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Spore: Rejected
Previous in Rants: See Next Month’s Minimum Requirements | Next in Rants: Treacherous Computing |
Of the current 158 customer reviews of Spore on Amazon.com, 134 are single-star reviews, most of which fault the game for its DRM.
See also here and here – apparently there have been problems with the activation servers.
I don’t fault folks like Strangeite, who picked up the game in spite of this idiocy. There are so few new ideas coming to us these days that it’s exceedingly difficult to just let something like this pass you by.
While a game with this much hype behind it can’t really flop, it can sell less than expected. But if that happens EA might just conclude that people don’t want new things and that they should go back to making more cookie-cutter graphics demos. Or they’ll just blame pirates. If the game sells they will either learn that we accept this sort of DRM, and if it doesn’t they’ll learn that we fear new ideas. Buy the game or don’t: There is no way your choice can push EA in a positive direction. No matter how things go, they are going to take home all the wrong lessons from this.
I take no joy in any of this. It’s such a massive, stupid waste of potential.
Previous in Rants: See Next Month’s Minimum Requirements | Next in Rants: Treacherous Computing |
77 comments. (Seventy-seven is the smallest positive integer requiring five syllables in English!)
No matter how things go, they are going to take home all the wrong lessons from this.
Heh, marketing guys always try to change people’s opinion but but it’s hardest for them to change their own opinions. If they believe in DRM, they will defend it.
Maybe if numerous people took pictures of their computers running spore with $50 next to the monitor and send those to EA with words “I am going to enjoy your game but you wont enjoy my money as long as your DRM is in place”,theyd take the hint.
Or,more likelly,theyd hire assassins to kill those people.
is it not interesting that there is no way of correcting the perception that we refuse to buy the game because of DRM? and so history will record that EA went bankrupt because of pirates, not their own stupidity. In other words, it is not EA but us who will be blamed for it dying a slow and painful death.
Wow! EA should be in the government!
@Iudex Fatarum
Except EA will never bankrupt.Worst case scenario is that they switch completelly to consoles.
I’ll pick up the Wii version – maybe – but not the PC version. What sort of message that sends, I’m not really sure – probably not the best one.
EDIT: Removed most of my comment. Upon reflection it was a bit vitriolic and I hate lowering the level of discourse. The jist of the post is that I’m not sold on Spore being a truly revolutionary game. It seems to me that it’s a bunch of disjointed parts strung together under the premise of an evolving lifeform.
I’ve played games using all of the underlying systems before. Civ games, sim city, monster makers, even the single-cell spore phase is just a rehash of half the flash games ever made.
It’s technical accomplishment is amazing, but I’ve never seen a compelling reason to believe the gameplay will be fun. Moreso than DRM, I think EA has done a very bad job explaining how Spore will be a fun game and THAT is what will hurt sales.
Ultimately Shamus is right…the lesson they’ll learn is that people don’t want titles like this. They know that DRM is hurting their sales, but they can’t be seen as doing nothing to combat piracy. Best we can hope for is MAYBE a backdown on the online activation stance. I doubt it though.
Actually to a point I agree with you. As much as I enjoy the game (I’ll admit it, I pirated the damn thing last week. without the intrusive DRM I would have gladly parted with $50 – and that’s not said lightly) I can’t help but feel I’ve done some of these things before. However, the way the game *combines* all these pieces of gameplay into a cohesive game is what astounds me and keeps me playing.
However, I cannot stand the tribal stage.
I explained the problem with the whole DRM thing to someone on a mailing list I’m on and his response:
My girlfriend wants to buy it, too, and I’m pretty sure I can’t really make her understand the problem.
In general people don’t care.
Snook, I did the same.
However I am already bored after about 4 hours play time, in space and dont see much point carrying on.
The game held such promise, I expected a combination of Civ and Alpha centuri with maybe a little bit of sims. A huge impersive universe, and what I got was 6 mini games and a my sims style creature creator.
Im glad of EAs DRM at this point other wise Id have lost £30.
Oh, I’m sure I’ll be bored with this game in a week or so as well but for now it’s a wonderful stress relief to go hunting for creatures as a superpredator after returning from a geology class…
Unfortunatly if you want a real demo of the game for free, just pirate it. All the “games” within the game are mabye a half hour to an hour long, and that’s being generous. Trust me, I beat it in about 4 hours playing at a moderate pace. (I also beat it 1 day before it came out anywhere.) The customization of everything is fun at first but gets old after not very long.
