You did such a wonderful job talking about this game, explaining not just its (very valid) problems but also what people had actually done with it; design, contests, challenges, and so forth. As corny as it is, I owe Spore everything I have now and I was very excited to hear you mention artists using it as a means of creating art - it's absolutely what got me to take 3D art seriously in the first place! It's always fun hearing other people's experiences, perspectives and histories with this game and I really enjoyed listening to yours. I'm also a tad bit jealous you won one of the Darkspore creation challenges! The competition was fierce and I never got a winning entry, congratulations, and hopefully some day the Darkspore resurrection project will let us experience your creation up close!
Thank you so much! We really love your channel, and we've been watching your videos a lot these last few weeks as we've started creating some Spore content again. Even after all this time, Spore is honestly still a lot of fun (despite the crashes), and we 100% believe that it's a great creative tool, especially as a launching pad for budding artists.
SunnySzeto SunnySzeto sorry to burst your bubble but thrive was doomed to fail from the start- i was actually part of their community about 3 years ago and next to no progress has been made on the game since then. most of the developers the team had back then left over that span of time, and the project managers seem to vehemently refuse to open any form of crowdfunding that they could use to actually hire new people for the team. at one point a project manager even *acknowledged* on a forum post that the team would benefit greatly from crowdsourced funds, yet actively refused to listen to the people suggesting it and instead used the rest of said forum post to deride and mock them. excuse my French here, but there is no hope for thrive ever being completed unless whoever is managing it pulls the proverbial stick out of their ass and actually listens to their consumerbase
When I was a kid I actually gave a presentation on design using spore as an example and I had the creature creator out on my moms laptop so people could try it out. This video threw me back into middle school where everything was interesting and all I wanted to do was explore and create. Such a huge influence on me, I honestly don’t think I’d be the same person today if I didn’t receive the game for my birthday. I still have the CD bundle, right next to my sketchbooks on my bookcase.
No way. I did the same thing! In middle school we had a project where we were supposed to design a city, and I did it using GA and took a bunch of screen shots.
What kind of fucked up expectations did you have? Spore was a ridiculously amazing game. All of the 5 stages that it had felt truly different and yet, complete in their own right. A small game, each of them. How did it disappoint you?!
@@vVaIker When they first announced the game, it was a different concept. It was less "game" and more "evolution simulation". For example, the stats of your creature depended on your design, not on the pieces you chose. It also had an aquatic stage, between the cell and creature stages, and Will Wright hyped up a lot of features that never made it to the final game. And finally they released something that was nothing like the game they promised. Most people played it as it was, without knowing anything about the hype train, so while they now remember it as a fun game from their childhood, others remember it as a big disappointment.
With 2009 technology, it could've been much greater than it was. If an indie team of 15 devs can make the current No Man's Sky today, Maxis could've made exactly what we expected spore to be, and it was going to be, if not for EA wanting to make the game more child-friendly and casual. But I wouldn't buy a sequel to spore just yet, I'd buy any game that actually delivered what Will Wright promised spore could be back at GDCe 2005, the already mentioned No Man's Sky would be a good start, if only we changed it's focus.
@@starsiadraws Mainly because EA hasn't offered to reboot it for new gen. Along with no Indie Dev has properly tackled the idea to make a spiritual successor for the franchise with creativity in mind.
Lol, the most flawed concept corporatism has embraced wholeheartedly. This thing is working perfectly! But it only produces 2% profit/growth... hmmmmm.... BURN IT DOWN
@@CeilingCatMSM Hi. RANDOM Recommendations cause i like to spread some fun-stuff: -Cliffside. -Hilda- -Starship Goldfish. -RUclipsr Redditor. -RUclipsr Vice Rhino.
I just can't believe how magical a Spore 2 would be with the technology of today's games...like hyperrealistic creatures, unlimited different parts, weapons, accessories, endless stuff to explore in the universe in space stage, more, bigger, better worlds, but the original experience, and essentially the same game rebooted. It would be amazing...
Aren't there any studio with the idea to "make" a game that is similiar to Spore? I would love to experience a sequal to Spore but... well we all know the reason why it wouldn't happen anytime soon in the future.
If Spore was remade today I agree with all those things except the photorealistic creatures. I think Spore's creatures work best in a cartoony style, but maybe that's just me.
I would LOVE that, but unfortunately even IF it’s made, it probably will come with a butt load of micro transactions and season passes and all that shit that games seem to love nowadays
@@whiskizyo2067 Just saying they're the biggest head on the d-k hydra that's become of gaming, don't get me started on those mouthbreathers at Activision-Blizzard or the morons behind Candy Crush!
Gerado Solusyon corporate greed leads to self sabotage that has little consequences for the corporations themselves because of how big and influential they are.
Spore is a good game but I'm always frustrated with how much *more* it could have been. Literally every stage of the game could have a couple more mechanics added and it just feels kinda rushed to me. I've played it several times now and I always find myself rushing through the first 4 stages (ESPECIALLY TRIBAL) and I get bored after a week on space, granted, every game bores me after a week but I always think "I wish I could do this or that" and I just can't. There is still too much potential to this idea.
Yes! I've always said this game needs a remake. Like a proper remake. Tribal stage has always been my favorite stage, sadly it is (aside from the single cell stage) the shortest stage I feel like. I really hope someday this game gets blown into a new life..
@@lilredhead17 Speaking of which, breaking news: There's an open source game called Thrive that seems to be trying to do just that, remake spore on a wider scale. I just downloaded it and it's only on cell stage right now and it seems a lot more scientific than spore.
personally my favorite stages were cell and creature, i couldnt care less about tribal and disliked civilization, space seemed fun but always crashed before i could do much
@@Cocojonut-fp8ek Correction; there's a half functional cell stage that overshot its correction toward realism so hard that it ended up being less fun than spore's googly eyed cell stage... and a giant wikipedia page full of ideas. It's been in development since before I was an adult, and now I've got 4 kids. So it's safe to say we're never going to see multicellular.
I was actually hoping this video had go in detail with the version of spore that never saw the light of day, the one shown by Will that included and aquatic stage, more realistic anatomy, active ecosystem and blood. To this day im still wishing for someone to make a game exactly like the Spore we never got to play.
I watched the video in hopes of some info on that aswell. I remember years before spores release i watched will wrights presentations of the game, it looked amazing. And then the crap they churned out in the end was so bad in comparison to its early alpha days it was basically a different game. Still breaks my heart when i think of what it could have been.
the "version" of spore shown off in 2005 was a concept demonstration comprised of isolated setpieces, not a playable game. for instance, you can tell they hadn't fully figured out exporting creatures from the editor to gameplay yet because the version of the tripod will makes in the editor is noticeably different from the one he plays as. the aquatic stage probably never existed beyond that one little patch of terrain they show, iirc they wanted to make a full aquatic stage but didn't have time to sort out control issues.
You didn't touch on the grand disappointment the game was when compared to the tech demo that Will Wright kept showing. This game was supposed to be way more complex, but instead it turned into Sims in Space.
It wasn't even that when it released, it felt more like one of those bundles of minigames you see getting sold for 20 bucks by studios nobody can ever remember the name of. When I was in school for game art and design, we kept watching that tech demo and wondering how much this game was gonna change the industry. A month after release, nobody was talking about it anymore.
Indeed. You are spot on. EA is also slowly killing The Sims in the same way. And Sim City…gone. Cities Skylines filled those shoes…and well. (Paralives is poised to overtake The Sims) The only thing I found amusing about Spore was seeing one of my creations in someone else’s game (never uploaded it, just a spore I had made in normal gameplay) and the person shared the description of the now, dinosaur sized creature (it never evolved in their game). It said extremely dangerous, you cannot impress this species. I found that hilarious! Beyond that, I lost interest after playing a few days with my daughter. She lost interest too. EA strikes again. Those little details in Maxis games are just…gone.
I think what made Spore special was Galactic Adventures. It added in a new way to experience the game and allowed for people to create whatever missions they desired, resulting in many entertaining moments whether they were terrible or amazing.
second stage and first stage were my favorites. I blew a lot of time playing space stage as well. My first video posted to youtube 13 years ago ruclips.net/video/kErrVqOdVLU/видео.html
I never went past second stage lol. Recently I got to tribal stage and had no idea it even existed or how it worked and it felt weird and so I stopped playing it. I love spore mostly for character creation and walking around in the weird world
@@directedbydon I agree it should come back but not with EA as they'd just infect the game with "surprise mechanics". I know it's their thing and they probably won't sell it but the last thing spore needs is to be riddled with microtransactions.
To be honest, I have used spore as a basis when designing. Sometimes I can't just draw what I think, and making a creature out of the idea has helped me finalize things. That being said, the spore creative community is still very active. And new games that intend to follow in spore's footsteps have started to come from the woodwork. Whether or not they'll be able to live up to spore, I cannot say. But we can dream. And get there one day. I also ask for people to download the game from steam, or origin of you have it. There are two DLC packs, and a plethora of mods to add. Including some that bring in models from dark spore. It's a game that can be used as an artistic tool if you want, or just have fun.
@@josephhuston4186 Not true for everyone! I use a steam copy (i literally couldnt transfer it to anything else due to a common error w/ the game's key) and recently modded it to hell and back. It works fine as long as you look up how to do it instead of just winging it.
I feel the downfall of spore started before the games release, I feel the alphas and betas they showed before release where even better. The ability to exist underwater, more inclusive and diverse environments and even the ability of total free fly in space age. Removing all this was the beginning of the end for spore.
