Spore was one-dimensional, start to finish. (Though I didn't play too far on the space stage: from there I'd lost interest.) There was no interaction. I wanted the first stage to be the simplest. I wanted rapid iteration of complexity. Something for everybody. I got none of that.
It's a shame, because the technology was so incredible. It just went into an awful game.
I don't understand how the 'game industry' expects to beat piracy when it costs so much for so little assurance that you'll get what you want.
If this had been (nearly) any other product, I could have returned it, gotten my refund, and gone on my way.
I bought Spore, even after seeing all the warnings about piracy, because I had such faith in Will Wright and Maxis. I thought that they would make my money worth it. Now? My list is down to Valve and Maxis. If The Sims 3 or Spore 2 comes out, I'm going to pirate it first to make sure it's worth my money. I'll buy it afterwards, but my trust is gone.
Turns out that the creators, and sharing your creation, and then pimping your creation IS the entire game. Your meticulously designed creation which took 3 hours to make is evolutionarily no better than a 10 year old's cell with legs and googly eyes, with the only difference being how much time you have to "sell" it on the official forum to get any attention. It's an intelligent introvert's worst nightmare: your works will not be noticed amongst the hundreds of millions based on merit, but on how marketable it is and how much marketing resources is backing the creation.Your beautifully designed planet with semi-realistically balanced ecosystem performs absolutely no better than a randomly generated neighboring planet inhibited by "variations on the theme of vomit-green spheres."
As a new best selling game it's not bad, but I was looking for a "simulation" game. I did find a spectacular one though, so this year wasn't a complete loss : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves
Have you ever played sim earth? I liked it a lot.
http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkwZsimQ20earthQQ_armrsZ1QQ...
I enjoyed most of the Sim games because they give you a complex system with rules where every little decision has some slight impact on the way the game turns out. Part of winning is learning the rules to the system and strategizing (whether or not that system really reflect the reality of what it is ostensibly a simulation of).
There are too many things in Spore that don't make any difference in the gameplay. Most of the influence from one stage to the next is purely aesthetic or otherwise very limited. And everything except the Space stage was pretty simplistic with few opportunities for strategy.