How Corporate Greed Sabotaged Spore's Success

[Music] hey guys we're back from a rather long hiatus sorry we've been radio silent for so long we had a lot of traveling over the holidays and we weren't quite able to produce any new material but we're finally back and I've got a topic that I've actually wanted to discuss for a while now before we get started I just want to give a big thank you to our awesome patreon supporters these guys are helping keep this channel alive and we really can't thank you enough if you want to join our Legion of subjectivist Sauer patreon link is down in the description any amount helps I also encourage you to check out our partners ink Gaming Inc Gaming produces high-quality gaming merch like mouse pads play mats t-shirts and more all with artwork designed by independent artists check them out and be sure to use the link in the description all right that's enough of that I think it's time we move on to the real reason that you guys are here today we're going to talk about one of my favorite video games of all time what about its art style and gameplay makes it so unique and why it and its franchise died in just a few years let me set the scene for you it's Christmas morning 2008 it's been a pretty big year for video games Super Smash Bros Brawl had just been released Mario Kart Wii is dominating sales sequels to big titles like Pokemon Ranger mystery dungeon and platinum they've also hit the market LittleBigPlanet Soul Calibur for Fallout 3 left 4 dead mushroom men man I got to make a video about mushroom men but you don't care about any of this all of these games are white noise behind the rumors and murmurs surrounding will Wright's newest game one that promises a platform for players to explore share and conquer but also to create and imagine and sitting there under the tree in that small rectangular package that has since become obsolete is Spore the game that would change your life forever ok maybe it wasn't that dramatic for everyone but when I was 12 years old it was a really big deal spore had been hyped up by so many of my friends and by December a lot of them had already owned the game and I could think of nothing other than playing it myself it sounded like something that I as a middle-school are obsessed with dinosaurs and alien had made up myself you could create and play as anything you could imagine from single-celled amoebas to spaceships that could blow planets it was my life for about three years and I still enjoy playing it today but enough reminiscing let's talk a little bit about the development of Spore and how it became to be so popular for however short a time spore was the brainchild of Will Wright founder of the development company Maxis that at the time was all part of the gaming Titan EA he was most well known for creating the Sims another god simulation game where the fates of tiny digital creatures rest in the irresponsible hands of people who enjoy starving them in empty pools and seeing how many babies one human can produce looking at you Jamie games at the time of spores release the Sims and SimCity had been around for years and we're very popular with many demographics of gamers and while the people used both the Sims and spores to orchestrate scenarios of mass chaos and destruction Wright always had a very admirable vision for his games a quote from will right the problem with our education system is we've taken this kind of narrow reductionist our stott lien approach to what learning is it's not designed for experimenting with complex systems and navigating your way through them in an intuitive way which is what games teach it's not really designed for failure which is also something that games teach I mean I think that failure is a better teacher than success trial and error reverse engineering stuff in your mind all of these ways that kids interact with games that's the kind of thinking that schools should be teaching will right is the kind of guy who sees potential for greatness in everything and everyone and tries to bring out that potential of his players through his games it's true one of the most fun things to do in Spore is to make a creature that looks like a giant ape it's brown attacking monsters with lasers but as a young kid with an interest in science art and discovery spore was a blank canvas that allowed a creative mind the kind of freedom that's really impossible to replicate in the real world for those of you unfamiliar with Spore let me give you a brief breakdown of the gameplay as succinctly as possible spore is a life simulation realtime strategy god game which is basically what it sounds like as crazy as that is you control a species that will evolve from a single-cell organism into a fully sentient spacefaring race of beings and every choice you make along the way will impact the skills and adaptations your species will have as they continue to develop over millions of years there are five stages of gameplay cell stage where the player controls a single-celled organism that can do three things meat mate and swim away your goal in this stage is to consume as much matter as you can being plant animal or both this matter is then converted into DNA that you can use to evolve your cell to allow to survive better in an ever-changing microscopic world when you're evolved enough it's time to move on to the second stage creature this stage functions similar to cell in that your primary goal is to further evolve your creature by accumulating new DNA but unlike cell stage you're now land dwelling species desires more than just sustenance you'll encounter dozens of other species roaming your world and you can evolve adaptations to either be friend and ally with these new inhabitants or drive them to extinction by force either way eventually you will reduce your competition so that you can progress to the third stage tribal at this point in your creatures evolution you will no longer be able to evolve your player species physical design your progress will take place upstairs as you begin to form the basics of a society you must ration resources develop structures to produce tools and train your tribesmen in the arts of either peace or war depending on how you interact with other tribes you will emerge dominant over your planet as either a militant religious or economics based civilization the fourth stage of the game now global domination is your goal managed cities build your Arsenal's claim resources and develop the optimal strategy for converting every city on the planet to your way of thinking only when a single power controls every single resource on the planet can your species ascend to the fifth and final stage of the game space stage now things really take off space stage is in and of itself the final stage the end of the game ends the post game as there is literally an entire galaxy for you to explore and influence you can amass a vast network of intergalactic allies trade exotic resources from other planet to develop tools you've never seen before or destroy everyone in your path an ally with the enigmatic rocks the guardians of the core of the galaxy there are near endless things for a player to do at this point in the game and with the add-on pack galactic adventures there are even more ways for players to explore the universe assigning an estimated playtime for spore is practically impossible because each player can continue to play and create for as long as their heart's desire there's really no end to this game and if the core gameplay doesn't appeal to you there's still a lot this game offers to its players in the form of an active creator community where players can share ideas with other fans of the game in its heyday there were contests held both by the individual players and the official Maxis admins featured creations selected by the developers of the game and millions of creations that could be downloaded from the community into an individual's game to flesh out the five stages