Imagine a Spore Engine, Might Be Real

Electronic Arts may be considering the Spore system as an “Engine” for licensing to other developers to build RPG’s, action games, web-based games and many other options. Much like ID Software and Epic Games have done, this could be a build system for new creative additions to the industry.

Considering the amount of crazy Spore mini-games that have hit the street in the last few months, it seems possible EA’s already using this technique in-house to build hype and extension to the Spore product line. Usually such engines are licensed by smaller developers (smaller compared to Electronic Arts anyway) and not a big publisher such as EA.

Frank Gibeau, president of Electronic Arts’ Games Label says, “What’s so beautiful about Spore is that it’s extremely malleable, you could add RPG or action, you could take it to different platforms, like (Web-page) flash games, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, Nintendo’s Wii” (kotaku)

While EA did use the word “you could” they may be referencing the fact that “one could do it, if they worked at EA.” Electronic Arts wants to win the battle of the publishers, no doubt, and they continue to grow in size; would they let loose the Spore engine on outside developers? Or, would they keep it as an in-house engine for their own groups to leverage in future projects?

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Many game studios are being dropped following a bit of an economic downturn in the United States and globally. Activision has to deal with being agile enough to survive the economic times like anyone else and has dropped a few games that had great potential.

Gamers continue to ask the question, “why?” when some of their highest potential games were dropped to the floor. Ghostbusters and Brütal Legend are a couple examples of games with eager fans already salivating prior to its launch. Some of these fans are a bit ticked off that Activision named them as dropped franchise opportunities.

People ask why a company holds one “mediocre” title while getting rid of other potentially awesome ones. Don’t forget, this is a business and a good studio/publisher is going to make good business decisions without emotional attachments – those that bring emotions into play may end up with a highly valued product (to them) with no additional potential and lower revenue. This isn’t to say developers cannot be passionate about their games and their industry, they just have to build games gamers will buy and continue to fall in love with release after release.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is one of these business savvy individuals who knows where investors will find profits for the future, and he also know how to manage employees, with the use of software like this sample pay stub for payments and more.

“[Those games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.” (1up)

Ghostbusters is a great example of a title which could be well received and fun to play but probably wouldn’t be an exploitable franchise. The game, based on a popular movie, has limited potential for yearly releases and huge franchise success. Ghostbusters fans would probably disagree, but that’s when emotion comes into play. Think dollars and cents, not awesome fun gaming.

Oddly enough many of these business decisions from Activision, Electronic Arts and other big publishers arrive when the economy is in free fall and investors are eying your revenue potential. People make their most important and, usually, unfriendly business decisions when their company is at risk.

It’s sad to think money comes first and entertainment value comes second but we’re not the ones trying to make a profitable living in the industry. Put yourself in Kotick’s shoes as he walks into a board meeting to discuss future plans, road maps and profitability – you’d do what you have to do to keep your job, right?

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[This podcast upload was corrupted. Reuploaded.]

The news this week:

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered‘s PC specs and features detailed, as Sony reiterates no PSN account required, EA Sports College Football 26 to increase NIL payouts to $1,500, Palworld update 0.5.0 patch notes bring crossplay to the game, Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope says ‘it’s a tragedy’ his 2013 immigration sim now feels so on-the-nose, Xbox lists Hollow Knight: Silksong as part of “incredible” upcoming indie line-up, Apple & Google face antitrust charges as EU defies threat of Trump tariffs.

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Mass Effect 3: What REALLY Went Wrong, And How To Fix ItMass Effect 3: What REALLY Went Wrong, And How To Fix It

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THE ENDING AND EVENTS OF MASS EFFECT 3. DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WISH THE GAME TO BE SPOILED FOR YOU.

In this day and age, one learns to take internet outrage with a heavy dollop of salt. The videogame community tends to be reactionary in the worst way, for a few reasons: they tend to be young, they tend to express their immediate feelings almost as a stream of consciousness, and let’s face it, the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory comes into play as well.

When it comes to game endings, when I hear that the community is upset about a game’s ending, I almost always take that as a good sign that the ending is daring and provocative. For example, there was an outcry over the abruptness of the ending of Halo 2, which had the nerve to conclude with a cliffhanger. The 2009 Prince of Persia reboot ended with the player undoing all of the work to free an ancient evil god they’d just imprisoned.

So when I heard that there was a growing outcry about the endings of Mass Effect 3, my interest peaked, because invariably, that meant the story was provocative and daring, instead of predictable and boring.

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