Caryl Shaw of Maxis provided a tour of customer generated content for Spore. The base Spore game has spawned a class of users who do not play, Shaw informed the crowd, but exclusively designs elements for other users. Even beyond an evolving designer class, Shaw pointed toward signs that customers were organizing into groups to create amateur projects that maximize the skills of each participant.
A big boost to such users will arrive in the Galactic Adventures expansion pack that Shaw previewed. The pack allows users to construct modules on designed planets to implement games within the game-from first person shooters to tactic battles to maze quests. The expansion appears set to leverage the creative Spore community to turn Spore from game to gaming platform. Pictured here, we see one of Shaw's creations looking for trouble in a module she assembled during the panel!
The 2009 GameStooge Awards continue with the fourth part of the Awards – the Technical category that covers expansions, digital games, and the surprise games of 2009.
Winners:
Best Expansion: Fallout 3: Broken Steel
Best Digital Game (Original): Plants Vs. Zombies
Best Digital Game (Adaptation): Trials HD
Best Multiplayer: Halo 3: ODST
Best Game You Didn't Play: Dead Space Extraction
Best Surprise: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Stardock has released Impulse's Top 10 Sellers list for the week ending on January 9.
GP writes: "The sheer scale of Will Wright's vision for Spore was praiseworthy, even if the final product occasionally felt pinched and clipped.
In brief, Spore zoomed out from the microscopic to the telescopic in five phases as players evolved and nurtured a single celled organism representing a species into a space captain representing a galactic empire. Unfortunately, the first four phases played like a rambling prologue to the final galactic phase. But what it lacked in aspects of game-play it made up for in charm and creativity."
