Caryl Shaw’s vast experience managing the user-generated content in Maxis' The Sims serves her well in her new role as the head architect behind the sharing of user-created content in Spore. She shared her views in a recent session that made us even more intrigued by the idea that players, not developers, can be in charge of the actual creatures, structures and vehicles found throughout the game. Of course, that’s a tall order and one that presents many potential complications, but Caryl outlined her ideas for the system very convincingly.
First, she admits that they had it all wrong at the beginning. They had thought the answer was to make content sharing completely invisible to players. Using a complex but seemingly effective aesthetic matching tool, the servers at EA would deliver content uploaded by other users that matched the sort of visual style you were playing with. The real problem with this system was that it took creative control away from the players and placed in the hands of a script.
Once the team decided that wasn’t the direction they should be heading, the first step was to create a functional content browser that let players explore the content using a variety of filters and keyword searches to show them just what they want to see at any given moment. Options to ban offensive content (which, let’s face it, is totally coming) or to filter content so you only see stuff made by people on your friends list makes the browser a relatively safe environment. A number of quality metrics reveal how popular each asset is, how creative the designer’s other items are, and how often they’ve shown up in events and games. Now when players encounter a new creature in their game, they’ll get a small creature card that links to other items made by that player.
To help build the community around the creation of shared assets, the team at Maxis have created a number of social networking interfaces that can be accessed via a web browser or as an HTML feed within the game itself. The MySpore.com page, for instance, shows the status and updates of your friends, any assets you’ve created, as well as comments and rankings that other players have made about your creations.
The in-game version of MySpore.com also includes options to take your individual creations out for a test drive and actually capture movies on them in action. These movies can then automatically be uploaded to youtube.com or saved to your hard drive for further editing. The team is also working on a partnership with a comic creation software company to offer comic book versions of your own Spore story. Plans are also in place for a Spore store where you can order t-shirts or mugs or even 3D print outs of your creature. There’s even an option that allows you to capture an animated GIF of your creature in action for use on message boards.
Finally, the game also makes use of convenient content groupings called Sporecasts. These Sporecasts are ways to tag certain assets that have a thematic relationship. You might, for instance, have a Sporecast that includes earth animals, from hippo creatures to space ships shaped like owls. Another Sporecast might just include food items, from a city hall that looks like a California Roll to an alien shaped like a Cheetoh. If you’re looking for a more consistent experience, you can just upload an entire Sporecast to your game and not worry about cherry picking each individual asset.
The end of our demo finally revealed the new music editor that Brian Eno helped create for the game. This wasn’t originally intended to be part of the game, but the idea was so compelling that the team decided it had to be included. There are a variety of samples for beats and ambient noise that you can switch on to get a nice foundation for your sound, and then a number of melodies you can lay over them. There’s even a graphical interface that lets you shape the contour of the melody so you can play with your favorite tunes — like say, the theme from the Banana Splits or Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldiers. Due to copyright issues, this is one bit of user-generated content that can’t be shared over the EA servers
Awesome. Now u can get a website (if u choose) where all ur creations, etc. can be viewed (if u want them to be). Also there u can make movies of ur creature (if u don’t have fraps or any other PC video capture device). The movies then can be automatically be uploaded to Youtube or u can save it to ur harddrive. Also It says that u can make gifs outta ur creature (yes i plan on doing this) and u can order T-shirts that have ur creature on it doing anything u want. Also u can filter what content u want/like.
Ok my opinion of Wii Spore and the other console versions of Spore has changed after watching this video. This game looks like the PC version only it looks as if it’s a bit more “mini-game” oriented and is simpler than the PC version. Meaning that Console versions of Spore will actually be good.
the DS version is using the DS pen basically as a mouse meaning the Wii version will most likely use the Wii-mote as a mouse meaning the Wii version will be good .
Oh and there’s a lot of new vids. Chek em out in the first page.
Well it’s heavily hitned for 360 and PS3. Maxis said that if it sells well in general they’ll make a 360 and PS3 version.
So far experts are predicting it’ll sell 3-5 million this year . SO yeah i’d be expecting a 360 or PS3 version. Wii version will prbly be out sometime next year and if Spore sells well then expect a PS3 and 360 version to release along with it. The PC, Mac, Cell Phone, and DS versions of Spore are releasing this year however.
Well, I also want them to make a demo for Wiiware. Nintendo did say that they were working on 100 Wii ware projects, what if it is one of em'? That’d be awesome.
^^^ thats cool. But thats the PC release date...not wii’s.
oh u guys Spore is kinda like H3 becuase it has the ability to save films and screenshots and such. So be expecting a video of how my creature makes it through evolution
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