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从《孢子》的开发中所获得的经验教训

发布时间:2014-01-17 14:50:45 Tags:,,,,

作者:Soren Johnson

几周前,《孢子》热热闹闹地迎来了5岁的生日。这款游戏最早出现在2005年的GDC上,即在Will Wright关于自己的想法的年度演讲中。游戏最初的理念是—-玩家作为一个物种从最初的细胞进化成银河的统治者,这创造了大量的宣传,开发者也努力希望在2008年推出游戏。《孢子》收到了来自游戏媒体的中等评论,他们认为游戏玩法略有不足,且不够集中,同时它也收到了来自科学媒体的严厉批评,即认为自己被游戏源自真正科学的承诺所欺骗。

Spore-cover(from wikiacadia)

Spore-cover(from wikiacadia)

对于我来说,现在正是传达对于《孢子》开发看法的最佳时机—-我关于这一项目的记忆仍然很清晰,并且时间也证明了种种的批评都未对我们活跃的团队产生影响。我在2007年5月加入《孢子》的开发(最终经历了15个月);然而该团队却是在2000年就开始创造这一游戏,这便意味着我所见证的过程只有20%。

因此我关于游戏开发的观点便是不完整的,这让我想起了盲人摸象的典故,我想我应该从这个角度进行思考。我也希望《孢子》团队的其他成员能够与我分享他们关于这一项目的经历,特别是当他们的看法与我不同时。而以下是我自己总结的来自《孢子》的经验教训。

1.不要害怕去挑战最初的愿景

最终,《孢子》是关于两个大理念——10的次方和程序内容。第一个理念是引用美国设计师Charles和Ray Eames的经典短篇电影,即基于10的次方把镜头移近到一个男人和女人身上,直到达到夸克(游戏邦注:理论上一种比原子更小的基本粒子),然后放大镜头到整个宇宙。这部电影激发了Will去创造一款基于范围上激进变化的的游戏,即从细胞进化到生物,到部落,到文明,最后变成一个太空帝国。

另外一个理念(程序内容)是指游戏中的所有内容能够用几千字节的数据进行表示,按照Will的话来说就是,“游戏中的生物DNA模版,就像一个子宫,创造动物的‘外形’,这代表几百万字节的纹理,动画等。”从这颗种子中将萌生出强大的编辑器(能够启用一些具有颠覆性的创造力),程序动画(能够真正处理任何内容),以及内容授粉(分享社区的最佳作品)。

当Will开始开发游戏时,他所确定的核心理念是10的次方,即反应在最初的游戏《SimEverything》中,即承诺游戏是基于每一个变焦程度。当在创建游戏原型时,程序内容突然出现并作为填充玩家宇宙的一种方式,这一理念始终保持着发展与扩大,直至哪个理念才是《孢子》最大的理念趋于模糊化。当然,游戏可以同时拥有两个大理念,但问题在于只有其中的一个理念才是真正突出的。

《孢子》所具有的最大问题在于每个阶段的游戏都很肤浅,因为该团队是在同时在制作着5款游戏。(在某一时刻,Will将游戏的每个阶段分别描绘成一些经典的游戏,如细胞就像《吃豆人》,生物是《暗黑破坏神》,部落是《Populous》,文明是《文明》,而太空则是《Masters of Orion》。)然而,同时创造5款不同的游戏却是个糟糕的理念;创造一款优秀的游戏已经很困难了。

在这5个阶段中每个阶段都带有不同的控制,不同的界面,不同的名词,不同的动词以及不同的目标等等。当然,他们也努力着在每个阶段分享理念和元素;然而所涉及的妥协却经常冲淡了本应该凸显出每个阶段的元素。例如,每个阶段要求一个能与其它实体相互维系的友好方式;在生物阶段,这一机制将面向其它生物翩翩起舞以示友好,而在文明阶段,这一机制将伴随着音乐而非子弹攻击其它城市。没有一种机制是其自身阶段的最佳理念,因为它们具有非常高的一致性。因此,10的次方理念将团队置于一种永恒妥协的状态,即每个重要决策都必须考虑其在所有5个阶段中的作用。

