Spore senior producer Morgan Roarty has been weighing up the similarities between the Maxis game and Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet, as well as their relative strengths.
Speaking to us at a recent EA event, Roarty contemplated whether LittleBigPlanet had stolen all of the hype surrounding user created game content in recent times.
"We've had plenty of noise on our day," he said, later adding, "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 are 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.
While speaking passionately about his game, Roarty insisted there's "no ill will" between Maxis and Media Molecule and also acknowledged that there isn't "a lot for people to do" with their creations in Spore, "where as in LittleBigPlanet you can make stuff with those things".
He went on to explain that Maxis will address this shortcoming in the upcoming Spore expansion, Galactic Adventures. It'll allow you to completely customise planets and create adventures to share with other players using new editing tools.
"They can't give people our 64 million [Sporepedia entries]," Roarty, who's Galactic Adventures' executive producer, added of Media Molecule. "We want to get that 64 million to have that kind of functionality and then we're going to be happy."
Roarty went on to reveal that Galactic Adventures "wasn't our original expansion pack idea", saying "it was [originally] more of an added fiction" across all of Spore's stages that allowed gamers to replay "all of the levels in a different way".
I haven't heard much but from what I have heard these "adventures" don't sound like they will be very appealing. I guess we'll see. I hope it turns out great though, I just got Spore and I'd gladly pick up anything that adds to it.
Played from Cell to Space, now that's 7 hours of my life I'll never get back. LBP is fun, Spore is a chore to play due to the crappy controls and boring gameplay.
f**k off maxis, if youre going to release any addons for spore, make them free and downloadable, rather than buttf**king the retards who wandered into your trap over and over again. pathetic
One of the greatest benefits of PC gaming is many of them have free updates. Spore SHOULD "have" LBP on that, but they even failed there.
I played spore for about 6-7 hours before getting so bored I just uninstalled it.
LBP i've played for far longer, and it's still incredible.
No matter what Spore adds on next, it will fail. Unless they manage to incorporate "fun" into their game, that would be nice.
That's a bit harsh John as Spore is a great game if you give it a bit of time and patience, but I do agree that LBP is definitely far more accessible and a fantastic game in its own right, but maybe, just maybe, not quite as good as all the hysteria suggests.
Doesn't surprise me though considering the amount of people with PCs out there compared to PS3s and creating stuff with a mouse is obviously a lot easier than with a joystick.
This guy should get a cookie for pointing out the obvious
One of the greatest benefits of PC gaming is many of them have free updates. Spore SHOULD "have" LBP on that, but they even failed there.
I played spore for about 6-7 hours before getting so bored I just uninstalled it.
LBP i've played for far longer, and it's still incredible.
No matter what Spore adds on next, it will fail. Unless they manage to incorporate "fun" into their game, that would be nice.
That's a bit harsh John as Spore is a great game if you give it a bit of time and patience, but I do agree that LBP is definitely far more accessible and a fantastic game in its own right, but maybe, just maybe, not quite as good as all the hysteria suggests.
Correction: Spore WAS a good game (see E3 2005), then EA bought the company and now its nothing but a cleverly disguised framework for an expansion f**k fest.
I was thinking the same thing, Grumpy. The creature creation process in Spore is sort of limiting and it does half the work for you - forcing symmetry, automatically creating it's movement, etc. LBP is entirely yours, so if you want something to work you need to make it.
However the major difference is that Maxis won't steal your work for undisclosed reasons and then try and sell it to you as an add on pack.
Sony seem to have no problem just taking the content you spent do long creating and removing it for no apparent reason.
Although Spore is limiting. i'd say that with a little tinkering it could become an even better experience than LBP.
I love both games by the way and am not a huge fan of either SOny or EA.
You're very deluded. Spore was the biggest letdown of this generation whilst in contrast LBP has been the game I personally play most and enjoy most. to think that the people who created the retail version of Spore and all that entails could create a better gaming experience than LBP is just very very unlikely.
The biggest problem with spore was that anything you do is either prescripted or just a visually different variation of another thing. Sharp claws for instance don't make you good at climbing trees, they merely look nice. Long legs dont make you faster or better able to harvest tree growing food they merely look different.
Not played LBP yet (waiting for a price drop!!) Spore was fun from the cell stage and creature stage. It got really boring as soon as they turned it into a Real Time Strategy from Tribal onwards.
I think Maxis should just bring out a free creature open world stage where you can wander about as you want.
What was the point in spending ages working on creating your creature in the cell and creature stage only for everything you done to be deemed purely for looks at Tribal?
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