore -looking Godzilla stand-in is what the city would have wanted. The scaly bugger doesn't do all that much damage anyway—this video is actually the third of three dino attacks. Thanks to the GlassBox engine, any destroyed buildings are quickly replaced once the rubble has been bulldozed. Natural disasters just aren't what they used to be. EA assures me that the bug that kept me from my city was an issue with the private servers the press preview are being held on, and should not affect retail customers, so hopefully noone should have to lose something they love, get it back and then kill it ever again. At least not in SimCity . |
| 18/09/2012 | People become gamers by accident, usually when they're young. A school-friend's console turns them into one. Or a parent hands them their first controller. It happens naturally. But being a PC gamer...as far as I've been able to tell, that happens on purpose. That's something you declare. It's no accident. It's an effort, a conscious act. I once was a PC gamer. Then I stopped, for years. Soon, I'll start again. I'm ready. Who a PC Gamer Is For most of my gaming life, the no-stress ease of the gaming console suited me well. I drive automatic transmission after all, not stick. I don't have any desire to lift the hood of a car. Tinkering is barely a pleasure; maintenance is something to pay others for. I recently installed a ceiling fan and only shocked myself slightly. That was enough home improvement for me. The PC gamer, I've observed, is the person who will lift the hood of a car. They tinker. They fix. They expect things to not run perfectly and they assume the responsibility to make them run better. The console gamer waits for a patch. The PC gamer finds one. Or makes one. My PC Days, Pre-Nintendo I was a PC Gamer in 1985, when, despite my complaints, my parents bought a Commodore 64. I still recall my bizarre reaction, as I complained to my mother that using a computer was "cheating". Strange, I know, but that's how I first came to think of computers. To me, they were shortcut creators. That was their power. We did word processing through Bank Street Writer and practiced typing with a game that involved a wizard whose spell-casts I can still hear in my mind today. We got a lot of games. Snooper Troops stands out, as does Test Drive and a batch of Accolade adventures. I played Spy Hunter off of a cartridge and Impossible Mission off of a floppy disc. My favorite game was LucasArts' Labyrinth , a text adventure that turned into a graphical adventure based on the Jim Henson movie. But here's the perfect PC gaming twist: We made some games. Basic stuff. My brother and I typed in programming code from Run magazine . I have no idea what we typed in, and I'm sure we never intentionally deviated from the code listed in the magazine. Nevertheless, that was as under-the-hood as I'd ever get. The PC gamer, I've observed, is the person who will lift the hood of a car. They tinker. They fix. I liked playing games on a computer, partially because that was the only machine we had games on. We'd had an Odyssey 2, not an Atari, but neglected it by the time the C64 arrived. Maybe it broke. I don't remember. We'd eventually get a Nintendo Entertainment System, later than any of my friends did, and soon we'd have an IBM PC, too (maybe a 286; probably a 386). My brother preferred the computer; I glided toward Mario and Nintendo. He played Microsoft Flight Simulator . A lot. Downstairs, my C64 pulled me back in because we got a modem for it. I logged into a service called Quantum Link , the proto-AOL that included Club Caribe , a LucasArts-looking graphical chat room with avatars and palm trees and whatnot. The gaming diet in my home was typical. We got Tetris on the NES and we got SimCity on the PC. SimCity became an obsession. SimCity produced the worst gaming purchase decision of my life, when my mother gave me the choice of getting SimCity CD or SimCity 2000 . The latter was an actual sequel; a complex improvement over the original. But I asked for CD , a re-packaging of the original game, but with live-action cut-scenes added in (click on the one in this article, if you dare). Thanks, PC gaming: you were making me feel stupid even back then. We got Myst , of course, and I think I solved all of it. Took notes, even. Minimum Specs, High Prices and the Breaking Point Our IBM 486 begat a Pentium 1? 2? I don't recall. One of those went to college with me, along with a copy of SimTower and some helicopter sim. This was 1994, and it was the year I learned about minimum specs and started loathing PC gaming. SimTower only ran well when my tower was one story high. Add more floors and the game started to chug. The helicopter game was smooth during take-off, but not during the moment of having a missile fired at me. I'd brought a Super Nintendo with me to college as well. It did not cause me these kinds of problems. Yoshi's Island just worked and only slowed down when you hit the fuzzy enemies that were programmed to make it seem like Yoshi had suddenly become drunk. PC gaming began to piss me off. My computer was sort of new and already couldn't run new games well. I think we bought me a new computer. Soon enough, it was lagging as well, and soon enough I was buying my last PC game. I used my computer in college to write term papers. I used my Super Nintendo as a trade-in for a Nintendo 64. I didn't hear about any PC games that were as cool as Super Mario 64 back then, and, as it's been chronicled, I totally missed Doom . I lived without Civilization and without Quake . I lived without Baldur's Gate and without Fallout . I never played Half-Life , never touched Deus Ex . In my later years in college I worked part-time at a magazine. The art director there was the first person I met who loved Macs. Somehow that led to me goofing off at work