You should check the early trailers. The game used to have a 3d underwater section. I dreamt of making an underwater civilization which is why I was super disappointed
I had a love hate relationship with this game... A lot of memories some good, some bad. The biggest disappointment came from its initial advertisements and showcases. I loved that vision, that game play, that intelligent design. Come to find out after I get a copy... that things have changed... a lot... now, I don't pretend to know that it was simply a design choice for feasibility or player accessibility or was because EA wanted to rush a product to as many people as possible, but the spore I initially fell in love with was a more diverse, complicated animal. Of course when it did come out, I did love the creativity that went into it and the community that developed around the game.... but I will always remember how it could have been so much more.
That was exactly my experience! I expected each stage of the game to be more fleshed out and having more mechanics. I remember them showing different breeding habits based on how you create your creature. I couldn't believe how fast I went through the different stages without trying. I replayed it again after my first playthrough and made the game last 18 hours before reaching the space stage by completely exploring the planet on each stage after cell before going to the space stage. If they ever do remake it I hope it's to the original design and not the game that was released to us.
@@Bver19 If I tried to, I could get two species to space stage in one day. I normally get a species to space stage in one sitting because it only takes me around two and a half hours to do so.
"And every choice you make along the way will impact the skills and adaptations your species will have as they continue to develop over millions of years." That right there is the false marketing hype that made Spore a disappointment for me oh so many years ago. Every choice you make will have a very minor impact on the gameplay of the stage you're currently in; and once you move into the next stage, all those choices have barely even a cosmetic impact on the rest of the game.
Part of the reason I bought the game was a presentation given by Wright about some of the technology going into the kinematics of the Creature Creator. Needless to say, the technology that went into dynamically animating a player-designed creature with any number of limbs and a screwed up spine is AMAZING and well beyond my ability to explain. I was sold on the idea that the choices I'd make while designing a critter were meaningful and affected the success of my creature, much like the process of evolution. In reality, it didn't matter where you put the mouth, it didn't matter how many arms it had, it didn't matter how many legs it had or where. Every part did something easily quantifiable and game-y, which is fine for young kids, but I was expecting something with a bit more meat to it. I think the game could've really used another year of development and an Advanced Mode for older players that offered a richer and more feature-complete experience. I don't know if the game got dumbed down just to appeal to broader audience or if they just ran out of time; it was a very ambitious project after all.
But remember it wasnt will Wright's fault at all, ea owned them so they couldn't stop them from changing it to fit there crappy vision on what the game should be and not what it could be.
I remember there was some early negative criticism over _Spore_ being transitioned from a more realistic art-style to a more cartoony art-style, as well as the loss of the Aquatic stage.
I felt so let down when I played at first. I had been watching everything they put it since the first black and white demo of the cell stage they did. I think the scope of the game was originally massive but had to be pared down quite a bit. That said... Still out in over 300 hours into that game
@@jelly_4_brainz Nope. The Aquatic stage was going to be more like the Creature phase, with players controlling an underwater creature that can swim in all directions. IIRC it was cut because of technical difficulties, but Will Wright mentioned it would be added back in as an expansion pack... which ultimately never happened.
Wright had a bit of a reputation after this game came out that was similar to that Molyneux. We were promised so much before and with the exception of the creature and space stage all came up woefully short. Most of the game felt unfinished and oversimplified. Me and my wife preordered a copy each and this was one of the games that put the nail in the coffin of us preordering games. Spore wasn't bad, but it wasn't the game we were sold.
" it could have been more " > me in my childhood still spent hundreds of hours on this haha > most of which was creature stage to just walk around with whatever designs i could come up with; & the creator whenever i wanted to make something more " complex " > No matter how many times i replayed the cycle of evolution I loved it every time- up until the grox.
@@ACK4t Uhm, actually, yes. Thats kinda a Fact. The School-System is known and highly criticized for being very primitive for even the time we literally live in; and its evidend where the 'Evolution' of 'Schools' goes to, seeing how Computers are more and more used. So what i said wasnt really a Question but is more, uhm, fact?
It's amazing how good Spore is even in its current state. This video just scratched the surface of the game's issues. EA doomed it from the start by forcing it to release far ahead of schedule, sans many game mechanics that Will intended to have, leaving it a buggy shadow of what it could have been.
@AAAnt M Not to sound rude, but he DID say that EA doomed Spore by forcing it to release far ahead of schedule, which is why it would be so rushed and unpolished. Poor Devs
Another thing I don't see mentioned much in the comments here, or in the video, is that apparently the devs themselves were also split into two 'factions'. Originally Spore was going to be more like the old Maxis games, heading closer towards a soft simulationist direction (which lines up more with the old pre-release publicity footage), this was apparently Will Wright's 'faction'. Another faction popped up that wanted the spore we have now, more gamey, less focused on evolution etc. etc. I personally would've preferred the other, and was super hyped about the other, but we got this, it was still enjoyable, but compared to what it could've been, it felt hollow =/.
Spore was literally a Santa present exactly how he described it. I can still remember playing that game on that Christmas with pure curiosity and enthusiasm. One of my Best gaming moments period.
i wonder how spore could be reinvented- with more modern graphics and mechanics whilst still retaining as a tool for creative expression and freedom. Either way, despite the graphics being outdated its still holds up as a game.
That's easy. Don't make player reflexes and skill provide a benefit. Hell don't even have the player control a member of the species. Make the player's sole interaction be in the form of designing the form and how the creature interacts with the world and members of its own species.
If graphics ever meant something to a videogame's quality, the endless garbage stream of recycled IPs called "AAA games" we have nowadays would be actually good.
I think it could be done easy, but the real horror is how a lot of the staples of "modern gaming" would ultimately ruin it (i.e. cutting stuff out to sell you later, monetization, live-service model and etc). I'd be hesitant giving EA a chance back in the day, and now a days I'd NEVER want them to try and remake ANYTHING ever.
@@eidenno4662 Hasn't it been in development hell for like seven years? How far along have they come? Last time I tried asking questions on their forum in like 2013 an admin threatened to ban me for daring to ask anything at all, which kind of made them come across as @ssholes...
Oh hey, one of my creations shows up briefly! (7:12 the "Let it Consume You" creature by Metalblaze) This game is definitely one of my favorites, even in the state that it is in with the disappointing level it came out to be, it's still a huge amount of fun. There really is no game like it.
I remember when lil baby me had the epiphany that parts can be used in ways they weren't intended. A mouth inversed becomes a frill that expands when the monster yells. Horns can be legs. Legs can be horns. Tools are used best in new creative ways. Ways they may not have been intended for. What a wonderful discovery to have at such a young age.
9:35 "Spore's first and arguably its only controversy was centered around its DRM". Uhm, no. That was neither the only nor the first controversy surrounding Spore. The first controversy was when EA stepped in and said "It's neat that you've made a deep simulation game appealing to science geeks, but we're going to need you to dumb it down, cut a lot of content and make it much more cute and cartoony, to appeal to pre-teens instead". The 2005 version of Spore looked so awesome and so promising, and what ended up actually being released in 2008 was underwhelming to say the least to those who had been following its development for years.
One of my favourite games growing up, the beauty of user created content allowed it to have a much longer lifespan, with many active communities still around today. Also you can make Lovecraft look like a chump with the walking dong creatures. E: Just realized that your snowman species is in empire into my main game, neato!
Spore is, and continues to be, one of my favorite games of all time. It's so awesome how I can create anything, put in complex strategies that only make sense to me, and scream in joy as I murder another defenseless Epic with lasers. Thanks for making it and paying homage to the awesomeness that is Spore.
Can't believe I'm only just now seeing this video, but even a year later thank you for making it. Couldn't have said it more succinctly, Spore was really a gateway into creation for others that wasn't difficult to pass through because of technical proficiency that other creative software demanded (Maya, Blender, Max etc...). While I think it's a shame that it could have been so much more, I'm still happy it existed for me and others, it brought me a lot of joy through the years. Despite the games limitations, there's still so much you can do inside of it.
@@blackcat2333 You said to find a game with evolution mechanics. Thrive does have an evolution mechanic. You never said the game has to be finished. Although, if you want a *finished* game, I'd suggest looking up E.V.O. for the SNES.
7:50 “Sure you could say that some were better than others” Of course, nothing anyone will create from now on can compare to the sheer beauty of Butter.
Spore was, and still is, one of those games that just made my personality. It is a shame that EA owns it, but still. Spore is a great expirience even now. So much fun, so much possibilities. I feel bad for the fish stage
My favorite memory of playing Spore was when I'd really started to delve into the creative aspect of it all. I'd grown bored with the base game and just wanted to see how far I could stretch my creative limbs. So 14 year old simply made art. I made a LOT of it. From rainbow-colored spaceships that looked unbelievably complex to strange structures and even weirder creatures... I couldn't have enough of it. I created tidbits of lore for EVERYTHING I made. My inspiration started with Slartibartfast89 back then too. I admired his art and wanted to emulate it. Sure it took me forever to find my stride but when I did... The most magical thing happened. I'd created this sunset-looking ship that looked like a sideways cone. Except the center of it was pitch black while the outside fins had a - well - sunset coloration to them. They spiraled down to a sharp point at the end. I'd uploaded it the night before and the next morning, much to my surprise, I'd gotten featured! My fifteen minutes of fame came and went as people discovered my treasure trove of weird creatures, art, and sci-fi spaceships. It was unique, and it made me insanely happy. I haven't booted Spore up since, really. Fourteen year old and twenty-six year old me are do very different people, and I'm afraid I lost the patience and skill to do what I used to in this game. But... you might have convinced me to maybe install it one more time. . .
I really enjoyed Spore when I was younger. Watching my favourite RUclipsrs play it and make all these interesting things and species. Shame it's in this state now.
