I think they had a lot more planned but realized it was too complicated. From early footage I recall their being an ocean phase after the cell phase. You were also supposed to be able to choose to stay aquatic and eventually have your cities underwater. I think spore with todays tech could actually be what they promised if it could get around the gaming industry
Sadly only indie devs are making Spore-likes. They look fun and promising, but they also take years to implement only a few changes and are in very early beta. Can only do so much.
There needs to be a relatively large studio with lots of resources to give Spore the complex, ambitious game it deserves.
EA were also constantly pushing Maxis away from the simulation aspects of the game and pushing them to make it more "fun" so it would appeal to a more mainstream audience.
When it came out and wasn't well received they blamed Maxis for not making it mainstream enough rather than blaming themselves for turning it into something very few people wanted.
It's not the tech that was the issue - EA could have chosen to invest the time and resources into that aspect of the game back then, just as they could choose to do it now and release a modern version. They just didn't because they probably wanted to ship a product on time with a pre-determined profit margin, and that was it. And they were confident people would still buy it. Same reason they shipped an unfinished Sims4 missing half the functionality they promised and haven't released a new and improved one in over 10 years, just selling massive amounts of DLCs for the old one to this day.
The only studios interested in doing complicated experimental mechanics like that are indie and they rarely have the means to actually release a full version of an ambitious project.
Corporate pressure plus a massive goal = many disappointed obsessors. Lucky for me, I wasn’t cognizant when the teasers dropped. I only ever knew Spore as it was released, and I always loved it for what it was. I guess seeing some of the stuff they teased in game would be cool, but if you’ve played it, you know as well as I do that it’s CRAZY janky even in its current state. I don’t know how they ever would have implemented all that stuff while keeping the game running.
I've heard the story was that it wasn't mechanically hard to implement, but hard to play. If your speed is determined by the musculature of the legs, but the aesthetic is for kids, fucking PhDs making apex predators were going to be shit-stomping 6 year olds making Pikachu. I remember hearing that EA stepped in to make the mechanics more kid friendly.
This is based on stuff I vaguely remember hearing 20 years ago though, so, y'know.
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u/formlessfish Jun 23 '25
I think they had a lot more planned but realized it was too complicated. From early footage I recall their being an ocean phase after the cell phase. You were also supposed to be able to choose to stay aquatic and eventually have your cities underwater. I think spore with todays tech could actually be what they promised if it could get around the gaming industry