14 DAY TRIAL // In the gaming industry a lot of trends appear and disappear, as easily as the wind gushing over a plain. One such “breeze” is user generated content, which, as some representatives of gaming companies would claim, is here to stay. This feature was very hyped up last year, when gamers received two titles aimed at making their creative juices flow and letting their imagination run wild, LittleBigPlanet and Spore.
But these games weren't very well received by the public for various reasons. While the creator of the former, Media Molecule, believed that because of all the big blockbuster titles released at the same time as its new game, which had a negative impact on sales, Spore encountered a much more difficult situation. Because publisher Electronic Arts decided to include the infamous SecuROM DRM (Digital Rights Management) program in order to prevent piracy, users unleashed a massive negative backlash on the game, and, despite the company's measure to prevent the illegal use of the game, it managed to top last year's most pirated PC games chart.
Now, it seems that the senior producer of the game, Morgan Roarty, has decided to gather attention around this title, as it is about to receive the Galactic Adventures add-on. He recently talked with CVG and said that, in terms of user-generated content, its main rival, LittleBigPlanet, couldn't match Spore. Roarty went on to say that he personally believed LBP, although hyping up the importance of user creativity, didn't really match the attention garnered by Spore when it was first announced.
“We've had plenty of noise on our day,” he said. “I was already at Maxis for a couple of years working on Spore before I heard about LittleBigPlanet so I don't know if they were inspired by us. They don't have anything near our numbers of things created," he asserted, noting that around 200,000-250,000 creatures, buildings and vehicles were created daily by Spore players. “I don't think their base editors are as easily accessible as our editors, I think we really have that on them," he continued.
But while he made these comparisons, Roarty did acknowledge that there was limited use for the creations of users in Spore, while in the PlayStation 3-exclusive platformer there’s a lot you can do with your creations.
Hopefully all of these things will change when Galactic Adventures appears, as it will bring plenty of new things that players can add to their adventure and explore other planets. Look forward to it in Spring this year.