Spore has been somewhat of a phenomenon since debuting last year. Much like its user created content - around 200,000 creatures are created daily - it has flourished quickly, racking up three million sales on PC and handheld platforms to become the "number one new launch of an IP in EA's history".
We recently took a trip to the publisher's UK headquarters to have a look at the core game's first expansion pack, Galactic Adventures, which developer Maxis says will take Spore and its user created content to a completely new level when it's released later this year.
Maxis has decided to heed critic and community feedback by targeting a "deeper variety of gameplay" based around Spore's space stage. The overwhelming majority of the expansion's new content will be created by the Spore community using a new adventure editor that quickly brings to mind LittleBigPlanet's.
"[Galactic Adventures] wasn't the original idea for the first expansion pack," says executive producer Morgan Roarty, "but there are 64 million pieces of content that people have created, and people have created some amazing things with our editors. We went back to the drawing board and said, 'What can we do to get more meaningful creativity out of those assets? What can we do to get people to go back and use those assets?'
"They were getting used in the core game but not to the extent that we were happy with, so we had this idea of making an editor to make adventures out of."
Galactic Adventures will allow you to completely customise the planets that will play home to your adventures. You'll be able to change the colour of their terrain, water, sky and atmosphere, play with the time of day, alter the temperature and create continents, before populating them with your choice of assets from the millions that Sporepedia houses.
"Basically these were all developer tools for the original Spore," says Roarty, "and now we're giving them all to the player. [So you] can customise your whole planet any way you that you want to and save it and pollinate it, which is something we didn't give you before, and that's just the base level of it."
You can then utilise the expansion's "easy to use" editor to create your own adventures, which can consist of up to five acts.
You'll be able to set your "actors" goals, motivations and missions, give them health, group them into teams and make them pick up things or patrol areas. You'll also be able to add text, set timers, traps and sound triggers, and place collectibles and objects around the planet.
Maxis will provide plenty of default start pieces for you to play with, including classic items such as bombs, exploding barrels, keys and jump pads, while new abilities will be added to the creature editors so that you'll have access to hover packs, jet packs, flaming swords, blaster rifles and the like.
The developer plans to ship "about 30" of these adventures and hopes that you'll be limited only by the size of your imagination when you begin making your own.
"When you're out there playing the space stage, as soon as you buy the expansion pack these adventures are going to start kicking in. And when you run out of those the community's going to have your back making all these adventures for you. You'll get to rate them like all the other content in the game," says Roarty.
A hands-off demo of the software showed a mission Maxis had put together "in about an hour".
In classic fashion, the adventure saw the player battling with a dragon and other foes in a bid to rescue a princess, while another scenario saw a team of dragons facing off against a team of rabbits.
We're sure you'll be able to come up with more outlandish scenarios once you get your hands on the expansion's editor, but, just like in LittleBigPlanet, if creation's not your bag that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the fruits of other people's labour.
"Even if you're not a creature editor and creator type, we want to give you the back end of the space game to be able to experience these things," says Roarty. "Even if you look at the best editors and creators out there, unless you happen to be browsing Spore.com or buddy with them you're not going to run across all of their brilliant creations, but this is a way that you can. It's a direct application right into your game."
Roarty says that, early alpha, Maxis is "very pleased" with how the expansion's progressing, although he acknowledges it's "going to take a lot of iteration and polish to get it all right."
He concludes, "It's going to be one of those things that's going to need to be patched and updated because people are going to want to figure out different ways to make their adventures, but it already does work really seamlessly in the space game and adds immediate depth to it."
It all sounds really good but I also want attention paid to the other stages, the Creature to Civilization games are quite good but a bit basic and they don't last long enough!
This is EA you're talking about, ofcourse this is being marketed as an expansion (probably similar to that Creepy and Cute addon they released already). so expect to pay for it. Might not be an aweful lot, but you will probably have to pay. (Creepy and Cute pack was €20 over here)
Just a quick one this time; remove DRM, and I'll buy Spore- if SecuROM is still there, then it can rot on the shelf- it's all the same to me, I've enough games to play at the moment. :)