This game was pretty ambitious. I jumped into the franchise late, and through a DS spinoff years ago. Once I had the original game, it was played quite extensively. My favorite stage being the Creature Stage, with the second being the Space/Space Adventure Stage. At the time, I hadn’t thought of it as anything more. But, later in my early 20s. I saw it the same way some artists experienced Spore, a kind of crude, yet effective(with mods), 3D modeling engine. I would be lying if I said this game did not help me with proportions in anatomy, or, sending my creativity the path it has now. I’ve had a passion for evolution, biology, and aliens since I was around 5. Pokemon was a step into that, gardening years later, and access to the internet made finding information, and scientific facts easy. I had a lot of fun with this game, and I’m probably one of a thousand to say, I’d really like to see someone take this game as inspiration, and make something a step better. A Spore 2 perhaps? We can only voice interest, and hope from there.
This! For a time I had no internet and had to go to the library to download creations manually, one at a time. I was curious what filetypes theyd be and when I saw png I thought I had made a mistake and literqlly downloaded a thumbnail instead of the creation.
I’ve spent nearly 500 hours on it, but I haven’t played for a while. It’s definitely a deeply flawed game. I’m really hoping an amazing spiritual successor comes soon. One that realizes that untapped potential. I would play the HELL out of it
I just recently used Spore again for a painting project, because the anatomy of the creature was so alien that I needed a 3d visualization. It was pretty fast recreating it ingame and a screenshot of my spore creature was the basis for my picture.
The moment you start spore it feels like a magical awesome game, then as time goes on it starts to feel like a sloppy 45 minute experience rather then a full fledged game. It could of been soooo much more but it feels like half way through design something changed.
after years of knowing this game, I took advantage of the steam sales and got it ... I am 21 years old, I am forced to play from origin to have access to the servers, but all this is worth ... the game itself always gives you the opportunity to restart and never stop creating things and creatures that you will probably see again in the next game or even affect a game of others. this is what i love. everything is connected and unexpected leaving you with that feeling that what you create will be an indelible sign of your passage that sooner or later someone will meet as you can see someone else's creation
I honestly loved playing Spore when it came out. Sure, there was some unfulfilled potential and the game could have been even better, but I still had a blast playing it. I thought it was pretty creative for its time and it was fun progressing through the stages and using the creature editor.
@@WobblesandBean Civilisation stage is fun in terms of designing your own things and I play war type strategy games so the conquering is fun, economic was my favourite path out of military, economic and religious civilisation
I never knew so many people loved Spore so much. I was super excited about the game before it came out, but then it did and it just seemed lackluster. Yes, you could customize your creatures virtually endlessly, but it didn't have the impacts I was expecting. You could make a super-efficient, sleek creature or a derpy dude with a mouth on the top of its head and a useless third arm flopping out of its back and nothing major would change. Based on this video I guess the difference was about playstyles. I didn't really care about the creation screen; making a new creature wasn't the part I wanted, I wanted to see how different creatures reacted to their environments.
I literally played this game so damn much throughout my childhood, hell I still play it now and again to make aliens from Darwin IV, to think this game ALMOST had its own animation creator that could teach you about animating and make your creature, no matter the shape, move fluently.
i have strong memories with Spore, still remember my creatures design to this day think my only issue i had with the game was that i actually didn't like the shift from playing as an individual creature to then becoming a sims like game, i would have liked to have stayed as an individual in the tribe instead of being this weird force controlling my tribe think it's because i am more of a 3rd person game fan than a sims fan
man, this is a throwback. I used to play this all the time with my brother, and I remember I would get sad that his creatures looked better than mine. I wanted another copy for forever! I didnt know it was on steam!
Spore was one of those games I was super excited for. I got it the day it came out and though I had fun, the actual game was so short it felt more like a tech demo. I was so disappointed.
Everyone: Such a throwback, i remember playing this back when i was in middle school! Me: In middle school, loves this game even though it's only a year younger than me and is pretty dead.
Great summary of the ill-fated Spore. The DRM on Spore was unusual because while many physical CD games of the time had a CD-Key you had to enter (Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 & 2, etc.) they never had a limit on how many times you could use the key. I could go dig up my Starcraft 1 disc now and install it. The key was also not verified with any servers (AFAIK) for those games so you also weren't reliant on the company maintaining servers forever to keep your game. I beta tested and eventually bought Darkspore when it released. I had given them a lot of feedback during the beta and the team was listening and doing their best to take this wild idea and make it into a fun game loop. Unfortunately, they never got there before it was canned. There were a lot of redeeming qualities about it and the ARPG genre had a lack of games at the time so it could've done really well if it had gotten the support it needed and not been so poorly handled by EA. Unfortunately, this is the story of many games. Very few games get the backing and dedication they need to turn a dud or even a medium success into a great game. No Man's Sky is such a unique exception there and I think it's really only because Hello Games had nothing else to fall back on and nobody would have bought another game from them if they didn't fix NMS.
Spore was my childhood! I love this game, and it holds a special place in my heart. I haven't played it in a couple years, but I was super active back in the day. It's honestly a great game.
As someone who also still loves the community and wants to continue, your video has brought to light the majority of technical difficulties I've been having as I keep changing computers and had bouts with customer service about spore even to this day. I'd love to keep playing If they'd let me. Gotten to the point where my account isn't even allowed to install the addons like creepy and cute or those dumb bots parts I won from a contest back in the day 😞 Don't need them to keep creating but not being able to view or have access to my old creations because of those errors is really frustrating 😑
Great talk. Spore is one of my favorite games of all time, really a great experience to engage creativity. Not to mention the feeling of this explorable pocket universe, it was really something magical despite its "streamlining". It was interesting to hear how you believe it contributed to you becoming a designer today, I am also working in 3D modeling and animation, I know I there is a lot that influenced me to do so but there definitely might be a correlation with Spore as well. ^^
I remember being so hyped for this game, my friend had brought in a /newspaper clipping/ to lunch and that alone had my whole friend group going bonkers over this game. I ended up playing this game with my friends for a solid three years, even when it came down to just me and one other friend making Adventures for each other in a map we decided we were the co-authors of. This game is ENORMOUSLY influential on my taste in games and my development as an artist, even if I only really draw as a hobby now I still sometimes draw with the SPORE ost in the background because I spent virtually every night I had with it open either doing homework or building something.
I loved spore as an art program. As a game the only really fun section was cell stage. (Which should become an arcade game). The space stage ended up being too big, I could never keep track of which worlds were self sustaining and well defended.
One of my favorite parts is the amazing amounts of attention to detail, you can find your other saved games in the space stage, ally with them on one save. And it transfers the friendship to the other save too
That’s one of the things I loved about it , I would make all kinds of random shit and come across it randomly , it’s funny seeing something I imagined as hostile being friendly , and something friendly being a complete abomination lmaoo
I remember loving the creature creator. I think if I had had my own laptop or PC back then I'd have spent SO much time just building new creatures. That said, the game itself was a mixed bag for me. I liked the cellular and creature stages, but everything above creature didn't interest me at all. Tribal was always the stage I stopped at, so maybe I would have enjoyed the space stage. Who knows.
I still remember first getting spore roughly seven years ago for my birthday I had seen an ad for it in a pamphlet or something like that, and I just _had_ to get it. So glad I convinced my mom to get it for me, and it warms my heart to see that the spore community is still so active, especially the modding community, allowing so much more to be added on. And the whole darkspore thing, I never got to play the game and I had only just heard of it roughly two years ago after finding DarkEdge's channel and watching all her absolutely amazing UBD creations honestly, kinda sad I couldn't play the game as id love to try it, but I dont legally own the game(plus I _highly_ doubt anyone made a cracked version) so I cant use ReCap, the project you had mentioned that was trying to bring darkspore back. Currently, they have the main menu and hero editor working, so hopefully they can get some more smooth progress soon
I never even knew Spore was well-liked or had a community. I always felt like one of few, with how opinions about it were within my bubble. I adored it, I always wondered what happened to it (I only ever knew about Spore+DLC, not the other Spore-games)
I have both DS games, and the Wii one! One of my friends had regular Spore and I watched her play it once. I could never really get my parents to buy the PC version for me, as the only computer in the house was my Mom's laptop, and she thought it would crash/hack it. I was really only able to get the non PC stuff because the DS and Wii were both mine. I've played all three soooo many times! The only thing that keeps me coming back is the creature creation. The gameplay got stale after a few years, and the Wii version tends to glitch out. I wish that there'd be something reviving them on the Switch-desptite me not having one yet!
One thing you glossed over was the role that Will Wrights development team played in fucking up Spore. Part of the reason it took 8 years to release the game is that around year 3 or 4 of development, roughly 50% of WIll Wirghts staff pulled a creative direction mutiny and wanted to remake everything into a cartoony and kid friendly playstyle/aesthetic, i.e. the spore we ended up getting instead of the more realistic evolution simulator that can be seen in the early footage Will Wright showed us before. The only thing EA did to fuck up spore was the DRM, they literally went out on a limb and gave Will a blank check to make the game he wanted and he failed to put his foot down and tell his developers "No, we're doing it the way we already planned to do it".
I remember I was obsessed with this game too when I was young because I found evolution the coolest thing ever, I watched a ton of videos on it but that was the end of it lol I was one of those kids with parents who didn’t allow them to buy any games, not physical nor digital so I never actually got to play it
Spore was SUCH a friggin cool game. I loves it and still play it sometimes. I just started playing again, that i get a recommendation for this NOW should concern me. But i am too busy playing.
