True, but I think that gameplay has been the focus all along.

Perhaps it was a lesson learned from the past as there was a lack of total support for Will Wright back when he tried to convince people of his The Sims series idea. From the early stages on the first title did not ever have great graphics because Will did not get much resources to spend for sure...

To some extent Will Wright is also the kind of guy that will think mass-market (definitely after his success) and how a lot of potential customers will have 'outdated' hardware.

After all, all hype (justified or not) aside, that has been probably the main reasons why The Sims series could even be this record selling success story..

Cheers

Spore is kind of like Sim God or Sim Evolution depending on how you look at it or for that matter intend to play it.

If you've ever seen one of Will Wright's GDC presentations, Spore or otherwise, you'll note the amount of scientific fact and thinking that goes into each and everyone of his games.

I am sure scientific thinking went into Spore and I like most of Will Wright´s other games but I don´t see how the end product itself will be very scientific (with the player being the intelligent designer) and how it will be helpful in the evolution vs. creation debatte. Creationists probably will love Spore.

I really would be interested in what Richard Dawkins thinks about Spore.

I am well aware of the long techincal path. To me it just seems like Will has sold out.

Spore is certianly AAA, but I think they are pandering to the kiddie / female crowd instead of the hard core gamer audience direction they had two years ago.

I can't find fault with the business decision, but the art style and target audience seems to have shifted away from my interest area...

Keen

I suppose that art style is guided by the complicatios of having some nice solutions to the realistic texturing problems. It would be impossible to support a realistic texturing for every kind of creatures that are being made. The only solution in these kind of situations is to go way with the cartoonish texturing as it does not shows any flaws and falls nicely into the modelling design chosen for spore.

And the whole thing is attracting all kind of people towards itself. I doubt that such a thing can be implemented in A7. LOL.

It is what I meant
If Spore does really simulate a sort of simplified evolutionism, whithout any pre defined path, than the variety of creatures would me immense , consequently you can not expect a fantastic graphics but the game is fantastic

For those who may be interested in the combination graphic programming \ evolution , I quote a couple of simulations which have been proposed by mr Dawkins in his books

The spider net

Primitive spiders are moving randomly on the screen , leaving a drool behind them
You blit randomly some circles on the screen, the flyers
You count the number of circles overlapping with the spider net, using this number as "fit" factor for the genetic evolution
After many generations the virtual spider will behave like a real spider

The evolution of the crystalline lens of eyes

You get started from a shapeless sac full of liquid and some point lights
you draw the immagine of the light sources on a screen
The rays start from the point lights and reach the screen passing through the crystalline
You modifiy its shape using as "fit" parameter the average distance of the images of the same light
All the rays coming from the same light should converge in the same point on the screen to have a clear image
The shapeless sac will slowly turn into a lens

As as I know the graphic simulation of the evolution of the eye, not only the crystaline, has been made
The results were impressive
You dont need, relativly speaking, so many generation
This match the fossil evidences
Eyes popped up

I don´t think that Spore does much of that. Of course I haven´t played Spore yet and I can´t remember the details of the videos I have seen a while ago but I think there was something about evolution points your creature gains if it does well in the environment and you can spend those points on new body parts you can equip your creature with. You are the designer and not some evolutionary algorithm. But maybe I am wrong and there also is some automatic evolution mode?

As far as I can remember it was supposed to be a sort of "evolutionist" game

Of course you must take into account the marketing issues
A scientific simulation should be limited , for obvious reasons, to some details , if so not so many people would purchase the game
I do hope that at least the first level " the cell" is valid from a scientific point of view
The rest of course is just a game
We will see