另一方面,程序内容是个很有趣且多产的理念——在当时这是个非常新颖的理念,并适合有关进化的游戏,同时还带有丰富的游戏玩法可能性。而《孢子》所面临的悲剧在于其团队从未将他们的第一个理念与第二个理念相比较。的确,这里存在的一个关于传统游戏开发的问题是,最初假设很少会受到挑战,因为游戏从未接收过来自实际玩家的反馈。

对于一支团队来说,注意力是一个很重要的资产;如果游戏的范围能够减少到只剩生物阶段(即细胞和生物),那么该团队便可以集中注意力去探索程序内容与进化游戏玩法的交集。在之后的社交阶段,编辑器将扮演“美容师”的角色,将其变成背景。不幸的是,虽然10的次方听起来是个很棒的理念,能够带来巨大的宣传和媒体关注,但那时候却是2005年啊。推动玩家购买游戏的元素通常与推动他们玩游戏的元素是不相同的。

2.游戏玩法必须支持主题

之前我写过有关游戏主题与实际游戏玩法相匹配的重要性,而机制可以轻松地推翻预期的游戏意义,而不管设计师所明确的目标。的确,我写了一些有关这种不一致性是如何影响《孢子》的内容:

《孢子》是一款基于进化主题的游戏。在2008年10月发行的《科学》杂志上,John Bohannon写了如下有关游戏如何传达其主题承诺的内容:

我已经与一群科学家一起玩了《孢子》,基于其科学主题而对游戏进行了分级。当提到生物学,特别是进化论时,《孢子》遭到了惨败。根据科学家,这里所存在的问题不只是《孢子》简化了科学或者在某些环节出现了错误——它注定就是一款游戏,但相反地它却呈现出更多的生物学内容,所以才延伸出了种种的错误。

这种不一致性的源泉在于,《孢子》并不是一款真正有关进化的游戏。《孢子》更像是一款关于创造性的游戏——玩游戏的原因是让玩家发挥想象力而使用编辑器去创造对象,而不是基于游戏设计师的想象,不管是乐器,奇幻的生物还是惊人的场景。

《孢子》并不需要作为一款有关进化的游戏而进行市场营销,但因为它这么做了,所以玩家将会这么期望着游戏。尽管我们可能不会因为游戏让真正的科学家感到失望而惊讶,但限制编辑器对游戏玩法的影响的决定却让玩家不能体验进化的幻想——编辑器将实现无数独特生物的创造,并且其行为和表现都是与玩家选择无关的。

当然了,编辑器能够创造出无限具有视觉差异性的生物,但生物对于游戏玩法的影响却是非常分散的。它们所携带的脚组件都伴随着一组属性——例如,Stubbtoe提供“Sprint 2”,“Dance 1”,和“Speed 2”——不管脚的位置,附加的臂膀的长度或者身体的形状。因此,每个生物的属性只是所有指定的身体部位的综合,尽管程序动画保证带有许多臂膀的生物将充满说服力地行走着,而玩家在设计生物形状的创造性对实际游戏玩法并不会产生任何影响。

分离与细胞阶段形成了鲜明的对比,它提供了带有结果的编辑器。每个Proboscis,Flagella和Cilia的位置与玩家设计的细胞的移动是相联系的,玩家需要在避免捕食者的同时吃掉猎物。因此,细胞编辑器需要传达生物编辑器不能传达的实际游戏玩法,这是对于玩家主要的期许。

显然,生物阶段的3D世界比细胞阶段的2D世界呈现出了更大的挑战,但将游戏范围缩小到只有生物阶段可能会带来一定的帮助。然而,这里存在的根源性问题在于有关游戏中编辑器角色的哲理性争论。编辑器是否能够实现无与伦比的美学定制,即以游戏玩法结果为代价,或者游戏机制是否应该支持玩家所做出的每个选择,即使这意味着限制编辑器的灵活性?《孢子》是否应该成为一个互动性艺术博物馆或者定制的电子游戏?