I have been a big fan of this game for a long time, in one moment I tought it was dead. But then... I saw a lot of spore videos on RUclips, I tought they were old, but they weren't! I am so glad this game is still not completely dead.
The thing you talk about with the christmas tree in 2008 threw me right back memory lane... hard. My sister and I were OBSESSED with Spore, we played it together for hours on end and we loved it. The nostalgia is unreal, I swear... How we had to persuade our mom to buy us the DLCs for birthdays and christmas after... how we named our creatures weird stuff we thought was funny back then and how my sister was a literal master at creating them because she has an artist brain touched by the Gods lol Those memories make my chest ache. Simpler times, really...
I love this game, I remember making over 800 things, I wish I still had them, but I should probably go back and play this masterpiece, it's nice to revisit your childhood sometimes
I remember being so hyped for the release of spore, I even pulled all nighter so I could play it from when it released at midnight until I had to go to school the next morning. Finally getting my hands on it and being like "oh.. this is it?" Pretty sure it destroyed all future expectations of video games for me.
This video almost made me cry lmao, im an artist and spore was a childhood favourite game of mine, i was never around during spores haydays, i started playing around 2012-2013, i used to have a vers of the game with less harsh drm, idk got lucky i geuss, i installed it on almost all my computers but recently the severs stopped working, i ended up being forced to buy it again on origin after the support claimed my code doesnt work on origin (bullshit i sent them photographic proof of it being a legitimate copy that existed before origin) to this day i loved playing it and i have my own entire storyline based off my main favourite races, a kinda polictal murder mystery dance turned all out war in space stage between these four races, its one of my favourite comfort games and i so wish for more, but i still play it for hours on end, I've probably played more than any game like skyrim or fallout or those tripple a open worlds, spore is so simple fun and creative and holds such a special place in my heart.
I remember the initial spore demo/preview. It was amazing! You could do so much and each stage presented so much potential. Then it got released and they simplified it so much... too much... The game I saw and the game that got released were so different and not in a good way... not saying that the spore we got was bad, but the previous rendition had so much more potential.
Im so mad i didn't find this video sooner. Its very well put together and i like that you pointed out the faults and actually got around to explaining why the franchise fell- I certainly can agree as I own Spore Hero and let me tell you starting it as a kid and then finding out I couldn't create just what I wanted like on PC I was so upset because it could've been done, my cousins have put more hours into that game than I have because its just not even the same- But I digress. Spore, like many, was life changing for me. I've met some of my greatest friends by playing the game with them and creating wacky creatures we would laugh about for hours on end, but also, creating creatures from my imagination really helped push forward my artistic passion, I used to draw these creatures as practice and it was always really fun and easy. I recently bought the game again on Steam and I'm not even embarrassed about the hours I've already put into it because I've already put so many years into it. I'll always recommend Spore to people who just want a game they can screw around and just have a fun time with because thats what it is. In terms of my art today, its definitely helped bring back my love for character creation and design, and no art school could've taught me the things Spore has. It'll always be my heart game.
Spore's DRM was also such that it would detect changes in the game files and prevent the game from running. This made it UNPLAYABLE later on for MacOS, because it would detect the updated files as altered files, and would block you from running the game. The problem was unfixable
it also would detect hardware changes as being on a new computer, which caused some people to inadvertently lose the ability to install the game on their PC
You did such a wonderful job talking about this game, explaining not just its (very valid) problems but also what people had actually done with it; design, contests, challenges, and so forth. As corny as it is, I owe Spore everything I have now and I was very excited to hear you mention artists using it as a means of creating art - it's absolutely what got me to take 3D art seriously in the first place! It's always fun hearing other people's experiences, perspectives and histories with this game and I really enjoyed listening to yours.
I'm also a tad bit jealous you won one of the Darkspore creation challenges! The competition was fierce and I never got a winning entry, congratulations, and hopefully some day the Darkspore resurrection project will let us experience your creation up close!
Thank you so much! We really love your channel, and we've been watching your videos a lot these last few weeks as we've started creating some Spore content again. Even after all this time, Spore is honestly still a lot of fun (despite the crashes), and we 100% believe that it's a great creative tool, especially as a launching pad for budding artists.
OML MY FAVORITE SPIORE RUclipsR!@!@!!
SunnySzeto SunnySzeto sorry to burst your bubble but thrive was doomed to fail from the start- i was actually part of their community about 3 years ago and next to no progress has been made on the game since then.
most of the developers the team had back then left over that span of time, and the project managers seem to vehemently refuse to open any form of crowdfunding that they could use to actually hire new people for the team. at one point a project manager even *acknowledged* on a forum post that the team would benefit greatly from crowdsourced funds, yet actively refused to listen to the people suggesting it and instead used the rest of said forum post to deride and mock them.
excuse my French here, but there is no hope for thrive ever being completed unless whoever is managing it pulls the proverbial stick out of their ass and actually listens to their consumerbase
U JUST HAD A STREAM NOW U CANNOT STOP ME WITH THE CAPS
Eey
When I was a kid I actually gave a presentation on design using spore as an example and I had the creature creator out on my moms laptop so people could try it out. This video threw me back into middle school where everything was interesting and all I wanted to do was explore and create. Such a huge influence on me, I honestly don’t think I’d be the same person today if I didn’t receive the game for my birthday. I still have the CD bundle, right next to my sketchbooks on my bookcase.
No way. I did the same thing! In middle school we had a project where we were supposed to design a city, and I did it using GA and took a bunch of screen shots.
@@ianmeade7441 i made alot of mission on GA and my brother made the story 😂 good times 😭, i am 28 now
@@helldronez 👌🏿
My Hyper-Super-Educated Opinion is:
Games are the Future of Schools.
@@slevinchannel7589 yes
Spore didn't live up to expectations but with today's tech, it absolutely could.
It's been 3000 years but I would buy a Spore 2 in a heartbeat.
What kind of fucked up expectations did you have? Spore was a ridiculously amazing game. All of the 5 stages that it had felt truly different and yet, complete in their own right. A small game, each of them. How did it disappoint you?!
@@vVaIker It was hyped up to be a lot more.
@@vVaIker When they first announced the game, it was a different concept. It was less "game" and more "evolution simulation". For example, the stats of your creature depended on your design, not on the pieces you chose. It also had an aquatic stage, between the cell and creature stages, and Will Wright hyped up a lot of features that never made it to the final game.
And finally they released something that was nothing like the game they promised. Most people played it as it was, without knowing anything about the hype train, so while they now remember it as a fun game from their childhood, others remember it as a big disappointment.
Wouldn't even ask the price
With 2009 technology, it could've been much greater than it was. If an indie team of 15 devs can make the current No Man's Sky today, Maxis could've made exactly what we expected spore to be, and it was going to be, if not for EA wanting to make the game more child-friendly and casual.
But I wouldn't buy a sequel to spore just yet, I'd buy any game that actually delivered what Will Wright promised spore could be back at GDCe 2005, the already mentioned No Man's Sky would be a good start, if only we changed it's focus.
One day, one day there should Spore Remastered with additions of Cute And Creepy, Galactic Adventure, and Dark Spore bundle in.
Spore on newest consoles? This would be best spore already
And that Dr Pepper Robot parts pack
A 4k D*CK creation
Seriously, why are we not funding this??
@@starsiadraws Mainly because EA hasn't offered to reboot it for new gen. Along with no Indie Dev has properly tackled the idea to make a spiritual successor for the franchise with creativity in mind.
EA: "It's making money, but not enough money. Cancel it"
Lol, the most flawed concept corporatism has embraced wholeheartedly.
This thing is working perfectly! But it only produces 2% profit/growth... hmmmmm.... BURN IT DOWN
EA: "birds fly. grass grows and brother? i hurt people"
Yea, they'd kill a game for no reason other than their own greed.
My Hyper-Super-Educated Opinion is:
Games are the Future of Schools.
@@CeilingCatMSM Hi.
RANDOM Recommendations cause i like to spread some fun-stuff:
-Cliffside.
-Hilda-
-Starship Goldfish.
-RUclipsr Redditor.
-RUclipsr Vice Rhino.
I just can't believe how magical a Spore 2 would be with the technology of today's games...like hyperrealistic creatures, unlimited different parts, weapons, accessories, endless stuff to explore in the universe in space stage, more, bigger, better worlds, but the original experience, and essentially the same game rebooted. It would be amazing...
Aren't there any studio with the idea to "make" a game that is similiar to Spore? I would love to experience a sequal to Spore but... well we all know the reason why it wouldn't happen anytime soon in the future.
@@derkommentator6543 I've had an idea for it for years but lack the coding skills
If Spore was remade today I agree with all those things except the photorealistic creatures. I think Spore's creatures work best in a cartoony style, but maybe that's just me.
@@sirincompetent758 yeah because if it was hyper realistic it would be extremely graphic and traumatizing for younger players
I would LOVE that, but unfortunately even IF it’s made, it probably will come with a butt load of micro transactions and season passes and all that shit that games seem to love nowadays
It’s surprising how many held back games can have their failure summed up as “Then EA happened..”
Ultima was one of those series destroyed when EA sank its tendrils into it.
plants vs zombies met the same fate as well
because EA is the only ultra capitalistic corporation that has stained the gaming industry
@@whiskizyo2067 Just saying they're the biggest head on the d-k hydra that's become of gaming, don't get me started on those mouthbreathers at Activision-Blizzard or the morons behind Candy Crush!
@@whiskizyo2067 Gamigo is pretty awful too
I was obsessed with this game and i’ve always hated EA for how they treated it.
...sabotage? Corporate greed? Both? Something else?
