Spore's real costs, implications therof. A rant.

[Cabbage]

Just played from start and about 20 mins of space stage in one sitting.... Cell stage was by far the most fun, and i was fairly pleased with my final ceature design, but other than that than its a bit dull tbh.

make friends with X number of X

kill X number of X

Move onto next stage and repeat

[manored]

From what I read the game is too easy but has a lot of things to experience with, or something like that... I personally like the idea of "playing god" in the space stage, so I suppose I will like it :)

[Panda]

BLASPHEMY!

Shall we find a stake... er, nevermind...

Hey look- behind you! It's Elvis! <runs>

He ran away.

-Samus face palm for you.

[Muzic]

I still think it'll be amusing...

Any way of modding this game?

Id love to have some sort of gigantic space war that would last forever with a civ thats as powerful as mine....

is there any difficulty setting?

[PicassoCT]

ARGH.. it´is EA, look what they have done with the Sims, a Game without Target, without story, without Anthing you can´t have in cheap sitcoms.

They made Addons for it, to milk stupid fans. So i guess you will soon see the Horrible Cow of Space appear, to milk the Sporeaddictets. Moooooh - EA-Spore 2009 to be rereleased soon (Creature now with a new Head)

[smoth]

some food for thoughts

spring estimated development cost:

http://www.ohloh.net/projects/6454

Project Cost

This calculator estimates how much it would cost to hire a team to write this project from scratch. More »
Include
Codebase 615,088
Effort (est.) 168 Person Years
$ 9,263,584

springlobby estimated development cost:

http://www.ohloh.net/projects/springlobby

Project Cost

This calculator estimates how much it would cost to hire a team to write this project from scratch. More »
Include
Codebase 111,605
Effort (est.) 28 Person Years
$ 1,553,88

that isn't art content, gameplay elements of said content, sound effects, scripts, explosions, sprites, playtesting... and soon we will start doing musical scores. Yeah, spring would be expensive.

Not related to arghs goofy assertion.

[manored]

I loved the cell stage, so much fun :)

There is a difficult setting, and the cell stage is quite challenging on hard mode (Then you do manage to eat something its while running away from something else) so hopefully the other stages are as well, altough I didnt played then yet.

Only thing I didnt liked much is that you have to find genetic material to adquire certain parts, either on asteroid pieces or eating a creature that has that part, and that doesnt makes much sense in evolution :)

[BrainDamage]

that isn't art content, gameplay elements of said content, sound effects, scripts, explosions, sprites, playtesting... and soon we will start doing musical scores. Yeah, spring would be expensive.

Not related to arghs goofy assertion.

100% correct, that was a cost analys of just the spring code, not to mention the content, the external support (hosting, ecc) that it requires. Making a game isn't cheap at all and IMHO 50 millions for how high it may sound is pretty reasonable considering the amount of work needed

[Wolf-In-Exile]

Looking at the immense amount of procedural elements, the streamlined interface, and components that could be standalone games by themselves, i'd say fifty million is quite average, considering the sheer amount of work put into it.

It is quite inappropriate to compare it with small indie efforts, as Spore is really in a league of its own. Fifty million dollars might seem alot to 'normal' people, but its really chump change for massive corporations like EA, who reap revenues to the tune of hundreds of millions per month, or billions a year.

Look at EA's financial report if you don't believe me.

Fiscal First Quarter Results (comparisons are to the quarter ended June 30, 2007)

Net revenue for the first quarter was $804 million, up $409 million as compared with $395 million for the prior year. During the quarter, EA had a net benefit of $231 million year-over-year related to the recognition of deferred net revenue for certain online enabled packaged goods games.

Sauce

Also, piracy is really an excuse to increase prices of games, while increasing their control over how they 'intend for you to use their products'. Piracy does affect sales, but far from the extent that is trumpeted by the media.

If you want your brain to melt, however, go look up financial reports for oil companies.
They get so much money that you, your ancestors, and all your future descendants probably will never see in person, ever.

[KDR_11k]

Cheaper != equivalent.

Innovation != profitable.

Yes, yes... sometimes, somebody makes a DDR, a Smash Bros., etc., and innovation becomes profitable. Sometimes, you get a Wii.

Don't mistake those for dumb luck though. Read this, it was written in November 2006. Rising game development costs are what enabled the Wii, the strategy is called a disruptive invention and it allowed steamrolling the market that got stuck in blockbuster mentality with cheap games.

[smoth]

that isn't art content, gameplay elements of said content, sound effects, scripts, explosions, sprites, playtesting... and soon we will start doing musical scores. Yeah, spring would be expensive.

Not related to arghs goofy assertion.

100% correct, that was a cost analys of just the spring code, not to mention the content, the external support (hosting, ecc) that it requires. Making a game isn't cheap at all and IMHO 50 millions for how high it may sound is pretty reasonable considering the amount of work needed

Hell yeah braindamage, I reckon that those estimates are probably a bit on the optimistic side. People generally get what, 4-6 hours of actual coding time in daily at an 8 hour job? When you get to looking at it from the perspective of actually productive time you might end up with double that.

