{"id":70,"date":"2005-03-12T12:59:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-12T16:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=70"},"modified":"2006-08-19T20:59:38","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T00:59:38","slug":"the-ultimate-god-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2005\/03\/12\/the-ultimate-god-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate God Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t heard about Will Wright’s latest project, Spore<\/i>, do yourself a favor and check out his plans<\/a>. As the Bard said, ambition can be a grievous fault and this design plan is high on ambition.<\/p>\n

We’ve heard ambitious stuff like this before, mostly from Peter Molyneux, who sells each of his games as if it is the ultimate world simulator. Remember how Fable<\/i> was supposed to have trees that grew dynamically? And how Black and White<\/i> was supposed to be fun? The Movies<\/i> promises to allow unprecedented freedom of action but even the claims made for it seem to have been scaled back in the last few months.<\/p>\n

So forgive my caution when I hear about Spore.<\/i> On the upside, this is Will Wright – not a guy known for his hyperbole. Not all of his games have been successes. In fact, when I read about Spore<\/i> the first game that came to mind was SimEarth<\/i>, an ambitious environmental\/ecological\/evolution sim that was more textbook than game. If Spore<\/i> will allow me to mess about on the cellular level and check out what is going on on other planets, this will be the ultimate god game.<\/p>\n

I doubt any game has serious theological implications, but this could be as close as we get. Players might be able to be either detached observer gods – cosmic watchmakers – or interventionst Old Testament deities that micromanage star systems. As the game progresses, players will be able to do more and unlock greater content.<\/p>\n

This is yet another game to look forward to, but, by the sound of it it could be a couple of years off. It is a big gamble for Wright, and EA, if they choose to publish it. If it works it could prove as difficult to duplicate successfully as The Sims<\/i> has proven to be – are there any good Sims <\/i>clones out there? – and could cement Wright’s place at the very top of the game god Pantheon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t heard about Will Wright’s latest project, Spore, do yourself a favor and check out his plans. As the Bard said, ambition can be a grievous fault and this design plan is high on ambition. We’ve heard ambitious stuff like this before, mostly from Peter Molyneux, who sells each of his games as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-18","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}