of the core game with creations of other brilliant minds it was one of those really rare games that valued the creativity of the player over the gameplay there wasn't really any way for someone to be good at Spore there was no competitive league no best times to be no top players there were only ideas sure you could say that some were better than others but it's all subjective and what's beautiful about it is that even if you don't consider yourself to be a creative person it made it easy for you to bring to life whatever you wanted no matter how stupid anyone may think your ideas were if you want a good laugh go to the spore pedia website or open up a copy of Spore if you have it and search the Creator qqqq q96 that was my username back when I first owned the game in middle school I was an active member of the community with a large collection of interesting creations I even won one of Max's official contests where I designed a creature in game to be an enemy in their newest game Darkspore Wow darkspore one of a handful of spin-offs that spawned from the original game dark sport tried to incorporate what worked best in Spore but instead it became a poster child for the series greatest downfall Darkspore is or should I say was an entirely different animal from spore it retains some of will Wright's original vision for the Chai's in so much as a player had a decently large range of options in terms of character customization but turning a simulation god game into an action RPG let's just say it really lost what's more was all about it received underwhelming reviews from critics and fans of the original game tended to be disappointed in the almost complete departure from the spore that they knew and loved I myself have never played the game because by the time of its release my interest in Spore had waned and the idea of a sequel of any kind just couldn't catch my attention and unfortunately it never will I wasn't exaggerating when I said that Darkspore became the embodiment of the original games downfall and it wasn't an issue with gameplay art direction or anything related to the actual game itself spores first and arguably its only controversy was centered around its DRM or digital rights management software basically EA the company that produced the game didn't want anyone to rip it off or reverse-engineer a clone of the game by using the same software included with the disc their first system required users to authenticate their copy of the game once every 10 days but that model was scrapped before release due to objections from potential fans instead they included a security key with every copy of the game that must be entered when the game was installed on a new computer and could only be used on three separate systems a lot of old PC games had this if they were sold on CDs but this was incredibly frustrating especially for a young kid as they had to keep track of both the physical CD and the code to actually install the game and if you had a new computer accidentally erased your software or just wanted to install it on another system you could only use the code three times I learned this the hard way after I got my first laptop when I was about 14 and I was unable to install the game even after finding my code I had uninstalled and reinstalled the games too many times on too many different computers and even after dealing with tech support and customer service our only option was to buy another copy of the game now this particular problem would surely have affected other players in far less dramatic ways an adult with a single computer who actually understood the details of the DRM would probably never run into a situation like this and thus it had little effect on the public's perception of the game but that was spore darkspore had a hole other set of problems with the security measures taken by EI and it was bad enough to literally wipe the game from existence unlike the original game darkspore was marketed during a time where digital copies of games sold far more easily than physical disks and it was sold through both steam and EA's controversial game distribution service origins but in fashion with EA's digital rights management model any player who purchased the game needed an authentication key in order to play their copy of the game and even after yiay pulled the game's page from Steam players who owned it couldn't even play as its DRM scheme required a connection to servers which no longer existed EA functionally erased any instance of this game from history so whether or not the game actually had merit or was standalone a well-made game it didn't matter the process for actually getting this game to run in 2020 is so convoluted that it's not really worth the time or effort and even if you were able to open it the servers were shut down over four years ago so half the game would be unplayable anyway it really is a shame especially considering that Darkspore was essentially the end of the franchise's legacy there were talks about a swarm movie to be produced by blue sky studios but that was almost a decade ago and let's be honest movies are never a good direction for video game franchises to head in but the good news is that despite all of the ugly stuff between sports conception and today the original game and all of its expansion DLC is still available for purchase on Steam no authentication code required the servers are still up and running and everything you love and remember from over eleven years ago is still right there for you to enjoy and explore if you haven't played the game or are completely unfamiliar with the franchise I highly recommend that you check it out on Steam it's safe to say that spore shaped Who I am as an artist today it literally gave me a new perspective through which I could see design the ability to render something in 3d is a great resource for an artist to have and while this program would never be considered artist software like blender or Maya people have made some really impressive stuff with the help of mods and a lot of creativity it's one of those games that just forces you to think in entirely new ways whether your interests lie in strategizing and forging an empire or just figuring out best way to make a Naruto character out of miscellaneous animal parts I feel like even though the legacy might have died with darkspore will rights message should be preserved the contrast between his vision and EA's paranoia is so ironic he had designed the game to help people learn and grow through exploration trial and error and in his own words reverse engineering EA's goals were to protect their IP at any and all costs and it was their attempts to thwart that kind of thinking that caused the game to fade away into distant memories those memories are precious and there are more to be made if you have the time and a few extra bucks download a copy from Steam especially if you're still a developing artist and let's face it we all are I guarantee you that this game will provide for you and experience beyond anything you felt before its strategy its simulation it's a canvas a studio and a platform for you to share your ideas and more importantly than everything else it's just a lot of fun I hope you all will give it a try thanks for watching everyone again so sorry for our gap in videos we're back though and our video upload schedule will return to normal for the time being if you're interested in seeing more please be sure to like this video and subscribe for new ones every Thursday and Sunday thanks again for watching and I'll see you all in the next video

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 510,366

Rating: 4.897965 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: tXV3JIoE1AE

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PICAXO]

May I have a resume of what is said?

[u/Pinnaporaptor]

Love the folks over at Subjectively

[u/Scyobi_Empire]

I wonder if Spore will let me make the Groxslayer without crashing...