sometimes, playing Spaceward Ho! . This art director guy, Ken, raved about a Doom -like game for the Mac called Marathon . I had no interest. I had GoldenEye on my N64. I didn't need any other first-person shooter. The thing I liked about Macs, from the way my friend at work described them, is that they seemed airtight. They seemed hassle-free. They seemed, more or less, like consoles. So when I went to grad school right after college, I got my first laptop. It was a Mac. So was my second, and nary a game ever ran on those machines. Gaming was for my N64, then for my GameCube, my Game Boy Advance, my PlayStation 2, or, briefly, for the Dreamcast I borrowed from a friend. I'd often hear that PC gaming was better, but when I'd do the math, I'd realize it was also ridiculously more expensive. So I lived without it. I lived without Civilization and without Quake . I lived without Baldur's Gate and without Fallout . I never played Half-Life , never touched Deus Ex . When I only owned a GameCube, I knew enough that I was missing things to spring for a PS2 and then an Xbox, but PC gaming lived on the other side of a wall I could not afford to surmount, not with the fear that as soon as I bought a PC for today's games, I'd discover it couldn't run tomorrow's. Fear. That's What It Was. In my second long-term job after grad school, I made a friend who loved Fallout and who foisted a dual copy of Fallout / Fallout 2 into my hands. I don't remember which computer I tried it on. I think I had a Windows-based tower PC at the time, not for games but for word-processing, checking e-mail and using the web. I loaded the first game, liked it, but got stuck. I'd made my hero too mediocre. He couldn't talk his way past some mean guards. Couldn't fight them too. I backed away from PC gaming again. I moved in with my girlfriend and she went out for a full Saturday once. During that Saturday I went from level 1 to level 12 as a Tauren Druid in World of Warcraft . That was the first and last MMO I'd ever played. Too much work. My fear of PC gaming persisted. Being a PC gamer would demand too much, I had decided. Too much money. Too much time. Too much work. It was ridiculous to me that just about nothing could run Crysis . I could sleep at night without having played Doom 3 . But from time to time I'd hear about a new PC game that must have reminded me of the top-down fun of those old SimCity s. A guy named Peter Molyneux concocted the likes of Black & White and The Movies , sims about being god or a movie mogul, respectively. Games like this started arriving in my mailbox from game publishers who wanted to catch the eye of someone who was now a game reporter. I had no computer that could run things well. Loading a PC game, for me, was like making a new friend, waving to them and then watching them have a heart attack. PC gaming frustrated me, because I could not make sense of it. Search engines never produced the right solutions to my technical woes. I had the wrong drivers or the wrong graphics card. I didn't know. Maybe more RAM would help, or maybe my processor just sucked. I didn't want to guess if the game I was buying was going to work. I didn't want to always feel that, even if it did, it could run better if only my machine was different. I got an Xbox 360. It didn't give me these headaches. People began talking about a game called Spore . It was only going to be on PC. I was a game reporter by the time it was close to release. I interviewed people who were making it. So I bought a gaming laptop—yes, a laptop, an acquiescence to the New York city-dweller's lack of space. It ran Spore —the first video game I spent $1500 to play—just fine. Too bad the game wasn't that good. The Allure of the Indies As I made a name for myself as a video game reporter, the good people behind the Independent Games Festival invited me to judge indie games. They'd send me half-made works of wonderfully imaginative creators. After years of playing consoles games—after years of never having touched a mod—the first batch of indie games I downloaded to try on my gaming laptop were the rawest games I'd seen in decades. The rawest games I'd seen since those ones my brother and I typed into our C64. I struggled to get some of these games to run. Some were bad; some just badly made. But they fascinated me. I played Braid this way, more than a year before it came out. I played batches of physics games and shooters, some weird adventure games and other creations that were more abstract. For one thrilling week per 52, I was gaming on the frontier instead of on the safe terrain of consoles. For several years, I only played PC games once a year, when it was time to judge games for the IGF. That was an uptick in my rate of PC gaming. It gave me one thrilling week per 52 when I was gaming on the frontier rather than on the safe terrain of the Xbox 360, the Wii and the PlayStation 3. A few years back, I had the sense not to tell the folks at Valve Software that the Steam press account that they gave me—the account that would unlock, for free, the majority of games available on Steam—was something I couldn't really use. I could play some indie games, but I couldn't run a lot of other games from Steam. Or, maybe I could. I wouldn't. I'd fancied myself a gaming omnivore, diving into games on any console or handheld, but I'd made a dietary exception for PC gaming. That was just too much. And, I must admit, I did not mind the signs of PC gaming's decline, because I knew it would leave me fewer gaming platforms to worry about. (To make matters worse/slightly-better, I did use my Steam account to redeem Bejeweled 3 , which I liked very much. Defcon , too.) Time For a Comeback My gaming laptop is now obsolete. It hasn't been able to run any new games of note in a few years. I'd stuck to consoles, handhelds and iOS devices