Archive for the ‘Spore’ Category

Well, take a gander at a very small shot of the retail Spore boxart.  You can find it on www.spore.com

GameSpot UK: Why was the decision made to sell the Spore Creature Creator?

Lucy Bradshaw: The Spore Creature Creator is an introduction to the world of Spore–your own little universe in a box. By starting with this fun little bite we are getting a head start at building the Spore community as players share their creations and interact with each other at Spore.com. The Spore Creature Creator is quite literally the beginning of the launch of Spore and introduces the brand in a really fun and easily accessible way. We can’t wait to see what people will create starting this week.

Lucy, I like you as a person, but I have to say I think you completely mis-interpreted their question and didn’t answer it properly.  They asked WHY was the decision made to sell the Spore Creator, as in: Why are you selling it instead of releasing it free (the full version) much like all of the past tools for The Sims and The Sims 2 were?

Then again, I don’t think she could get away saying…”EA wants all the money they can get their hands on”…so that’s probably why we got that answer.

Read the rest of the interview here

Thanks to Spore Illustrated, IGN has a commericial/preview for the Spore Creature Creator:

Well, I figure you might find this interesting, a little snippet from the EULA in the Creature Creator:

(b) Spore IP Rights. EA owns… the Spore creatures that you create, animate, and capture in screen shots or video clips using the Spore Creature Creator. You may use only the assets supplied with the Creature Creator to create Spore Creatures. You may not further modify Spore Creatures with any other materials, tools, or software programs. All rights not expressly granted herein, are reserved by EA.

(c) Your Contributions. You hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means… without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind… you hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution with respect to EA’s and other players’ use and enjoyment of Spore Creatures… To illustrate, and without limiting the statements above, if you create a Spore Creature and upload it (pursuant to EA’s agreement) to one of EA’s third party partner’s sites to create merchandise (such as a T-shirt or a replica), you acknowledge and agree that any other person can make the same or different merchandise using the Spore Creature or other assets that you created with the Spore Creature Creator tool without any compensation or notice to you.

So…3rd party, fan created tools are out of the question?  That is a bummer…I love the tools that others create as they offer a lot more options/expandability than what the official programs do.  But then again…this is a EULA.  Does anybody really pay attention to these?

Source:  Doujoux’s LiveJournal

I cannot draw.  Nope, I have no artistic talent when it comes to drawing – I can’t even draw a stick figure!  Thank god for the Spore Creature Creator!  Even though I cannot draw, I can show off my artistic ability using this tool, and so can you!

Clive Thompson over at Wired shares my same problem.  However, by using the Creature Creator, he managed to create a character in about 6 minutes:

And like I said, it took only six and a half minutes.

Think for a second about how remarkable this is. When it comes to art and design, I am your Average Joe. I have only rudimentary sketching and visualization skills, and precisely zero experience with CAD software that animators use to craft Pixar-like animals. Yet in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee, I had created a completely awesome-looking 3-D creature.

Spore‘s Creature Creator, in other words, is doing something quite interesting and unexpected: It’s de-skilling 3-D design.

Congratulations, Clive.  As for the rest of you, start unleashing your wild side and see what your imagination can bring you!

Wired - Spore Releases the Pixar in You

Joystiq was digging around and managed to find a board game that comes very close to the idea of the creatures in Spore.

Calling itself Quirks, this board game allows you to place cards to form unique creators and players must continue modifying them to adapt to climate changes and other Quirks.  There is no doubt about it that Will loves board games as he stated that fact in many interviews.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jun 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Prepare to test the limits of your imagination! Maxis, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) studio, today released the Spore(TM) Creature Creator, an introduction to the highly-anticipated and groundbreaking video game, Spore(TM) which will ship worldwide this September.

Available today for both PC and Mac, the Spore Creature Creator is a stand-alone product and creativity toy box where players create their own unique creatures, bring them to life with entertaining animations, and share them online with friends around the world. The full version of the Spore Creature Creator will be available for $9.99 at retail stores or by visiting www.spore.com. A free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator is also available today at www.spore.com. The trial version features 25% of the creature-making parts from Spore and lets players shape, paint and play with their custom-created creatures. Creatures made in the Spore Creature Creator can also be imported into the full Spore game, allowing players to populate their own galaxies when the game ships worldwide later this year.

The Spore Creature Creator lets players create their own creatures, take them on a test drive, snap pictures, and make movies of them. Sharing pictures or videos with friends is as easy as the click of a button. Players can also share their creations with others by uploading to the Sporepedia(TM) at www.Spore.com. The Sporepedia is an extraordinarily vast online destination where people worldwide can search for and share Spore creations, comment on other player’s designs, check out celebrity creature creations and much more.

“Today is the day we begin to see Spore come to life,” said Executive Producer and General Manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw. “We’re excited to see what players will do with the powerful and intuitive creativity tools we’ve put into the Spore Creature Creator. Our team will be excitedly keeping an eye on the Sporepedia to check out creations made by players from around the world.”

The ability to upload players’ creations to YouTube(TM) has also been integrated into the Spore Creature Creator. Players can import and upload video of their creatures’ moves directly to YouTube with only two clicks within the game. Spore will have its own YouTube Channel where all videos of users’ creations uploaded from the game will be showcased for the YouTube community to watch, share, rate and comment on. Check it out at http://youtube.com/spore.

Love your creature so much you want the entire world to see? Post it to your blog for people to check out, even create an avatar for your favorite social networking site. And if you want to see your creature come to life in the real world – now you can! Visit www.zazzle.com/sporestore to upload your creature and turn it into a custom coffee mug, t-shirt, magnet, stickers and more! Zazzle allows you to instantly create cool products for your creature so you can take your creature on the go, wherever you go!

Spore, the highly-anticipated game from the creators of The Sims(TM), gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

The Spore Creature Creator is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB. The downloadable demo version is free. The complete version has an MSRP of $9.99 in North America. Spore ships for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS(TM) and mobile phones on September 5, 2008 in Europe and September 7, 2008 in North America and Asia. Visit www.Spore.com to download a free version of the Spore Creature Creator, sign up for the Spore newsletter or check out all-new screenshots and videos from the game.

While the official Spore site has yet to update, many sites are starting to upload the free demo of the Spore Creature Creator.  So far, the sites are:

• Official EU Spore Site
• SCCTrialSetup.exe – FileFront.com
• WorthPlaying
• Internode

Please make note that it is a 191MB file!  I’ll post another update once the official Spore site uploads it, as well as add it to the Spore Programs section.

Just thought you would enjoy what I have been working on this evening:

Get my Rabbid Creature here!