Your Spore creature could soon get even creepier--or cuter, depending on your preferences in primordial beings. Electronic Arts on Monday officially confirmed rumors that an expansion titled Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack will be available worldwide as soon as November 18.
The expansion, announced just a month after the game's release, will offer more than 100 new creature-building components in two styles--charming, cartoon-esque creatures and scary, monster-like beasts.
The long-awaited game from EA and The Sims creator Will Wright tasks players with evolving from primordial ooze to creature, civilization, and all the way out into space. The expansion pack will include body parts, paint options, animations, and backgrounds, so players will have even more options for customizing their creatures.
But that's not all, creature creators. EA says it also expects to release a space stage expansion pack in spring 2009 that will let players' space-faring beings beam down from their spaceships to explore new planets and earn rewards for completing challenging missions. A new adventure creator will let players build and share online their own custom missions.
The parts expansion is a cash-grab, but the one about adding onto the space-stage and the adventure creator sounds fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI don't have time for Spore lately, but I'm always thinking about it... odd, that.
Too bad EA hasn't fully embraced trusting its customers more. Another blog noted Pete Hines has announced that Fallout 3 will ship with little to no DRM whatsoever because they want to trust their paying customers. See http://www.aeropause.com/2008/10/fallout-3-to-ship-on-pc-minus-drm/
ReplyDeleteIf you want to pressure EA games to unbundle DRM and SecuROM, there’s a campaign that just started to refuse to buy EA games until they remove DRM and SecuROM from their software. Check it out at http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/ea-games-without-drm-and-secu-rom
Figure each game costs $50 minimum, and if 500 people sign on, that would be $25,000 in lost revenue. For its loyal customer base, secretly adding DRM and SecuROM in their install is just not the way to treat us.
The three issues are that DRM and SecuRom are being installed without the user realizing it; DRM limits the number of computers you can install it on; and SecuROM has been affecting some people’s computers to the point that they needed to re-format their hard drive and uninstall the game to get their computer returning to normal.
And it takes just a minute to sign up. You can even sign anonymously.
It is true that trust between players and game companies has been weakened over the years. I'm not a fan of DRM because, well, I want people to trust me.
ReplyDeleteBut, trust is a two way street. The game was going to get cracked and distributed over the internet wheither it had a DRM or not. That's the sad truth of our society.
I am sorry they had to resort to a DRM, but they needed to protect their assets. If someone breaks into your house, you don't leave it unlocked to deture people, you build a stronger more secure house and that is all EA did.
People are upset because they feel they aren't being trusted and honestly, if more consumers would report people that distribute cracked or pirated software then it wouldn't be an issue. But gamers tend to look the other way or just help by being part of the problem by using the cracked software. I've done it, so I know others must.
You can't just look at it from the side of the consumer, you have to look at the companies position. Do you think EA is happy about treating customers as thieves? I don't think their mission statement reflects that policy.
They know its not popular, but it had to be done to protect their investment just like you would look up your house to protect it.
Besides, why would you need to have it on multible computers to start with? Sure it will suck if your computer dies twice and you hae to reinstall it each time or that you can't make a secure copy for your records, but hey, how often does that actually happen?