这一问题与孢子是款游戏还是个玩具,实际上,在游戏开发阶段便有很多人问了这一问题,但都未得到明确的答复。为了让玩家能够在接触游戏玩法前发挥想象力,《孢子》可以说具有魔法般的体验;的确,对于10岁左右的孩子来说,这款游戏应该是最棒的。然而,对于那些期待着看到进化的核心玩家来说(或者更确切的应该是带有杰出设计的完美游戏),《孢子》却并不符合标准。

Spore(from forums.darkspore.com)

Spore(from forums.darkspore.com)

3.唯一重要的原型是游戏

《孢子》的开发的一个特别元素是专注于快速且有效测试设计理念的原型。Chris Hecker和Chaim Gingold在2006年GDC上就这一话题发表了讲话;他们传达了一个证实生物编辑器能够运行的重要原型,即通过在3D中拉,戳并伸展各个身体部位而编辑一个生物是很有趣的体验。

一般说来,原型创建是个很棒的理念;这一过程不仅节约了时间和金钱,同时还让开发者专注于一些有形的问题,并提供一些永远不会出现在设计文件中的理念。然而,除非原型是有意回答一个特别且相关的问题,如生物编辑器是否合理,否则过多的原型将引起一种前进的错觉。比起100%吸引人但却具有限制性的原型,单一可游戏原型更有可能创造出一款优秀的游戏。

团队最终为玩家呈现出了14种原型进行尝试,最显著的便是选择它们对于最终游戏会产生多少有意义的影响。我记得生物团队使用了Gonzaga/SPUG,但当我加入的时候,许多游戏的核心设计仍然悬而未决,而大多数早前的原型也被遗忘了(例如文明阶段便只是在一个球形世界的技术演示版本)。游戏必须比其每部分的总和更出色,如此当游戏玩法系统出现在一个完整的体验时,玩家才能够理解它,而不管当前技术存在怎样的缺陷。

当Sid将其原型整合到可游戏的内容中时,他将这一过程描绘为“寻找乐趣”;然而他正致力于单一原型中,并逐渐将其演变成最后的游戏。对于《文明4》,我是基于一个被取消的RTS项目在创造游戏,这让我们能够面对一款可行的游戏,并使用2D广告牌创造图像。Jon Shafer也是在《文明4》的代码基础上创造《文明5》的原型,只在准备好之时转变到新的图像引擎中。暴雪的访客经常会对他们的游戏在发行前几年就已经具备发行条件感到惊讶,如此他们才能基于互动游戏设计的重要性而更好地平衡AAA级作品的需求。这些完整的可游戏“原型”标志着游戏开发最重要的部分的开始——当设计师能够基于实际的游戏过程,而不是单独的实验快速改变游戏。

直到项目的最后一年,《孢子》还未完全可游戏。所以更早发行游戏便不是个合理的选择,而因为我们已经投入了所有时间和资源于试制过程中(但却未创造出一款可行的游戏),所以推迟游戏发行从政策和情感上看来也是不可行的。当然没许多成功的游戏也是在发行前一个月才实现完整可游戏内容,但它们通常都是已建立的类型或授权游戏的一部分;之前版本中已经存在乐趣,开发团队只需要完善核心游戏玩法便可。直到发行前才创造出可游戏的内容并不理想,但有些项目的确面临着非常苛刻的时间限制。

《孢子》具有永恒的开发时间,更重要的是,这是一个全新的游戏类型。之前从未出现过类似的游戏,带有巨大的范围并且没有类似的模版,所以该项目需要承担着巨大的风险,并且需要投入更多的金钱才有可能得到更好的完善。为像《孢子》这样需要技术创新的项目创造原型是个不小的壮举(例如许多程序动画是直至最后才完成的),但从一开始便不存在其它方法能够创造出一款有趣的游戏。

