anyone playing or using SPORE, the new game by Will Wright?

Will Wright, creator of the Sims, just released a new game, SPORE. Here's his speaker-bio at TED and here's a TED video: "Will Wright Makes Toys that Make Worlds" from TED2007.
Here's the SPORE site itself, which goes right into the introductory video.
(Marlen, I see you mentioned the game in a forum by Nancy on games--have you checked it out yet?)
Would love to hear from people who are playing it, and from people studying cognition who are looking at the type of learning skills involved... I haven't played it yet but plan to get going soon.

Tags: games, spore, thinking+skills, will+wright

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Permalink Reply by Mobbsey on September 30, 2008 at 6:08am

My hubby's been playing it (I've been watching over his shoulder :)) It looks really good.

In terms of in the classroom I can see students "evolving" their creature and reflecting on the choices they've made at each stage (they get objectives to meet before they can evolve and at that stage they can adapt appearance and equipment (defensive/offensive features, types of feet/wings/eyes/mouth etc). The game keeps a timeline of each adaptation so it's easy to track back each step - which will make it easy to see/trace back these changes and identify what went right (if objectives are reached - or wrong if you're creature is made extinct).

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on September 30, 2008 at 6:40am

I gave it to my 33 year old lawyer son for his birthday. He liked it and said it is easy to play. There is an antispore movement afoot! In my gifted program I serve kids from Christian and Catholic schools so I won't be buyin' it! N

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Permalink Reply by nlowell on September 30, 2008 at 9:32am

This is one I'm probably going to let pass because of the DRM. It's one of those poorly conceived ideas that makes me shake my head and sigh.

See: http://digg.com/search?section=all&s=spore+drm

EA made a very big mistake that's been exacerbated by WalMart's recent retrenchment on their DRM based music service. After the Sony Root Kit Fiasco, and the Microsoft Music Store collapse, these efforts will be less and less effective, I think.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on September 30, 2008 at 5:05pm

NLOWELL, Explain to me in a nutshell what the problem is with digital rights. I looked at your digg links, read one. I don't really care one iota about EA or Spore or DRM but I'm interested in what all the fuss is about. N.

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Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on October 4, 2008 at 9:48am

Thanks for the notes, Mobbsey, Nancy, and Nathan.

Here's a NYTimes article about Spore:

Gaming Evolves

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Permalink Reply by nlowell on October 4, 2008 at 12:14pm

There are a couple of problems with the EA DRM scheme.

1. The DRM will prevent you from installing the game on your machine more than a very small number of times. For places (like schools) that re-image every night that number runs out in less than a week. If I buy software, then I expect to be able to install it legitimately on my machine whenever I need to. If my hard drive dies, or if I upgrade a PC, I want my software to go with me.

2. The DRM installs software that reputedly collects and transmits data to EA about what I'm doing with the machine - not just with the game but with the machine. EA is not being very straightforward about what that data is.

3. The DRM software is based on the infamous "Sony Rootkit" that installed itself without telling the owners and then provided a backdoor security access to those computers so they could be controlled by people who were not the owners.

4. The largest issue is that this DRM scheme is apparently similar to the various music stores that sell music downloads which must "clear" before they can be played. In this scenario, when you try to play the game, it checks with a server to validate that it's a legitimate copy. As Zune and WalMart customers recently found out, this means your program will only run until the company decides that it's too expenive and shuts down the validation servers the way the Zune store and WalMart recently did with their musical sales online.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on October 4, 2008 at 5:30pm

Thanks, nlowell--interesting information. Wonders never cease to amaze!

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Permalink Reply by Lynn Marentette on October 5, 2008 at 9:04am

My Spore game was a birthday gift from my daughter. I played it for a while, but I've been too busy with work I've had to do after school hours to get back to it again.

I think that the game supports a variety of cognitive skills, and can be used to highlight concepts related to math and computer science, such as genetic algorithms.

I think that the DRM issue might be a good talking point for a class discussion, since it brings up issues related to consumer advocacy, copyrights, and so forth.