Gerado Solusyon Just EA itself sucks
EA also ruined SimCity
Gerado Solusyon corporate greed leads to self sabotage that has little consequences for the corporations themselves because of how big and influential they are.
i've Always hated EA
Spore is a good game but I'm always frustrated with how much *more* it could have been. Literally every stage of the game could have a couple more mechanics added and it just feels kinda rushed to me. I've played it several times now and I always find myself rushing through the first 4 stages (ESPECIALLY TRIBAL) and I get bored after a week on space, granted, every game bores me after a week but I always think "I wish I could do this or that" and I just can't. There is still too much potential to this idea.
Yes! I've always said this game needs a remake. Like a proper remake. Tribal stage has always been my favorite stage, sadly it is (aside from the single cell stage) the shortest stage I feel like. I really hope someday this game gets blown into a new life..
@@lilredhead17 Speaking of which, breaking news: There's an open source game called Thrive that seems to be trying to do just that, remake spore on a wider scale. I just downloaded it and it's only on cell stage right now and it seems a lot more scientific than spore.
@Bob Bobbertson For a game that isn't even 1/5 done, I like it.
@@Zancibar I will check it out! Thank you 😁
personally my favorite stages were cell and creature, i couldnt care less about tribal and disliked civilization, space seemed fun but always crashed before i could do much
I wish we had a spore-like game made now. The idea was ahead of its time, but the technology was well, from 2008
Are there good mods for the main game to make the experience more interesting? I thought of playing the game again after all those years.
Honestly, even the tech was a bit ahead as far as the IK for creatures and some other concepts
@@irecordwithaphone1856 the tech wasn’t ahead enough lol
there's thrive
@@Cocojonut-fp8ek Correction; there's a half functional cell stage that overshot its correction toward realism so hard that it ended up being less fun than spore's googly eyed cell stage... and a giant wikipedia page full of ideas.
It's been in development since before I was an adult, and now I've got 4 kids. So it's safe to say we're never going to see multicellular.
I was actually hoping this video had go in detail with the version of spore that never saw the light of day, the one shown by Will that included and aquatic stage, more realistic anatomy, active ecosystem and blood. To this day im still wishing for someone to make a game exactly like the Spore we never got to play.
same, i was really disappointed when i learned that there was supposed to be an aquatic stage in the game
I watched the video in hopes of some info on that aswell. I remember years before spores release i watched will wrights presentations of the game, it looked amazing. And then the crap they churned out in the end was so bad in comparison to its early alpha days it was basically a different game. Still breaks my heart when i think of what it could have been.
Thrive and Elysian eclipse
theres sapling
the "version" of spore shown off in 2005 was a concept demonstration comprised of isolated setpieces, not a playable game. for instance, you can tell they hadn't fully figured out exporting creatures from the editor to gameplay yet because the version of the tripod will makes in the editor is noticeably different from the one he plays as. the aquatic stage probably never existed beyond that one little patch of terrain they show, iirc they wanted to make a full aquatic stage but didn't have time to sort out control issues.
EA had literal goldmine in hands. Too bad they blew up the whole mine.
They thought exploding it would be better than hiring expert miners to mine it
Another case of a golden goose I see?
They already did that partaly before even releasing it.
They got the goblin flu
Behold my golden goose, see how I cook it!
The SPORE modding community is already trying to bring back Darkspore… and EA aint even noticed!
The Resurrection Capsule project is taking measures to ensure that if/when EA does notice, they (hopefully) won't have reason to object.
EA is EA, We can only hope for a shred of mercy, after all, we`re technicaly buying a broken game off them if the resurrection Capsule project works.
Really? Lolol. Cool.
@@splitwirez what exactly is the plan? Remake Darkspore?
@@JS-cq7ut i wanna know too
You didn't touch on the grand disappointment the game was when compared to the tech demo that Will Wright kept showing. This game was supposed to be way more complex, but instead it turned into Sims in Space.
It wasn't even that when it released, it felt more like one of those bundles of minigames you see getting sold for 20 bucks by studios nobody can ever remember the name of. When I was in school for game art and design, we kept watching that tech demo and wondering how much this game was gonna change the industry. A month after release, nobody was talking about it anymore.
Indeed. You are spot on. EA is also slowly killing The Sims in the same way. And Sim City…gone. Cities Skylines filled those shoes…and well. (Paralives is poised to overtake The Sims)
The only thing I found amusing about Spore was seeing one of my creations in someone else’s game (never uploaded it, just a spore I had made in normal gameplay) and the person shared the description of the now, dinosaur sized creature (it never evolved in their game). It said extremely dangerous, you cannot impress this species. I found that hilarious! Beyond that, I lost interest after playing a few days with my daughter. She lost interest too. EA strikes again.
Those little details in Maxis games are just…gone.
@@heyitsjustaz Yeah it's pretty much comparable to No Man's Lie, Lyberpunk, and Game of Thrones Finalie
I think what made Spore special was Galactic Adventures. It added in a new way to experience the game and allowed for people to create whatever missions they desired, resulting in many entertaining moments whether they were terrible or amazing.
@@life4trinity But I didn't want to play another dungeon crawler. I wanted what Will Wright demo'd.
The second stage was definitely my favorite one, it was fun to design cool wildlife.
Yeah!
I loved the civ stage too. It was fun
second stage and first stage were my favorites. I blew a lot of time playing space stage as well. My first video posted to youtube 13 years ago ruclips.net/video/kErrVqOdVLU/видео.html
@@partlycloudy7707 they're talking about creature stage
I never went past second stage lol. Recently I got to tribal stage and had no idea it even existed or how it worked and it felt weird and so I stopped playing it. I love spore mostly for character creation and walking around in the weird world
Subjectively: “sorry we’ve been gone so long!”
Me: *looks at subjectively content feed and sees last video was 2 days ago*
the audio for this video was actually recorded before our thursday video 😅
I tried to connect to an EA account and lost all my saves, does anyone know how to solve this problem?
Miguel Bianchi oh I know
@@Ryan-ly2bg how?
@@miguelbianchi968 that's normal man, Spore don't keep saves ;-;
I see spore videos in 2020... I click.
I feel like Spore is making a small comeback? It seems like more people have been playing and talking about it lately.
Prisinence Yes spore needs the comeback!
I liked it it was a lot of fun short but fun sad to here the story of it's downfall
@@directedbydon I agree it should come back but not with EA as they'd just infect the game with "surprise mechanics". I know it's their thing and they probably won't sell it but the last thing spore needs is to be riddled with microtransactions.
@@hikaru9624 i hope you can buy new cool skins in spore 2
To be honest, I have used spore as a basis when designing. Sometimes I can't just draw what I think, and making a creature out of the idea has helped me finalize things.
That being said, the spore creative community is still very active. And new games that intend to follow in spore's footsteps have started to come from the woodwork. Whether or not they'll be able to live up to spore, I cannot say. But we can dream. And get there one day.
I also ask for people to download the game from steam, or origin of you have it. There are two DLC packs, and a plethora of mods to add. Including some that bring in models from dark spore. It's a game that can be used as an artistic tool if you want, or just have fun.
I do the same thing, glad to hear im not the only one
I heard Thrive has updated, they’re trying to be spore 2.
Cant use Mods with spore on steam tho, kinda sucks
@@josephhuston4186 Not true for everyone! I use a steam copy (i literally couldnt transfer it to anything else due to a common error w/ the game's key) and recently modded it to hell and back.
It works fine as long as you look up how to do it instead of just winging it.
@@prismitits9005 oh nice I'll prolly try getting some mods then, thanks
I feel the downfall of spore started before the games release, I feel the alphas and betas they showed before release where even better. The ability to exist underwater, more inclusive and diverse environments and even the ability of total free fly in space age. Removing all this was the beginning of the end for spore.
I think it never existed, that stuff was custom made in some program
@@georgsgrants9925 wut, im talking about the beta 2 unless that whole video was sham that was how the game used to be
@@BaconVonStrip yeah, i think it was basically fake. vaguely recall some EA representative saying that on some forum. let me try to find it
@@georgsgrants9925 did you find it?
@@grapiesoo skeleton.jpg
You should check the early trailers. The game used to have a 3d underwater section.
I dreamt of making an underwater civilization which is why I was super disappointed
I had a love hate relationship with this game... A lot of memories some good, some bad. The biggest disappointment came from its initial advertisements and showcases. I loved that vision, that game play, that intelligent design. Come to find out after I get a copy... that things have changed... a lot... now, I don't pretend to know that it was simply a design choice for feasibility or player accessibility or was because EA wanted to rush a product to as many people as possible, but the spore I initially fell in love with was a more diverse, complicated animal.
Of course when it did come out, I did love the creativity that went into it and the community that developed around the game.... but I will always remember how it could have been so much more.
That was exactly my experience! I expected each stage of the game to be more fleshed out and having more mechanics. I remember them showing different breeding habits based on how you create your creature. I couldn't believe how fast I went through the different stages without trying. I replayed it again after my first playthrough and made the game last 18 hours before reaching the space stage by completely exploring the planet on each stage after cell before going to the space stage. If they ever do remake it I hope it's to the original design and not the game that was released to us.
@@Bver19 If I tried to, I could get two species to space stage in one day. I normally get a species to space stage in one sitting because it only takes me around two and a half hours to do so.
EA made them downgrade the game, as far as I know. They wanted a simple game.
"And every choice you make along the way will impact the skills and adaptations your species will have as they continue to develop over millions of years."
That right there is the false marketing hype that made Spore a disappointment for me oh so many years ago.
Every choice you make will have a very minor impact on the gameplay of the stage you're currently in; and once you move into the next stage, all those choices have barely even a cosmetic impact on the rest of the game.