4.团队凝聚力比团队质量更重要

我非常确定的一件事便是,《孢子》的团队是我所看过的最强大的游戏开发者集合体。他们的创造性,领导能力,多样性以及知识水平都是非常出色的。在最顶部,游戏是由传奇设计师Will Wright和资深执行制作人Lucy Bradshaw所领导。其他团队成员也对整个产业做出了巨大贡献:Chris Hecker是《SpyParty》的设计师/程序员;Alex Hutchinson是《刺客信条3》的创意总监;Jordan Maynard是iOS式MOBA游戏《Solstice Arena》的创意总监;Brian Sharp是Bungie的首席工程师;Caryl Shaw是ngmoco的执行制作人;Ocean Quigley,Stone Librande和Andrew Wilmott分别是全新《模拟城市》的创意总监,首席设计师和首席建筑师。此外,像Valve,Double Fine和Riot等公司中还有许多来自《孢子》的成员。

《孢子》的团队汇聚了各种人才。成就一个成功项目的一种老方法便是创建一只出色的团队,但是我们不能根据每个个体成员所添加的质量去衡量一直团队。相反的,团队是否强大应该取决于凝聚力——即团队成员是否能够整合其目标,优先权以及才能。不幸的是,《孢子》的团队面临着长期的分裂,即每个人对于项目都有不同的优先选择。一个著名争论便是关于可爱vs科学;坚持“可爱”的团队想要创造幽默,且具有情感冲击的体验,而坚持“科学”的团队则想要准确地呈现出宇宙的运行。我是在他们达成最终妥协后加入团队的,即他们决定尝试着将可爱的机制与科学主题结合在一起。

然而我见证了一个没有多少人知道的团队新分裂;即随着更多硬核游戏开发者加入团队去帮忙完成游戏,新“游戏玩法”团队与早旧的“模拟”团队间的文化差距逐渐形成了。前一个团队主要关注于《孢子》作为一款游戏所具备的种种元素。机制是否吸引人?玩家的选择是否重要?游戏是否具有重玩性?相反地,“模拟”团队主张来自Maxis的传统DNA,并更希望将《孢子》当作一个游戏盒子。玩家是否能够传达自己的想法?将自己的创造物与其他玩家分享是否具有意义?游戏是否能够激发想象力?

这些文化分裂阻碍着《孢子》发展成一个具有凝聚力的游戏体验。《孢子》本来可以作为一款可爱的游戏或者一款科学游戏。它本来可以是一系列有趣决策的结果或最出色的神奇蜡笔画。最出色的游戏设计能够传达给特定用户不同的体验;而面向所有人创造游戏则与不为任何人创造游戏相同。此外,还存在许多去创造有关宇宙进化,世界历史,现代战斗以及人类关系等游戏的方法;而真正的诀窍便是谨慎选择一个最匹配你们团队优势与激情的主题。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Spore: My View of the Elephant

by Soren Johnson

A few weeks ago and with little fanfare, Spore turned five-years-old. The game was announced at GDC 2005 during Will Wright’s annual mind-blowing speech on whatever floats through his head. The initial concept – of a game in which the player evolves a species from cellular development to galactic dominion – generated an immense amount of hype, which the game struggled to fulfill upon its 2008 release. Spore received middling reviews from the gaming press, who found the gameplay weak and unfocused, and harsh criticism from the scientific press, who felt tricked by the promise of a game built from real science.

For myself, the time is now right to put down my own thoughts on Spore’s development – my memories of the project are still fresh, yet enough time has passed to ensure that criticism doesn’t impact active teams. I joined Spore in May 2007 for what ended up as the final 15 months of the project; however, the team started the game in 2000, which meant that I saw just 20% of the complete story.

