Spore’s Clever Deception

Once in a while, one game manages to get the attention of everyone. It has more previews in a single month than most games get in their entire development cycle. Features are written on its new design philosophies, innovative gameplay, unique artistic style or whatever other particular attribute it has advertised itself upon. This is how it was for Spore, the life-simulator title from Maxis and Electronic Arts. Any gaming website or publication worth its salt at least mentioned the game and its “new and exciting” concept.

So, there was hype. As it is with any game that has hype surrounding it, high scores were expected and, for once, they were delivered. Metacritic currently rates Spore at a very respectable 84 out of 100, with this score being in the 90s during the earlier days. Now, most people will probably think they can see where I am going with this: “Oh, he’s going to complain about DRM and how much it sucks. Man the harpoons etc.” Actually I’m not. In fact, I think the DRM hate machine is a jumped-up bandwagon masquerading as a defender of human rights, honour and decency in the universe. More importantly, it has distracted people from the real issue: Spore isn’t actually very much fun for any significant amount of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not challenging the skill of these reviewers, I’m not calling them bad at their jobs and I’m certainly not attempting to insult them. Spore has been given these high scores for two reasons. The first is common among 70-80% games: all the technical pieces of an acceptable game are there. The gameplay is varied, there are few bugs, the interface is clean, the plot (what of it there is) makes sense. All of this combined means that Spore would almost never be given under 70% or equivalent – that’s simply how the industry tends to work.

The second reason has to do with the way larger games have to be reviewed: it is impossible to complete such games in the time that a reviewer is given. Thus, enough of the game has to be played so that the reviewer can get a feel for it, understand the basics, judge the game on its controls, graphics, gameplay, concept, whatever, and finally decide on a score based on his or her experience.

So for how much time are games that are “too long”, such as Spore, played for? A few days of constant play is the norm in our business, perhaps a week if time allows. Now we come to the crux of the matter: this is exactly the amount of time that Spore is at its best. I honestly do not know anyone who can say that Spore got more enjoyable the longer they played it. Most of the people I have asked admitted that they had the most fun with the cell stage. This is a game that seems to be specifically designed around making the consumer love the game from the off and then gradually allow him to be bored into submission. How else can one explain an early-game with all the addictive simplicity of Peggle and a late-game consisting of “go here, do this” for annoying NPCs and a very simple trading system?

Analysis of each segment shows a similar pattern. Each one starts as a promising, open-world, non-linear experience that ticks all our modern boxes and later reveals itself as a boring grind-fest just as it ends. Which is perfectly acceptable until the space phase is reached and there are no more stages to progress to. Here Spore’s genius is displayed: how inviting does that galaxy look? How enjoyable does it look to explore? And – most importantly – how fun is it for, say, six days? There’s even a goal in there to distract the player from what is, essentially, deeply repetitive gameplay: reach the centre of the universe for a big surprise. Personally I bored of space even faster than most: it has no longevity in its 100,000 light years wide galaxy, no depth in the 500,000 stars available for exploration.

This lack is evident in the experiences and opinions of those I know. None of my close gaming friends still play and most of them feel they have been cheated just in the purchase. We are all people who have played World of Warcraft and other MMOs, the grindiest games around, for extended periods of time and still found the endless spice trading and repetitive alien politics to be horrifically boring. It was commented that games based on a single, simple premise (such as Audiosurf, Peggle and anything that could be considered “pure deathmatch”) held the attention of the player for longer than Spore had done.

So what’s my point? My point is that I hope that none of the other games companies or publishers realise how easy it is to make a title that’ll garner huge hype, glowing reviews and galactic-level sales (Spore having outsold Microsoft Word at one point) without actually creating something of any value. I hope that even if they do they don’t decide it’s worth their reputation. And lastly I hope that a con on Spore’s magnitude is not perpetrated upon the public again.

Oh, and now factor in the DRM…