for my gaming since then. In these last few years, I fully lost my ability to call myself a PC gamer, something this chronology shows I let slip away, bit by bit. I can no longer ignore it, and I now feel as if I am missing an extraordinarily exciting section of gaming. I won't ignore it any longer. Two years ago, I should have been playing a lot of Minecraft and The Witcher . One year ago, I should have tried Amnesia . This year, I should have been playing DayZ . I couldn't play Star Wars: The Old Republic . I can't play League of Legends . I could Bootcamp my Macbook Air, but I don't think that would be the right way to dive into the world of the so very many fascinating, indie games being made for the PC. My computer gaming diet can't simply consist of the oddly captivating FarmVille 2 that runs now in my browser. I need to try FTL . I need to be ready for Cube World . I need to play a Paradox game, at long last. And I need to be ready, appropriately enough, for a new SimCity . There is a cardboard box at my feet right now. In it is a brand-new gaming PC. It's a laptop, space still being tight. But it's my ticket back. I don't know if I ever really was one, considering all the classics I missed, but I'm ready, at least to make the effort. I will be a PC gamer. It's finally important to me. |
| 31/01/2012 | You-hoo, PC gamers, there's a juicy sale going on over at EA's digital distribution shop Origin. In the Origin sale , you can pick up Mass Effect 1 and Dead Space 1 for the rock-bottom price of £3. Dead Space 2 will only set you back £7.50, Mass Effect 2 £10. Dragon Age 2 and Mirror's Edge are £5. The remaining deals worth noting are Bulletstorm for £7.50 and Spore for £6. This Origin deal runs for "a limited time only". |
| 06/06/2011 | Increasingly nebulous mega-brain Will Wright has finally revealed what the hell he’s up to next. He’s spent his post-Spore years working at an outfit he calls Stupid Fun Club , which has had all sorts of wild ideas about TV shows and toys, but now he seems to be turning those historically ingenious eyes back to games. He’s working on adapting a short story about a karmic computer, by sci-fi writer and technology ponderer Bruce Sterling, and he reckons he can get it turned around within a year. (more…) |
| 06/06/2011 | Will Wright is making a video game inspired by a short story by science fiction author Bruce Sterling. The game, which The Sims creator hopes to have up and running in a year, riffs off of the Sterling short story Maneki Neko. "He describes a karmic computer that's keeping a balance of payments between different people, and causing them to interact with each other in interesting ways to improve their lives even though they're strangers," Wright told Eurogamer in a new interview conducted at E3 in Los Angeles. "They earn karmic points that are redeemed by having somebody else help them." At the Game Developers Conference in March Wright announced he had begun work on his first new game projects since 2008's evolution sim Spore . Wright told Eurogamer that the Sterling-inspired game he's working on is likely set for launch on tablets, smart phones and social networks such as Facebook. "The rate of change is increasing almost exponentially right now, which means I don't think it makes sense to go through even a three or four year development cycle any more," he said. "Unless you can get something to market within a year, at least an initial version within a year, you're hosed. "So that's the new model for development, which has totally changed my thinking. Almost any project I want to work on is going to be something I can at least get some version out there in about a year and then iterate from there." But that's not all. Wright is working on other games, "one or two" of which are intended for home consoles. "But most of our work is going to be everything else: PC, tablet, Facebook and mobile." Wright left EA in 2009 to run entertainment think tank StupidFunClub. It's already launched a user-generated TV show, and plans are in place to manufacture toys. Video: |
| 20/04/2011 | <p><!-- videoId: 22670388 --><script type="text/javascript"> newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=22670388&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":368.75,"ratio":0.7375,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"vimeo","wrap":true,"agegate":false} ); </script><a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/04/22670388.jpg"></a><!-- /videoId: 22670388 --> If you've ever seen Will Wright, the big brain behind games like The Sims, Spore and SimCity, deliver one of his humorous, hypnotizing talks, you're probably going to want to settle in and watch this one too. If you've never had the good fortune to be assaulted by Will Wright's smarts, well, you're in luck.</p> <p>Earlier this year, Wright spoke at the Summit on Science, Entertainment, and Education, tying together a ton of ideas, anecdotes and thoughts on games, toys, science and a bazillion other things and how they might relate to education. He'll talk about video games and his own experience in development in this roughly 20 minute talk, but he'll also blow your mind in other ways.</p> <p>If you've got the time to spare to hear Will do his thing, watch the above recording of his Summit speech.</p> |
| 28/03/2011 | Steam makes it easy to get into the beta program for Maxis' Spore spin-off Darkspore . Just head to the Steam web site and install. Darkspore was recently delayed until the end of April. |
| 14/02/2011 | What has eight legs, three eyes, and a nose that spits deadly mucus? Doesn’t matter, just kill it in the face and take its stuff. Richard’s been playing a pre-release version of Spore’s psychotic cousin, where life is simple, death is cheap, and the only good alien is one that drops a particularly snazzy hat. (more…) |