Thus, my view of the game’s development is inevitably incomplete – bringing to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant – and needs to be viewed from that perspective. I would welcome – indeed, encourage – other members of the Spore team to speak up on their own experiences with the project, especially if their perspectives differ from my own. Nonetheless, here are four lessons from my time with Spore.

1 – Don’t be afraid to challenge the initial vision

Ultimately, Spore was about two big ideas – powers of ten and procedural content. The first idea refers to the classic short film by American designers Charles and Ray Eames, which zooms in, by powers of ten, on a man and a woman until reaching quarks and then zooms out to the entire universe. This film inspired Will to create a game with similar radical shifts in scale, jumping from a cell to a creature, then to a tribe, then to a civilization, and finally to a space-faring empire.

The other idea – procedural content – was that all content in the game (such as creatures, vehicles, and buildings) could be represented with just a few kilobytes of data – which was, in Will’s words, “the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the ‘phenotypes‘ of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc.” From this seed grew the powerful editors (which enabled some subversive creativity), procedural animation (which could truly handle anything), and content pollination (which shared the community’s best works).

When Will started developing the game, the core idea was powers of ten, reflected in the game’s original title, SimEverything, which promised a game at every zoom level. While prototyping that game, procedural content emerged as a way to fill the player’s universe, and that concept kept growing and expanding until it wasn’t clear anymore which concept was Spore’s big idea. A game can have two big ideas, of course, but the problem was that only one of these ideas was any good.

Spore’s biggest issue was that the play at each stage was fairly shallow because the team was making five games at once. (At one point, Will described each of the game’s five stages as light versions of classics – cell is like Pac-Man, creature is Diablo, tribe is Populous, civilization is Civilization, and space is Masters of Orion.) However, making five different games at once is a bad idea; making one good game is usually hard enough.

Each of the five stages had different controls, different interfaces, different nouns, different verbs, different goals, and so on. Some effort was made, of course, to share ideas and elements across stages; however, the compromises involved often watered down what was supposed to make each stage distinct in the first place. For example, each stage required a friendly means of engaging with other entities; in the creature stage, this mechanic became dancing for other creatures to make friends while, in the civilization stage, this mechanic translated into attacking other cities with music instead of bullets. Neither mechanic was the best idea for its own individual stage, and the justification was high-level consistency. Thus, the powers of ten idea put the team in a state of perpetual compromise where every major decision had to be considered according to its effect across all five stages.

On the other hand, procedural content was a genuinely interesting and fertile idea – one which was novel for the time, appropriate for a game about evolution, and rich with gameplay possibilities. The tragedy of Spore is that the team never re-evaluated its first big idea in comparison to its second one. Indeed, one of the problems with traditional, siloed game development is that initial assumptions are rarely challenged as the game is never exposed to the oxygen of actual player feedback.

Focus is an important asset for a team; if the game’s scope could have been reduced to just the biological stages (cell and creature), the team could have focused on fully exploring the intersection of procedural content and evolutionary gameplay. In the later, social stages, the editors served a mostly cosmetic role anyway, which pushed them to the background. Unfortunately, the best thing about powers of ten was that it sounded like a great idea, generating a huge amount of hype and press, so the die was cast at the 2005 reveal. What makes players buy a game, however, is often not the same thing as what actually makes them play it.

2 – Gameplay must support the theme

I have written before on the importance of a game’s theme matching its actual gameplay, and that the mechanics can easily subvert the intended meaning of a game, regardless of the designer’s stated goals. Indeed, I wrote about how this dissonance affected Spore:

The reception of Spore, a game sold with an evolutionary theme, provides a recent example. In the October 2008 issue of Science magazine, John Bohannon wrote the following about how the game delivered on the theme’s promise:

I’ve been playing Spore with a team of scientists, grading the game on each of its scientific themes. When it comes to biology, and particularly evolution, Spore failed miserably. According to the scientists, the problem isn’t just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong – it’s meant to be a game, after all – but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong.