Oh, and when publishers start being console exclusive, all the pirates will just pirate the consoles. I looked up how hard it is to pirate on a console and it seems fairly pain free and easy. Not that I’ll be doing that, it’s just that the myth of consoles don’t have piracy is a load of $h!t.
Fenix, the point is that consoles don’t have DRM, at least not at the moment and not in the same invasive way as on the PC.
I pirated, played, and was disappointed too. For example, the number of limbs doesn’t have an effect, only the type…
So I guess I’d say “nice, but I’ll wait see what it inspires others to make”.
Hi, First time writer here.
I have to disagree with Snook about the cohesiveness of the game. Yes it’s the same creature you carry over, but there the cohesiveness stops. I can collect all the dna points i want in the cell stage but my starting creature won’t be any better from it in creature stage. I can try and collect all the parts but my tribe won’t become any better from it, ect. I can collect a million food but my civilisation starts with the same stats as any other civilisation.
Each stage is a seperate game that wasn’t deep enough. I would have loved to have seen the seperate stages a bit wider and longer with more depth. With more stuff to do. You can waltz through to the space stage in an hour if you want to. Currency is plentifull and with enough “dudes” you can take over anything.
I won’t deny that it is a fun game, but it’s tailored to casual gamers (except for the space stage wich is really hard). The editors are really fun at first. But once past the creature editor and into the building and vehicle editors I found myself just picking a stock building/vehicle from the sporepedia. I will prolly play it more if i have some spare time but i won’t be rushing something else just to play Spore.
On a scale of “1″ to “duck” I rate Spore “meh”
Wow. I just got done buying the game through direct2drive. EA wanted an additional $5 to download it from them…god I hate them. I hope most of the “bad” reviews are just the people annoyed at the DRM. I hate it as well, of course. Right now I’d pick the pirated copy over the legal because of the lack of DRM. But I’m too honest to do that. Can’t wait to get home and try it out. Hopefully the gameplay will make me forget the DRM.
I did actually have the game on order and paid for when I downloaded it as I didnt want to wait or deal with DRM. However seen as I was nearing the end of the civ stage after 4 hours I decided to cancel the order, Ill probably never play the game again, however if the missus likes it I may get her one of the many that will no doubt be filled the secondhand bins shortly.
However if EA are to be believed second hand games are just as bad if not worse than piracy.
I tried to explain to a friend and the only way I could get it to really make sense is by pointing out what some of the amazon reviewers said: you’re effectively renting the game for $50.
I took my $50 for spore and used 37 of them to buy both expansion packs to GalCiv II. Even without the 20% off the 2(!) expansions would have been cheaper than spore and they’re DRM free!
Edit: Broken tag.
Some people do not seem to understand the problem unless it affects them personally. “Why are you complaining about the gaming having to connect to the internet every 10 days? You’ve got a good internet connection, it won’t affect you!“. That, is missing the point.
Maybe, I should take the money that could be used to buy Spore, throw them away while recordning it, and then putting it up on Youtube.
That, is missing the point.
“Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.”
On a less serious note, the enemy of gamers everywhere remain the non-gamers running the gaming companies.
I suspect that the DRM they have is designed to work best for the average game buyer, who plays the game for a week or so until it’s completed and then never looks at it again. Thus hardware will not change during the week or so of the game’s “life”, and the number of people reinstalling it will be pretty low.
Five years later it becomes a “classic” but by then the games developers will probably be out of business or doing something else, so won’t care about it.
Probably explains why games are becoming more about flash and less about content -up to a point game-play and replay value may hurt your sales as people are still playing the first game instead of buying the sequel. Subscription-based systems such as WoW have massive re-playability and can be very absorbing, so it’s a natural fit for RPG fans.
Case in point: Halo 3 on the Xbox doesn’t even have a “start new game” button (or if it does, they’ve hidden it well). I had to manually delete all the content on the hard disk before I could play it again.
In a lose-lose decision, I’d rather just keep my money.
#6 (GAZZA) –
That’ll tell them that gamers are moving from PC to console, and if things like that keep happening they’ll eventually stop making PC games altogether.
I have started adopting the idea that we should let the companies do their thing. We will not stop them from making the market die. We will let them bring on the destruction, so a new, sane, market can grow from the old one’s ashes.
While a game with this much hype behind it can’t really flop, it can sell less than expected.