Part of the reason I bought the game was a presentation given by Wright about some of the technology going into the kinematics of the Creature Creator. Needless to say, the technology that went into dynamically animating a player-designed creature with any number of limbs and a screwed up spine is AMAZING and well beyond my ability to explain. I was sold on the idea that the choices I'd make while designing a critter were meaningful and affected the success of my creature, much like the process of evolution.
In reality, it didn't matter where you put the mouth, it didn't matter how many arms it had, it didn't matter how many legs it had or where. Every part did something easily quantifiable and game-y, which is fine for young kids, but I was expecting something with a bit more meat to it. I think the game could've really used another year of development and an Advanced Mode for older players that offered a richer and more feature-complete experience. I don't know if the game got dumbed down just to appeal to broader audience or if they just ran out of time; it was a very ambitious project after all.
But remember it wasnt will Wright's fault at all, ea owned them so they couldn't stop them from changing it to fit there crappy vision on what the game should be and not what it could be.
well you can be zealot in space stage tho
Modern world in a nutshell: "How corporate greed sabotaged [insert pretty much anything here]"
m c d o n a l d s
The industrial revolution and its consequences....you know the rest
@@x1cxq703 The design for the new buildings look so bad.
"why I'm glad I'm not a business major"
I remember there was some early negative criticism over _Spore_ being transitioned from a more realistic art-style to a more cartoony art-style, as well as the loss of the Aquatic stage.
I felt so let down when I played at first. I had been watching everything they put it since the first black and white demo of the cell stage they did. I think the scope of the game was originally massive but had to be pared down quite a bit.
That said... Still out in over 300 hours into that game
Isnt the "aquatic stage" just the amoeba stage? I mean, you're in the water for that whole stage.
@@jelly_4_brainz Nope. The Aquatic stage was going to be more like the Creature phase, with players controlling an underwater creature that can swim in all directions.
IIRC it was cut because of technical difficulties, but Will Wright mentioned it would be added back in as an expansion pack... which ultimately never happened.
@@AschaVovina aawww that woulda been awesome :(
Wright had a bit of a reputation after this game came out that was similar to that Molyneux. We were promised so much before and with the exception of the creature and space stage all came up woefully short. Most of the game felt unfinished and oversimplified.
Me and my wife preordered a copy each and this was one of the games that put the nail in the coffin of us preordering games.
Spore wasn't bad, but it wasn't the game we were sold.
Omg nostalgia
didn't expect to see you here
Yeah me neither.
Same, I loved spore.
@@MystifyingMister Why wouldn't she be here, she's got a weird creature fetish. (All in good fun, Alteori.)
Omg nostalgia
" it could have been more "
> me in my childhood still spent hundreds of hours on this haha
> most of which was creature stage to just walk around with whatever designs i could come up with; & the creator whenever i wanted to make something more " complex "
> No matter how many times i replayed the cycle of evolution I loved it every time- up until the grox.
My Hyper-Super-Educated Opinion is:
Games are the Future of Schools.
@@slevinchannel7589 no
@@ACK4t Uhm, actually, yes. Thats kinda a Fact. The School-System is known and highly criticized for being very primitive for even the time we literally live in; and its evidend where the 'Evolution' of 'Schools' goes to, seeing how Computers are more and more used.
So what i said wasnt really a Question but is more, uhm, fact?
@@slevinchannel7589 i dont give a shit
@@ACK4t lmaooo
It's amazing how good Spore is even in its current state. This video just scratched the surface of the game's issues. EA doomed it from the start by forcing it to release far ahead of schedule, sans many game mechanics that Will intended to have, leaving it a buggy shadow of what it could have been.
Let's have a moment of silence for our dear Aquatic Stage.
Sans
@AAAnt M Not to sound rude, but he DID say that EA doomed Spore by forcing it to release far ahead of schedule, which is why it would be so rushed and unpolished. Poor Devs
Another thing I don't see mentioned much in the comments here, or in the video, is that apparently the devs themselves were also split into two 'factions'. Originally Spore was going to be more like the old Maxis games, heading closer towards a soft simulationist direction (which lines up more with the old pre-release publicity footage), this was apparently Will Wright's 'faction'. Another faction popped up that wanted the spore we have now, more gamey, less focused on evolution etc. etc. I personally would've preferred the other, and was super hyped about the other, but we got this, it was still enjoyable, but compared to what it could've been, it felt hollow =/.
My Hyper-Super-Educated Opinion is:
Games are the Future of Schools.
Spore didn't die
It's still lives in my heart😔
And in my username
there will be no us as right now if there is no Spore.
*has a heart attack*
In our hearts*
@@TSPH1992 and in my pc
Spore was literally a Santa present exactly how he described it. I can still remember playing that game on that Christmas with pure curiosity and enthusiasm. One of my Best gaming moments period.
i wonder how spore could be reinvented- with more modern graphics and mechanics whilst still retaining as a tool for creative expression and freedom. Either way, despite the graphics being outdated its still holds up as a game.
That's easy. Don't make player reflexes and skill provide a benefit.
Hell don't even have the player control a member of the species. Make the player's sole interaction be in the form of designing the form and how the creature interacts with the world and members of its own species.
If graphics ever meant something to a videogame's quality, the endless garbage stream of recycled IPs called "AAA games" we have nowadays would be actually good.
I think it could be done easy, but the real horror is how a lot of the staples of "modern gaming" would ultimately ruin it (i.e. cutting stuff out to sell you later, monetization, live-service model and etc). I'd be hesitant giving EA a chance back in the day, and now a days I'd NEVER want them to try and remake ANYTHING ever.
There's a game that's in development that is designed to be Spore's successor and more realistic counterpart... *THRIVE*
If they made a new Spore game I would be all over it
there's a game called Thrive that's being developed right now. it has similar mechanics as Spore but with more stages and stuff!
@@eidenno4662 Too realistic. Not enough adventures.
@@Bacony_Cakes that's true, i could totally go for a more non-realistic version as well!
@@eidenno4662 i like Thrive game too
@@eidenno4662 Hasn't it been in development hell for like seven years? How far along have they come? Last time I tried asking questions on their forum in like 2013 an admin threatened to ban me for daring to ask anything at all, which kind of made them come across as @ssholes...
Oh hey, one of my creations shows up briefly! (7:12 the "Let it Consume You" creature by Metalblaze)
This game is definitely one of my favorites, even in the state that it is in with the disappointing level it came out to be, it's still a huge amount of fun. There really is no game like it.
Hey! Get out of my computer!
ERROR! Congrats on the feature!
EA ruins EVERYTHING they touch 😭
Grass is Green, The Sky is Blue, And Cats Go Meow, What Else Is New?
Except plants vs zombies 1, thank god
You could call this condition... Bidet's Touch! **bard empire noises**
Rip command and conquer
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 can't believe anyone else even REMEMBERS those games. RIP.
I remember when lil baby me had the epiphany that parts can be used in ways they weren't intended. A mouth inversed becomes a frill that expands when the monster yells. Horns can be legs. Legs can be horns.
Tools are used best in new creative ways. Ways they may not have been intended for. What a wonderful discovery to have at such a young age.
9:35 "Spore's first and arguably its only controversy was centered around its DRM". Uhm, no. That was neither the only nor the first controversy surrounding Spore. The first controversy was when EA stepped in and said "It's neat that you've made a deep simulation game appealing to science geeks, but we're going to need you to dumb it down, cut a lot of content and make it much more cute and cartoony, to appeal to pre-teens instead". The 2005 version of Spore looked so awesome and so promising, and what ended up actually being released in 2008 was underwhelming to say the least to those who had been following its development for years.
I was a preteen when spore was first announced and the original version *did* appeal to me. I think you meant appeal to preschoolers.
Yep, pre-teens will always look up stuff above their age range
Therapist:
Spore Naruto doesn't exist, Spore Naruto can't hurt you!
Spore Naruto:
13:19
Sporeruto
@@KamisKapi 😭
@@KamisKapi Sporuuuuuuuuutoooooooooooooooooo
My Hyper-Super-Educated Opinion is:
Games are the Future of Schools.
@@mr.preston1632 Sporsukeeeeeeeeeeeeee
One of my favourite games growing up, the beauty of user created content allowed it to have a much longer lifespan, with many active communities still around today.
Also you can make Lovecraft look like a chump with the walking dong creatures.
E: Just realized that your snowman species is in empire into my main game, neato!
I used to spend entire days playing Spore!
Bysthedragon same I adored the game, really got my imagination going
Same
Aye
Spore is, and continues to be, one of my favorite games of all time. It's so awesome how I can create anything, put in complex strategies that only make sense to me, and scream in joy as I murder another defenseless Epic with lasers. Thanks for making it and paying homage to the awesomeness that is Spore.
Can't believe I'm only just now seeing this video, but even a year later thank you for making it. Couldn't have said it more succinctly, Spore was really a gateway into creation for others that wasn't difficult to pass through because of technical proficiency that other creative software demanded (Maya, Blender, Max etc...). While I think it's a shame that it could have been so much more, I'm still happy it existed for me and others, it brought me a lot of joy through the years. Despite the games limitations, there's still so much you can do inside of it.
I really hope we get some sort of successor to Spore one day
It feels like there's still so much potential to explore
Minecraft and No man's sky are pretty much it
@@---pb8od no, they're not. tell me of one other game that tries to do spore's evolution aspect
@@blackcat2333 Thrive.
@@astracrits4633 thrive's devs aren't even done with the first stage
@@blackcat2333 You said to find a game with evolution mechanics. Thrive does have an evolution mechanic. You never said the game has to be finished.
