Spore: It's Good To Be A Cell

[Starfox]

Remember these times where all you had to do was to eat and not be eaten? Probably not although nothing has changed since the very beginning of the big life game, social concerns just made things more complicated. In anticipation of the release in early June of their "creatures editor", the folks from Maxis released a new video and some screens showing the first gameplay phase of their upcoming life simulation title Spore, the "cell phase".

In Spore, you begin your life as a mere cell following a meteor crash on an unknown planet. The goal of the game in its full version that will be released next September is to create a life form viable enough to establish a real civilization eventually able to conquer the galaxy. But for that of course, players will have to start at the beginning, with the simplest form of life: the cell.

As stated by Maxis, your early choices in the design of your first cell, will have consequences in the future of your newly created species, either good or bad.

Even after seeing the gameplay video (see the main news), it's hard to figure what the gameplay of Spore will really feel like. Hopefully, the "creature editor" to be released in June will help answer the questions that we still have about that. One thing is sure, it will be your chance to play God (if you're willing to see that from an over-inflated ego point of view) or to put on your lab rig and go experiment (if you're like the casual "wanna create life" mad scientist -- not sure that there is a difference between the two points of view though).

As already mentioned, the full game Spore developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts will be released next September (scheduled September 4 for Europe and September 7 for North America) while the Spore creatures editor featuring about 25% of the capabilities of the full game will be released as a free download next month.

As for the official site it's right there

[Silver Sorrow]

I may have some bad news about Spore (and Mass Effect, btw). From what I've been reading, the yutzes are going with the same activation system as...Bioshock. But worse. Here's an article: Mass Effect and Spore: How the DRM Works.

The acrticle previous to that one, concerning Mass Effect, but with a good point or two: BioWare and EA: Dumbass Effect.

Bill Murray: "And then...depression set in."

[Starfox]

Some of this info is not valid anymore. Following the surge of people shouting "crap!" EA decided to use a modified version of SecuROM for both Spore and Mass Effect. In the facts that only means that they removed the 10 days re-authentication check. They still leave the online activation when you first start the game. Although the 10 days check is removed it is unclear if the game will still try to "phone home" when it is started or not. The only thing made clear is that the game won't stop to work after 10 days if it cannot contact the authentication server. Re-authentication will still be required if a new content or patch is downloaded. I assume that the 3 times installation thing is still enforced.

Apparently, we can thank US armed forces for EA/Bioware move since a lot of people in the armed forces overseas complained that they wouldn't be able to cope with the 10 days re-authentication process because well... internet access is not that easy in some corners of this world.

So that leaves us with a copy protection that does not stink as badly as before but that still stinks (due to the 3 installs limit). EA made a gesture, sure, but once again it's more marketing than anything else since the 10 days re-authentication thing was far to be necessary anyway and did not bring anything useful on the anti-piracy front (but what does anyway? Copy protection systems just prove to be annoying failures one after the other since they are not even able to prevent piracy and are still a pain in the ass for legit users).

If you want to blame someone for anti-piracy ridiculous systems, blame the shareholders. They are certainly the ones pushing publishers to incorporate all kind of nice features in games to allegedly "protect" their investment and since most of them know squat about games and the gaming world in general they don't even realize that the difference between no protection and protection is virtually non existent. It's like putting a very bad alarm system on a car and claiming that it is protected. But hey, if shareholders are satisfied by the use of ridiculous schemes then publishers are happy too. As for the legit consumer... who cares?

[Silver Sorrow]

Well, at least they got rid of the 10-day thing. That was just insane. How much you want to bet that the shareholders don't play video games?