The source of this dissonance is that, even though it was sold as such, Spore is not really a game about evolution. Spore is actually a game about creativity – the reason to play the game was to behold the wonder of other players’ imaginations as they used (and misused) the editors to create objects not imagined by the game’s designers – from musical instruments to fantastical creatures to dramatic scenes.

Spore didn’t need to be marketed or sold as a game about evolution, but since it was, players’ expectations had to be anticipated. Although one might not be surprised that the game was a disappointment to actual scientists, the crucial decision to limit the impact of the editor on gameplay ensured that players would not be able to experience the fantasy of evolution – that the editor would enable the creation of an infinite number of unique creatures, with behavior and performance dependent on player choice.

Of course, the editor enables an infinite number of visually distinct creatures, but the gameplay effects of the creature parts are unfortunately quite discrete. The feet components each carry with them a canned set of attributes – for example, Stubbtoe gives “Sprint 2,” “Dance 1,” and “Speed 2″ – regardless of the position of the foot, the length of the attached limb, or the shape of the body. Thus, the attributes of each creature is simply a summation of all the named body parts, and although the procedural animation guarantees that a many-limbed creature will walk convincingly, the player’s creativity in designing the creature’s shape has no impact on actual gameplay.

This disconnect stand in sharp contrast to the cell stage, which does deliver an editor with consequence. The exact position of each Proboscis, Flagella, and Cilia matters as the player-designed cell swims along, chomping prey while avoiding predators. Thus, the cell editor delivers actual gameplay that the creature editor does not, a key expectation for players.

How did the creature editor lose its bite? Obviously, the 3D world of the creature stage posed a greater challenge than the 2D world of the cell stage, but reducing the game’s scope to just the biological stages could have helped considerably. However, the root issue was a philosophical debate about the role of the editor in the game. Should the editor enable unparalleled aesthetic customization, at the expense of gameplay consequence, or should the game mechanics support every choice made by the player, even if that meant limiting the flexibility of the editor? Should Spore be an interactive art museum or a customizable video game?

The question is akin to asking if Spore is a game or a toy, which is, in fact, one question that got asked a lot during the game’s development, often without a clear answer. For players able to put imagination before gameplay, Spore is a magical experience; indeed, the game is at its best when played by ten-year-olds. However, for core gamers expecting a game about evolution (or, perhaps more accurately, a God-game about intelligent design), Spore fell short.

3 – The only prototype which matters is the game

One distinctive element of Spore’s development was a focus on prototypes to test out design ideas quickly and efficiently. Chris Hecker and Chaim Gingold gave a very well-received talk at GDC 2006 on this topic; they demonstrated one important prototype which proved that the creature editor could work, that editing a creature in 3D by pulling, prodding, and stretching various body parts was fun.

Generally speaking, prototyping is a great idea; the process saves time and money, focuses the developers on tangible problems, and suggests ideas that would never emerge from a design document. However, unless a prototype is meant to answer a very specific and relevant question – such as whether the creature editor will feel right – an over-abundance of prototypes can lead to a false sense of progression. 100 compelling yet limited prototypes are less likely to lead to a great game than a single playable one.

The team eventually posted fourteen prototypes for players to try out, and what is notable about the selection is how few of them had a meaningful impact on the final game. I do remember Gonzaga/SPUG being used by the creature team, but much of the game’s core design was still up in the air when I joined, with most of the old prototypes long forgotten. (The civilization stage, for example, was just a tech demo of a spherical world.) A game must be greater than the sum of its parts, and the gameplay systems can only be understood when they exist within one complete experience, regardless of the shortcomings of the current technology.

Sid describes this process as “finding the fun” as he is pulling and prodding his prototype into a playable game; however, he is working on a single prototype, which will eventually morph into the final game. For Civilization 4, I built the game on top of a cancelled RTS project, which allowed us to have a playable game working, using 2D billboards for art, within months. Jon Shafer prototyped Civilization 5 within the Civ4 codebase, only switching over to the new graphics engine when it was ready. Visitors to Blizzard are regularly shocked by how their games appear to be shippable years before release, which is how they balance the demands of AAA production with the importance of iterative game design. These fully playable “prototypes” signal the beginning of the most crucial part of game development – when the designers can change the game rapidly based on feedback from actual playthroughs, not disparate, standalone experiments.