Although, if you want a *finished* game, I'd suggest looking up E.V.O. for the SNES.
7:50 “Sure you could say that some were better than others”
Of course, nothing anyone will create from now on can compare to the sheer beauty of Butter.
I feel like every Subjectively video starts with "We're finally back! " Just an observation
That was actually a running gag in the early days :)
Интересное наблюдение
Spore was, and still is, one of those games that just made my personality. It is a shame that EA owns it, but still. Spore is a great expirience even now. So much fun, so much possibilities.
I feel bad for the fish stage
My favorite memory of playing Spore was when I'd really started to delve into the creative aspect of it all. I'd grown bored with the base game and just wanted to see how far I could stretch my creative limbs. So 14 year old simply made art. I made a LOT of it.
From rainbow-colored spaceships that looked unbelievably complex to strange structures and even weirder creatures... I couldn't have enough of it. I created tidbits of lore for EVERYTHING I made.
My inspiration started with Slartibartfast89 back then too. I admired his art and wanted to emulate it. Sure it took me forever to find my stride but when I did...
The most magical thing happened.
I'd created this sunset-looking ship that looked like a sideways cone. Except the center of it was pitch black while the outside fins had a - well - sunset coloration to them. They spiraled down to a sharp point at the end. I'd uploaded it the night before and the next morning, much to my surprise, I'd gotten featured!
My fifteen minutes of fame came and went as people discovered my treasure trove of weird creatures, art, and sci-fi spaceships. It was unique, and it made me insanely happy.
I haven't booted Spore up since, really. Fourteen year old and twenty-six year old me are do very different people, and I'm afraid I lost the patience and skill to do what I used to in this game.
But... you might have convinced me to maybe install it one more time. . .
I really enjoyed Spore when I was younger. Watching my favourite RUclipsrs play it and make all these interesting things and species. Shame it's in this state now.
spore should totally be revived haha
eiden no Yeah
As did I. I had not seen any promotional material and just bought it because it looked interesting, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.
Player Empire: **becomes ally with Grox**
Galactic Council: FBI OPEN UP! (and thanks for the fish)
I mean, the Grox will stab you in the back if you ally with them. Quoting the handbook "They don't understand relationships"
its too hard to hold the good relationship with grox tho
Spore is such a masterpiece and remastered version has so much potential
This game was pretty ambitious. I jumped into the franchise late, and through a DS spinoff years ago. Once I had the original game, it was played quite extensively. My favorite stage being the Creature Stage, with the second being the Space/Space Adventure Stage.
At the time, I hadn’t thought of it as anything more. But, later in my early 20s. I saw it the same way some artists experienced Spore, a kind of crude, yet effective(with mods), 3D modeling engine. I would be lying if I said this game did not help me with proportions in anatomy, or, sending my creativity the path it has now.
I’ve had a passion for evolution, biology, and aliens since I was around 5. Pokemon was a step into that, gardening years later, and access to the internet made finding information, and scientific facts easy.
I had a lot of fun with this game, and I’m probably one of a thousand to say, I’d really like to see someone take this game as inspiration, and make something a step better. A Spore 2 perhaps? We can only voice interest, and hope from there.
The thing that I would love to understand in a technical level is how they made a way to save creatures into PNG format!
This!
For a time I had no internet and had to go to the library to download creations manually, one at a time.
I was curious what filetypes theyd be and when I saw png I thought I had made a mistake and literqlly downloaded a thumbnail instead of the creation.
bruh what i didn't know that lmao
png's support metadata tags, and with some bit manipulation you use custom tags and then store the image bits
Koikatsu does the same thing too! It's crazy (look up at your own risk 18+)
I absolutely loved Spore and its expansion packs. It's a game that could have been so so much more, but for what it ended up being, I still loved it.
I’ve spent nearly 500 hours on it, but I haven’t played for a while. It’s definitely a deeply flawed game. I’m really hoping an amazing spiritual successor comes soon. One that realizes that untapped potential. I would play the HELL out of it
I just recently used Spore again for a painting project, because the anatomy of the creature was so alien that I needed a 3d visualization. It was pretty fast recreating it ingame and a screenshot of my spore creature was the basis for my picture.
The moment you start spore it feels like a magical awesome game, then as time goes on it starts to feel like a sloppy 45 minute experience rather then a full fledged game. It could of been soooo much more but it feels like half way through design something changed.
It was more like 80% through. Will Wright decided to pitch all the hardcore procedural behavior stuff they'd developed for casual game mechanics.
after years of knowing this game, I took advantage of the steam sales and got it ... I am 21 years old, I am forced to play from origin to have access to the servers, but all this is worth ... the game itself always gives you the opportunity to restart and never stop creating things and creatures that you will probably see again in the next game or even affect a game of others. this is what i love. everything is connected and unexpected leaving you with that feeling that what you create will be an indelible sign of your passage that sooner or later someone will meet as you can see someone else's creation
I honestly loved playing Spore when it came out. Sure, there was some unfulfilled potential and the game could have been even better, but I still had a blast playing it. I thought it was pretty creative for its time and it was fun progressing through the stages and using the creature editor.
Cell- Love
Animal-Fantastic
Tribal- Meh, I wasn’t a fan
Civilisation- Amazing
Space- Never played often
the best is animal phase, i love collecting them all bones 😂 even tho i repeat it almost thousand times still engaging.
honestly i hated space, it's so confusing
I always rushed to get to space, though creature stage was right behind it in terms of fun for me
Phase 2 is the best! Phases 3 and 4 are kinda tedious, imo.
@@WobblesandBean
Civilisation stage is fun in terms of designing your own things and I play war type strategy games so the conquering is fun, economic was my favourite path out of military, economic and religious civilisation
I really miss Spore! I played it so much in middle school😭
That was my childhood game.
I never knew so many people loved Spore so much. I was super excited about the game before it came out, but then it did and it just seemed lackluster. Yes, you could customize your creatures virtually endlessly, but it didn't have the impacts I was expecting. You could make a super-efficient, sleek creature or a derpy dude with a mouth on the top of its head and a useless third arm flopping out of its back and nothing major would change. Based on this video I guess the difference was about playstyles. I didn't really care about the creation screen; making a new creature wasn't the part I wanted, I wanted to see how different creatures reacted to their environments.
Same for me. I was extremely interested in the game, but ultimately it felt like nothing I did designing creatures had any real impact.
Well those who had no talent for 3 d design and lacked creativity were bound to hate the game i guess.
@@estebanbr7596 not at all what the game was advertised to be lmao
I literally played this game so damn much throughout my childhood, hell I still play it now and again to make aliens from Darwin IV, to think this game ALMOST had its own animation creator that could teach you about animating and make your creature, no matter the shape, move fluently.
i have strong memories with Spore, still remember my creatures design to this day
think my only issue i had with the game was that i actually didn't like the shift from playing as an individual creature to then becoming a sims like game, i would have liked to have stayed as an individual in the tribe instead of being this weird force controlling my tribe
think it's because i am more of a 3rd person game fan than a sims fan
man, this is a throwback. I used to play this all the time with my brother, and I remember I would get sad that his creatures looked better than mine. I wanted another copy for forever! I didnt know it was on steam!
Spore was one of those games I was super excited for. I got it the day it came out and though I had fun, the actual game was so short it felt more like a tech demo. I was so disappointed.
Same here. It was the first game I actually followed the development of.
Everyone: Such a throwback, i remember playing this back when i was in middle school!
Me: In middle school, loves this game even though it's only a year younger than me and is pretty dead.
you: look at me I'm different
me: buys wal-mart's entire stock of trojans just so I know it'll be impossible for me to have a kid like you
jesus christ this reply section is a rollercoaster that rides into itself
@@Danny0lsen he clearly doesnt
@@Danny0lsen Hmmm yes today I will go onto youtube and vent my insecurities by projecting them onto someone because they said mean words
@@ksquidplaysminecraft I don't see how being young and liking an old game could lead you to the conclusion that this kid is undesirable as offspring
not me staring menacingly at my copy of darkspore
Great summary of the ill-fated Spore. The DRM on Spore was unusual because while many physical CD games of the time had a CD-Key you had to enter (Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 & 2, etc.) they never had a limit on how many times you could use the key. I could go dig up my Starcraft 1 disc now and install it. The key was also not verified with any servers (AFAIK) for those games so you also weren't reliant on the company maintaining servers forever to keep your game.
I beta tested and eventually bought Darkspore when it released. I had given them a lot of feedback during the beta and the team was listening and doing their best to take this wild idea and make it into a fun game loop. Unfortunately, they never got there before it was canned. There were a lot of redeeming qualities about it and the ARPG genre had a lack of games at the time so it could've done really well if it had gotten the support it needed and not been so poorly handled by EA. Unfortunately, this is the story of many games. Very few games get the backing and dedication they need to turn a dud or even a medium success into a great game. No Man's Sky is such a unique exception there and I think it's really only because Hello Games had nothing else to fall back on and nobody would have bought another game from them if they didn't fix NMS.
Respawn: Hey EA we made one of the best battle royales. Can we reward our players with some cool events?
EA: yeah but make each character skin $18
Spore was my childhood! I love this game, and it holds a special place in my heart. I haven't played it in a couple years, but I was super active back in the day. It's honestly a great game.
As someone who also still loves the community and wants to continue, your video has brought to light the majority of technical difficulties I've been having as I keep changing computers and had bouts with customer service about spore even to this day.
