Is Creativity any Match for Gameplay?
Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pmIs creativity any match for gameplay? Not if you believe the more than 3,000 reviews of Spore on Amazon that gave it an average of 1.5 stars out of 5 (!)
It seems the kids were confused by the idea of a “game” where all you do is use your imagination to create creatures. I’m not saying this is a Bad Thing. It is what it is. The end of boomer aesthetics.
My bud Lucas is enamored with a very, very groovy Flash ™ app without any game play but crazy fun nonetheless “You don’t score points by playing this game, you make music” or in this case, a video. I give it a 5 - but then, I’m on the short end of the ride. Here’s my insta-video.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I read the first few pages of bad reviews and had a different take-away. Most people with bad reviews had a couple of issues:
1. The copy protection
2. Any creativity they applied to character creation wasn’t reflected in how the resulting creature performed within the game environment.
Many of the reviewers were big Sim game fans who were disappointed by how simplistic the simulation aspects of the game were.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
no doubt there are lots of lessons to be learned from the Spore drama beyond what I project onto to it…
November 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
You bet. My three pages isn’t much of a sampling out of over 3,000 reviews either.
Just glad it’s not my job to read all of them.