Spore was not fully playable until, at best, the final year of the project. Shipping the game earlier was never an option, and shipping the game latter was politically and emotionally impossible because of the time and resources already invested in the preproduction process, which did not result in a playable game. Of course, many successful games are not fully playable until months before release, but they tend to be part of established genres or franchises; the fun was already found in previous versions, and the team simply needs to improve the core gameplay without ruining anything. Having an unplayable game until shortly before shipping is not ideal, of course, but some projects have very demanding time constraints.

Spore was given an eternity of development time, and – more importantly – was new, new, new, new, new. No game had ever been made like it, with such immense scope and without a familiar template, so the project had an immense amount of risk, which only grew greater as more and more money was spent without a fully playable prototype. Creating such a prototype for a project with as much technical innovation as Spore would have been no small feat (much of the procedural animation, for example, was not finished until the final stretch), but no other method exists to make a fun game from scratch.

4 – Team cohesion beats team quality

Of one thing I am quite certain, the Spore team was the most incredible collection of game developers I have ever seen. Their creativity, their leadership, their diversity, and their raw intellectual firepower was inspiring. Starting at the top, the game was led by Will Wright, a legendary designer, and Lucy Bradshaw, an admired veteran executive producer. Key members of the team have gone on to make notable contributions to the industry: Chris Hecker is the designer/programmer behind SpyParty; Alex Hutchinson was the Creative Director of Assassin’s Creed III; Jordan Maynard is the Creative Director of the iOS MOBA Solstice Arena; Brian Sharp is a Lead Engineer at Bungie; Caryl Shaw was an Executive Producer at ngmoco; Ocean Quigley, Stone Librande, and Andrew Wilmott were (respectively) the Creative Director, Lead Designer, Lead Architect on the new SimCity. Beyond that, companies like Valve, Double Fine, and Riot are full of Spore alumni.

The Spore team was an incredible collection of talent. It’s an old chestnut that the key to a successful project is an exceptional team, but a team cannot be measured by adding up the qualities of each individual member. Instead, a team should be measured by its cohesion – how well the members are able to align their goals, priorities, and talents. Unfortunately, the Spore team was chronically fractured, divided into factions which had completely different priorities for the project. One well-known divide was the cute-vs-science debate; the ‘cute’ team wanted a playful, emotionally engaging experience while the ‘science’ team wanted an accurate representation of how the universe worked. I joined the team after a compromise was struck, which attempted to combine cute mechanics with a scientific theme.

However, I witnessed a new divide among the team which was less well-known; as more core game developers (such as myself) were recruited to help finish the game, a cultural gap emerged between the newer ‘gameplay’ team and the older ‘Sim’ team. The former group (which went on to spearhead Darkspore) was primarily concerned with how Spore played as a game. Were the mechanics engaging? Did the player’s choices matter? Was the game replayable? In contrast, the ‘Sim’ team carried the traditional Maxis DNA and was more comfortable with Spore as a toy box. Could the players express themselves? Was sharing one’s creations with other players meaningful? Did the game spark the imagination?

These cultural divides ruined Spore’s chances to be a focused, cohesive experience. Spore could have worked either as a cute game or as a scientific one. It could have been a series of interesting decisions or the best set of magic crayons ever devised. Games design works best at the extremes, delivering a distinctive experience to a specific audience; making a game for everybody is the same thing as making a game for nobody. Moreover, there are thousands of ways to make a game about cosmic evolution or world history or modern combat or human relationships or even something as concrete as baseball; the trick is to pick the one that best matches the strength and passion of the team.(source:designer-notes)


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