I'd love to keep playing If they'd let me. Gotten to the point where my account isn't even allowed to install the addons like creepy and cute or those dumb bots parts I won from a contest back in the day 😞
Don't need them to keep creating but not being able to view or have access to my old creations because of those errors is really frustrating 😑
God I miss Spore. I put hours and hours into this game and literally met some of my current friends through it still
Great talk. Spore is one of my favorite games of all time, really a great experience to engage creativity. Not to mention the feeling of this explorable pocket universe, it was really something magical despite its "streamlining". It was interesting to hear how you believe it contributed to you becoming a designer today, I am also working in 3D modeling and animation, I know I there is a lot that influenced me to do so but there definitely might be a correlation with Spore as well. ^^
I remember being so hyped for this game, my friend had brought in a /newspaper clipping/ to lunch and that alone had my whole friend group going bonkers over this game. I ended up playing this game with my friends for a solid three years, even when it came down to just me and one other friend making Adventures for each other in a map we decided we were the co-authors of. This game is ENORMOUSLY influential on my taste in games and my development as an artist, even if I only really draw as a hobby now I still sometimes draw with the SPORE ost in the background because I spent virtually every night I had with it open either doing homework or building something.
I remember my friend and I finally getting to space then stumbling across the solar system by accident. Blew our minds.
I loved spore as an art program. As a game the only really fun section was cell stage. (Which should become an arcade game). The space stage ended up being too big, I could never keep track of which worlds were self sustaining and well defended.
One of my favorite parts is the amazing amounts of attention to detail, you can find your other saved games in the space stage, ally with them on one save. And it transfers the friendship to the other save too
That’s one of the things I loved about it , I would make all kinds of random shit and come across it randomly , it’s funny seeing something I imagined as hostile being friendly , and something friendly being a complete abomination lmaoo
I remember loving the creature creator. I think if I had had my own laptop or PC back then I'd have spent SO much time just building new creatures. That said, the game itself was a mixed bag for me. I liked the cellular and creature stages, but everything above creature didn't interest me at all. Tribal was always the stage I stopped at, so maybe I would have enjoyed the space stage. Who knows.
I remeber when I first played it on the DS, damn that game was a lot of fun. Really one of the few games that leave a mark and that I'll always love.
I cant believe im not the only one who remembers Mushroom Men, id love to see a video on it eventually lmao
Oh, I remember Mushroom Men... and the "epic" ending you get from getting EVERYTHING in the game. 😖
Oh, I remember Mushroom Men... and the "epic" ending you get when you get when collect EVERYTHING in the game. 😖
*Petition to remaster spore who’s with me*
I still remember first getting spore roughly seven years ago for my birthday
I had seen an ad for it in a pamphlet or something like that, and I just _had_ to get it.
So glad I convinced my mom to get it for me, and it warms my heart to see that the spore community is still so active, especially the modding community, allowing so much more to be added on.
And the whole darkspore thing, I never got to play the game and I had only just heard of it roughly two years ago after finding DarkEdge's channel and watching all her absolutely amazing UBD creations
honestly, kinda sad I couldn't play the game as id love to try it, but I dont legally own the game(plus I _highly_ doubt anyone made a cracked version) so I cant use ReCap, the project you had mentioned that was trying to bring darkspore back. Currently, they have the main menu and hero editor working, so hopefully they can get some more smooth progress soon
I never even knew Spore was well-liked or had a community. I always felt like one of few, with how opinions about it were within my bubble.
I adored it, I always wondered what happened to it (I only ever knew about Spore+DLC, not the other Spore-games)
i remember spore and my first creatures. loking at them today shows that my taste in creature design has not changed by much
Spore for the DS wasn't the original Spore?
It was the first one I ever saw and had the simplest art style so I assumed it was the first Spore game.
oh yes the 2d one? i loved it! i think i still have it
Same, I lived a lie for so long
I have both DS games, and the Wii one!
One of my friends had regular Spore and I watched her play it once.
I could never really get my parents to buy the PC version for me, as the only computer in the house was my Mom's laptop, and she thought it would crash/hack it.
I was really only able to get the non PC stuff because the DS and Wii were both mine.
I've played all three soooo many times!
The only thing that keeps me coming back is the creature creation.
The gameplay got stale after a few years, and the Wii version tends to glitch out.
I wish that there'd be something reviving them on the Switch-desptite me not having one yet!
@@CatherineUmbreon96 why do
you talk
like this
it's
very annoying
The initial Spore was released for PCs
The word Spore: *exists in the title*
Me: *CLICKING*
I agree, 2 years ago me.
Clearly EA's anti piracy didn't work because as a kid I was introduced to this game via a pirated copy lmao
One thing you glossed over was the role that Will Wrights development team played in fucking up Spore. Part of the reason it took 8 years to release the game is that around year 3 or 4 of development, roughly 50% of WIll Wirghts staff pulled a creative direction mutiny and wanted to remake everything into a cartoony and kid friendly playstyle/aesthetic, i.e. the spore we ended up getting instead of the more realistic evolution simulator that can be seen in the early footage Will Wright showed us before.
The only thing EA did to fuck up spore was the DRM, they literally went out on a limb and gave Will a blank check to make the game he wanted and he failed to put his foot down and tell his developers "No, we're doing it the way we already planned to do it".
Oh gosh please do mushroom men that I remember reading that in a game informer and thought I WANT THAT but I don’t know why
Same! It always looked so cool
I remember I was obsessed with this game too when I was young because I found evolution the coolest thing ever, I watched a ton of videos on it but that was the end of it lol I was one of those kids with parents who didn’t allow them to buy any games, not physical nor digital so I never actually got to play it
Spore was SUCH a friggin cool game. I loves it and still play it sometimes. I just started playing again, that i get a recommendation for this NOW should concern me. But i am too busy playing.
I have been a big fan of this game for a long time, in one moment I tought it was dead. But then... I saw a lot of spore videos on RUclips, I tought they were old, but they weren't! I am so glad this game is still not completely dead.
I'm surprised people still care about Spore too. I hope we get a true spiritual successor to Spore one day
The thing you talk about with the christmas tree in 2008 threw me right back memory lane... hard. My sister and I were OBSESSED with Spore, we played it together for hours on end and we loved it. The nostalgia is unreal, I swear... How we had to persuade our mom to buy us the DLCs for birthdays and christmas after... how we named our creatures weird stuff we thought was funny back then and how my sister was a literal master at creating them because she has an artist brain touched by the Gods lol
Those memories make my chest ache. Simpler times, really...
I love this game, I remember making over 800 things, I wish I still had them, but I should probably go back and play this masterpiece, it's nice to revisit your childhood sometimes
yes!! go check it out again when you've got time, you won't regret it!
@@eidenno4662 I won't, I got it on steam now
@@DeerChops nice!
there was a time in my life where the only games i would play were zoo tycoon 2 and spore. good times
I remember being so hyped for the release of spore, I even pulled all nighter so I could play it from when it released at midnight until I had to go to school the next morning. Finally getting my hands on it and being like "oh.. this is it?" Pretty sure it destroyed all future expectations of video games for me.
This video almost made me cry lmao, im an artist and spore was a childhood favourite game of mine, i was never around during spores haydays, i started playing around 2012-2013, i used to have a vers of the game with less harsh drm, idk got lucky i geuss, i installed it on almost all my computers but recently the severs stopped working, i ended up being forced to buy it again on origin after the support claimed my code doesnt work on origin (bullshit i sent them photographic proof of it being a legitimate copy that existed before origin) to this day i loved playing it and i have my own entire storyline based off my main favourite races, a kinda polictal murder mystery dance turned all out war in space stage between these four races, its one of my favourite comfort games and i so wish for more, but i still play it for hours on end, I've probably played more than any game like skyrim or fallout or those tripple a open worlds, spore is so simple fun and creative and holds such a special place in my heart.
R.I.P. Aquatic stage, we wish we could've played you
Luckily though, in 47 years or so, we can all play Thrive!
I am currently making an adventure called “The Groxslayer”
It’s basically doom.
Scyobi Empire where would you be putting this up at? On steam or some other platform I’m unaware of.
Scyobi is talking about spores dlc
Called galactic adventures
You can make adventures
What's your username on Spore website? I wanna take a look at your stuff.
I remember the initial spore demo/preview. It was amazing! You could do so much and each stage presented so much potential. Then it got released and they simplified it so much... too much... The game I saw and the game that got released were so different and not in a good way... not saying that the spore we got was bad, but the previous rendition had so much more potential.
It was EA's fault.
Maxis was pretty good at delivering that sort of thing back in the day.
Im so mad i didn't find this video sooner. Its very well put together and i like that you pointed out the faults and actually got around to explaining why the franchise fell- I certainly can agree as I own Spore Hero and let me tell you starting it as a kid and then finding out I couldn't create just what I wanted like on PC I was so upset because it could've been done, my cousins have put more hours into that game than I have because its just not even the same- But I digress.
Spore, like many, was life changing for me. I've met some of my greatest friends by playing the game with them and creating wacky creatures we would laugh about for hours on end, but also, creating creatures from my imagination really helped push forward my artistic passion, I used to draw these creatures as practice and it was always really fun and easy. I recently bought the game again on Steam and I'm not even embarrassed about the hours I've already put into it because I've already put so many years into it.
I'll always recommend Spore to people who just want a game they can screw around and just have a fun time with because thats what it is. In terms of my art today, its definitely helped bring back my love for character creation and design, and no art school could've taught me the things Spore has.
It'll always be my heart game.
Spore's DRM was also such that it would detect changes in the game files and prevent the game from running. This made it UNPLAYABLE later on for MacOS, because it would detect the updated files as altered files, and would block you from running the game.
The problem was unfixable
it also would detect hardware changes as being on a new computer, which caused some people to inadvertently lose the ability to install the game on their PC