When a movie gets far more marketing than it would seem to otherwise deserve (Ghost Rider, anything with J-Lo, etc), it’s probably because it sucks, and the distributor is trying to build up some level of interest in the public, hopefully to minimize their losses. Good movies don’t need to be advertised heavily. Neither do good games.
I’ve seen the buzz online and even TV commercials for Spore. lBy the above standard, I’d say that EA suspects that it’s going to need some help from their Department of Misinformation (a/k/a Marketing).
The only point that will drive the DRM issue home is when it starts costing them more than their perceived savings. Call their tech support lines – their support staff costs them money and if most of their calls are due to DRM issues, then that sends a clear message. Call the corporate office, call the better business bureau, call consumer protection agencies, just keep the pressure on them.
The game got a mediocre review at the New York Times last week, in a piece which made essentially the same points made here by Factoid. So weak sales may actually reflect an ambitious game which doesn’t fully realize its potential — especially in later stages of “evolution.”
You should check out the review, actually, Shamus, as it highlights graphical interface elements of the space exploration phase in a manner reminiscent of your recent ramblings on making the management interface fun rather than a chore.
I just looked and now it’s up to 215 (oops now 220 and counting) one-star reviews. I suspect that EA will simply write it off as another campaign by a small anti-DRM crowd, which is a shame. On the plus side, it should raise awareness of the issue to a lot of people that wouldn’t have otherwise known about it. A lot of the reviews that are higher than 1* also take the time to bemoan the DRM too.
222 and counting…
http://www.amazon.com/Gamspot-commited-offence-writing-review/forum/Fx33E4EB7NJXA02/Tx1KZWGAGRG6QTD/1/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B000FKBCX4
Also quite interesting. One of the users wrote a review for Gamespot which got deleted by the admins, because he said something bad about the game (namely, he mentioned it has DRM). Gamespot artificially increasing rating? How unexpected!
I may be a polyanna optimist here…
Maybe someone at EA will stop just short of the water cooler while on break and wonder, “This isn’t the first game to get a bunch of bad ratings on Amazon… what’s really going on here?” Then this person will go rooting around on the internet and discover what we all have been talking about. Then Shamus and other people with legitimate suggestions on reducing piracy can get a small consultant’s fee, and PC gamers can stop getting the shaft.
Also, @ Pat: to start a new campaign in Halo 3, go to the campaign lobby, then choose ‘select level.’ The first level is Arrival. Voila! New game!
@ Justin, more likly they will look on the internet find hundreds of well thought out arguments and suggestions of improvment, then decide its all piratest rying to make cracks easier, then decide they need to improve DRM. Maybe they can think up a way to sell the game but not actualy give you anything.
Oh, I believe that the person who does this reading will get the pleas of us gamers. S/he won’t be able to convince the Suits of it though. Forgive the awful metaphor, but it’s like playing ‘Telephone’ with Helen Keller.
@Justin: Okay, I could sort of see the first part happening in a happy-and-hallucinatory-dream after I’d taken one of those sky-blue pills from the friendly street-vendor, but giving Shamus or anyone else a small consultants fee? Don’t push it, or you’ll wake up to reality. :P
Yeah, I pirated the game early with the intention of purchasing it when it came out (I care about DRM, but not enough to skip on a game that I want). However while it is enjoyable it isn’t actually very deep. The first four stages are basically minigames (each of them can be easily beaten in less than an hour).
The space stage is longer but doesn’t really have much depth it’s mostly a scavenger hunt for tools and badges. The tools for sculpting planets are nice and if you enjoy that it’s probably got some value but other than that…
Honestly I was expecting at least four hours of gameplay from each of the early stages (except maybe the cell stage) and then a space stage with a bit of interesting depth.
In any case, I’ll be uninstalling the copy I have and using the money to buy a copy of portal.
The drm isn’t about piracy, though. It’s about forcing buyers into accepting limited activations and repurchasing and also killing resale of games, both of which have been stated by EA mucky-mucks:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/e3-perspective-an-interview-with-john-riccitiello-ceo-of-electronic-arts/
(scroll down to where Nucleus is mentioned)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-second-hand-sales-are-a-critical-situation
Spore is the vehicle today (MEPC was the vehicle a few months ago) by which EA is being justifiably slammed for this utter disregard for their paying public. They’re bashing apart the last line of defense against piracy, the people who still pay them for games.
I shouldn’t feel like an idiot for paying for games, but with this insulting and chronically problematic drm in place, I’d BE an idiot to pony up for anything EA puts out anymore.