[[TS]Lollocide]

post.

Did you buy spore with the idea that when it opened it was going to be Earth v2.0 on your computer?

I bought it and it was rougly what I expected, it played well, didn't feel like I was massively overpowered from the start (Played on medium), aside from the AI being abit of a dumbstick sometimes, it never felt that they were that stupid or unreasonable.

It also didn't have that annoying feeling of being a piss-poorly designed game (Aside from some issues with the placement of stuff on vehicles), it felt like someone had actually taken the time to tweak and fix 99% of the stuff. Which improved my overall score about it, since most games seem to be released nowadays with bugs up the arse (Alone in the Dark being a star in that....driving along in tha Taxi, hit a newspaper, end up in orbit).

Its also got this great feeling of not being too pressured, even when you're racing back to your village to defend against a raiding party you still don't get too worked up because the game warns you and you can arm up with enough time to meet them.

I figure this is one of the few games that doesn't fit anywhere in teh usual games catagory of action, adventure, etc because it isn't a stereotypical game in any sense. But I'd also say its a laid back game, enjoyable for most people.

[Muzic]

Looking at the immense amount of procedural elements, the streamlined interface, and components that could be standalone games by themselves, i'd say fifty million is quite average, considering the sheer amount of work put into it.

It is quite inappropriate to compare it with small indie efforts, as Spore is really in a league of its own. Fifty million dollars might seem alot to 'normal' people, but its really chump change for massive corporations like EA, who reap revenues to the tune of hundreds of millions per month, or billions a year.

Look at EA's financial report if you don't believe me.

Fiscal First Quarter Results (comparisons are to the quarter ended June 30, 2007)

Net revenue for the first quarter was $804 million, up $409 million as compared with $395 million for the prior year. During the quarter, EA had a net benefit of $231 million year-over-year related to the recognition of deferred net revenue for certain online enabled packaged goods games.

Sauce

Also, piracy is really an excuse to increase prices of games, while increasing their control over how they 'intend for you to use their products'. Piracy does affect sales, but far from the extent that is trumpeted by the media.

If you want your brain to melt, however, go look up financial reports for oil companies.
They get so much money that you, your ancestors, and all your future descendants probably will never see in person, ever.

I like this guy.

[Gota]

post.

Did you buy spore with the idea that when it opened it was going to be Earth v2.0 on your computer?

I bought it and it was rougly what I expected, it played well, didn't feel like I was massively overpowered from the start (Played on medium), aside from the AI being abit of a dumbstick sometimes, it never felt that they were that stupid or unreasonable.

It also didn't have that annoying feeling of being a piss-poorly designed game (Aside from some issues with the placement of stuff on vehicles), it felt like someone had actually taken the time to tweak and fix 99% of the stuff. Which improved my overall score about it, since most games seem to be released nowadays with bugs up the arse (Alone in the Dark being a star in that....driving along in tha Taxi, hit a newspaper, end up in orbit).

Its also got this great feeling of not being too pressured, even when you're racing back to your village to defend against a raiding party you still don't get too worked up because the game warns you and you can arm up with enough time to meet them.

I figure this is one of the few games that doesn't fit anywhere in teh usual games catagory of action, adventure, etc because it isn't a stereotypical game in any sense. But I'd also say its a laid back game, enjoyable for most people.

Yeah.
I expected it to be smart.

[AF]

I found that the difficulty curve was a bit weird. I would steam roll through get to the halfway point then run into roadblocks.

I also don't like how the tribe numbers are limited artificially, Id much prefer something populous style where there's a natural progression and a reasoning rather than a strict cap.

Its strange too how an alien space ship kept arriving in the creature stage and abducting rival creatures.

[SwiftSpear]

$50 x 1.5 mil sales = $75 mil

Sims has 13 mil sales worldwide. GTA4 has neither hit PC yet, nor has it pricedropped yet. Spore has more hype and SIGINFIGANTLY larger general appeal than GTA4. Argh, your math is fucked, assuming the original estimate of costs is even accurate.

[[TS]Lollocide]

I Expected Spore to be Earth V2.0 on my less than supercomputer

And the masses laughed.

[Argh]

$50 x 1.5 mil sales = $75 mil

The publisher only sees 40% of the gross, after all is said and done, and has to recover sunk costs, too. My math is fine.

And I don't care if the Sims sold super-well. This is not the Sims:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/spore

[El Idiot]

And I don't care if the Sims sold super-well. This is not the Sims:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/spore

It's not, but it really is something else. I've heard some interesting things about new techniques used to make the game. Even if it doesn't sell well, or even break even, it's a good stepping stone for a new generation.
EA is massive enough to cover the losses.

[Sabutai]

The one thing that they really should have added ist the multiplayer. Come on. It's 2008 guys. Not 1988. Minigames can be balanced to be multiplayer fit. So can games like Settlers, Civ, 4x games etc etc. I want to build a spacearmada and beat a bigger spacearmade bc their species has only one hand to steer. The expansion needs moar starwars.