Too bad it turned out to be about as scientific as Pac-man eating power pellets and getting chased by ghosts (sorry my game references are just a little outdated). Science's "gonzo scientist," John Bohannon, recently tried out the game with some actual scientists, giving it grades on scientific accuracy. The thousands of horrible reviews on Amazon already convinced me not to consider checking out the game, but the borderline angry flunking it received from these scientists served as the final nail in the coffin (sorry for the cliches here; I'm too tired to put that much effort into writing well today).MWC--I've been aware of your disinterest in Spore for a while now. Any final thoughts?
2 comments:
Yeah... there are really two issues contributing to negative reviews of Spore, one of them scientific and the other more generally to do with how PC software is sold. The nega-flood on Amazon is the result of Spore's very restrictive digital rights management package, which (initially) severely limited the number of allowed installs. Naturally the DRM did not prevent piracy: downloads of Spore were available on BitTorrent before the game was in stores.
Scientifically, Spore was never going to be a winner. I mean, the core advantage of evolutionary theory is that it provides for the development of advanced features without any conscious direction. The only way that Spore could be about evolution was if it played itself, which would likely result in a sub-par experience.
Overall, my impression is that Spore promised too much to ever live up to it. There are some brilliant things going on there: procedurally-generated animation, procedurally-generated music. Unfortunately, they don't build into a coherent gaming experience.
Yeah...watching the game play itself wouldn't be so much fun, but it's interesting that in that Science article they even find an Intelligent Design "scientist" who dislikes the game.
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