THEY KNOW FULL WELL SECUROM IS THE PROBLEM. Don’t believe for a second they don’t.
@Primogenitor:
Point taken, however I was directing my comment more at the fact that EA and other publishers are learning the lesson that the PC isn’t giving them much profit from one reason or another and that if they jump ship to consoles the entire process will move over to consoles equaling more of the same problems and a second gaming depression may form. If thought of in this light if piracy is going to happen let it happen on the PC in order to let the consoles survive. Wow, gotta love twisted logic.
(I apologize for my run on sentence. Any harm to ones brain was unintentional.)
I spent so much time enjoying Spore yesterday that I forgot to care about DRM.
Click http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=24213.0 for proof that gamers will pay money to support something that is fun, even if it is given away without DRM and looks like garbage.
The numbers aren’t something that would make EA take notice, but they’re not bad for someone living in a rural part of washington state where rent is generally 3-500 a month.
Whups…
Can’t edit when I posted through firefox.
here
dammit.. http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=24213.0
You know, at first, I felt kind of bad about pirating Spore. I mean, they were DRMing out the bum, but they’d worked HARD on this game…hadn’t they?
No.
No, they did not. This game is pretty much mediocre. Four minigames strapped onto a game that wants to combine Master of Orion with Destroy all Humans and does it REALLY badly. The first two stages are pretty fun, but they’re over really fast and they’re both basically games I’ve played before, the Tribal Stage is fairly tedious with almost no customization and only eight structures, the Civilization stage you get a grand total of FOUR structures and one of them is a bloody gun on your walls. The Space Stage, on the other hand, isn’t so much customization as it is cram as much crap onto your spaceship as you possibly can with the amount of money you have on hand. Each stage is fun for about the first hour, but all of them either A: finish within an hour or B: Get old.
It’s moving upwards really fast, the reviews are soon at 600. Too bad you need to have purchased a product from Amazon before they allow you to write a review.
It has made the front page on Slashdot now, which may help them get publicity for the issue.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/08/1613250
I believe we’ll be seeing “the coming of the great white handkerchief” soon, as amazon mass-purges every review containing the words “rent” “drm” or “petunia”
Whoah.
The reviews on Amazon are all gone.
EDIT: Ooops, I stand corrected?
Weird, now when I look at the Spore page, it says “no reviews, be the first!”
Wow. I checked out the link to Amazon. I’d think this is probably the first time a game is both the #1 seller anywhere and has such a low rating by the consumers. I say good for everyone who gave Spore a 1-star review. Thanks to you, Shamus, if you hadn’t pointed out the idiocy that is DRM, I probably would be jumping through EA’s hoops in order to play Spore. Looks like I won’t be purchasing any EA products in the near future, PC or console. They really need to learn that treating your customers like criminals is NOT the right way to do business.
I’m reasonably excited about new types of games and spore has really got my attention. I’m not in favor DRM that EA is putting up but I’d do it for Spore. I’ve got a proxy which will prohibit the continual updates and only installing 3 times may end up a pain. My plan is to stick with the creator for awhile until the wii comes out. it boils down to: if you want the game then buy it, otherwise don’t. Not a hard choice to make.
I’m not going to buy a game that only lets me install it 3x.
Some games I have are 10 years old, that’s 4 pc’s ago and some of those I still like to install now. Let alone that I just wipe games I finished of my hd and just install them later when I want to try them again. Or people who format their pc on a regular basis to keep it performant…
Do you really “win” Spore?
Isn’t the point that you play through it repeatedly, trying different things each time?
Or is the variation just not interesting enough to do it again and again?
Play through the game twice and you’ve essentially seen all there is.
The current count is nearly 900 1 star ratings (out of almost 1000) and growing. Each of the other ratings barely register with less than 100 ratings from 2 to 5. (And a bunch of those positive ratings were from before the game came out.)
If this trend keeps up, I think there is actually hope that EA will learn their lesson. I’m tempted to buy a copy just so the DRM won’t work for me and then I can rake EA over the coals as a paying customer.
No that they paid any attention to me as a paying customer of Dungeon Keeper 2 who kept asking for Magic Carpet 3 and Syndicate 3, but I digress.
the reason why amazon users are giving spore a one star review, ia that they’re protesting the activation limit of only three. If someone already said this I apologize.
Also some new Xbox 360 news:http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169798
It’s very interesting.