Softpedia
 

NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
MEET THE EDITORS >>
Home > News > Games

January 26th, 2009, 18:01 GMT · By

Spore Producer Says Users Prefer His Game Over LittleBigPlanet

SHARE:

Adjust text size:


New adventures await in Spore
Enlarge picture
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.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:

1,486 hits · 1 comment · Link to this article · Print article · Send to friend · Subscribe to news

MUST-READ RELATED ARTICLES:


Four More Spore Games Coming in 2009

Will Wright Hypes Up His Next Game

Electronic Arts Partners with Steam and Brings a Lot of Titles

The Federal Trade Commission Wants Gamers to Comment on DRM

Games for Christmas: LittleBigPlanet

READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: borndigital on 26 Jan 2009, 20:58 UTC reply to this comment

Morgan Roarty is apparently a moron. Comparing the editors for the two programs it like comparing apples and apple pies. Of course Spore's editor is easy.. you're making creatures, buildings, and ships, not entire levels. It also stands to reason that there is a larger bulk of user contributed content, it takes minutes to make a creature, building, or ship. It takes hours or days to create an entire level. LittleBigPlanet does give users the ability to create units of work smaller than a level, the ability to share these in a meaningful way aside from prizes in levels however is fairly limited.

This is a transparent marketing attempt, and a really poor one at that. Even with Spore's upcoming expansion, the level of expression in Spore can't compare to LittleBigPlanet.

Spore is a good game, but it just isn't in the same league as LittleBigPlanet. It is still a just Sim game at the core. LittleBigPlanet has it's own share of limitations, but is much more innovative as is apparent by the comparison of nominations and awards between the two.

Spore does a really bad job of creating a continuous user experience with respect to controls. Each of the five stages feels very different (except tribal and civilization to an extent). This is one way in which LBP shines. The interface is minimalist, simple, and consistent.

If you're going to draw comparisons, make sure you're actually in the right class. If you're working for a well established franchise, comparing yourself to the newest rising star is a terribly gaudy way of barking (or in this case yapping) up attention.

Copyright © 2001-2012 Softpedia. Contact/Tip us at

WindowsGamesDriversMacLinuxScriptsMobileHandheldNews

SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE   |   ROMANIAN FORUM