I for one can’t wait for Spore, and will probably make one or two spiritual based societies just for the fuck of it.

Anyways, the article seems to be trying to pick a fight without any evidence or even anecdotes.

Isn’t there a PvP component to this? If so, the natural selection is coming.

PvP != natural selection
I mean real natural selection, like in this free game. Simulations of natural selection are Fun Times, and Spore is simply missing a whole lot of potential if it doesn’t have it.

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=396975&start=0&tstart=0

I didn’t have time to read past page 5 but I didn’t read any completely stupid comments apart from a creationist and the usual “it’s a game” idiots who didn’t get the point. The same points were raised about how Will Wright promoted the game dishonestly, but that must have slipped Will’s mind when recounting the incident to Eurogamer.

Will Wright is knowingly lying when he said that it was the inclusion of religion caused complaint, since he read the posts and responded to the authors. I don’t believe someone as intelligent as him could genuinely read and not understand the feedback he was getting. Wright needs to apologise for misrepresenting the situation, and the gaming “news” needs to write corrections to their “reporting”.

I can now see why religion in the game pissed some people off, because people like Will Wright go around implying the game “simulates evolution” and it’s about science then do the opposite. World of Warcraft has faith healing, I have no problem with magical powers in games, but I wouldn’t be happy if they popped up in Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six, games promoted for “realism”.

Here’s the original post from the thread (author: SpongB6F1):

From the thread “In Game Text dumps found on xSpore!”

“The Religious Super Weapons include the Faith Heal, Black Rain, and Messianic Uprising.

The Faith Heal is unlocked after capturing 3 Religious cities. You can use the Faith Heal on your own vehicles or buildings to heal all units in the area.

The Black Rain is unlocked after capturing 5 Religious cities. If you use Black Rain on a neighboring city, it will cause a large Black Storm to appear over the city, raining diseased creatures on their city. This causes extreme unhappiness making it easier to convert their city.

The Messianic Uprising is unlocked after capturing 7 cities. Launching the Messianic Uprising creates a large holographic image of your priests chanting over your city and sending your religion across the globes. Awestruck, all cities immediately convert to your nation. “

If this is true then I am severely disappointed. Such rampant mysticism should have no place in a game so explicitly scientific in nature. When I think of how much they’ve trumpeted their scientific credentials, making such a show of the sophisticated technical science behind their tutorials–and especially when I think of Mr. Wright’s remarks about the inspirational potential of a science-based toy in fostering a rational outlook and a passion for the investigation of nature, I can’t describe this as anything but hypocrisy.

Clerical healing powers are something out of dungeons and dragons, and have utterly no place in a science-based game.

One would hope they try to give this some kind of sciency veneer to integrate it with the rest of the Spore setting (e.g. they described the “Messianic Uprising” as involving a hologram), but I can’t see how it would work.

And a further, related point–I’ve read that adopting a social strategy in the earlier game results inexorably in having religious cities in the Civ phase. This has no rational justification.

I am appalled.

Will Wright’s reply:

I do read the threads here when I get the chance (though been a bit on the busy side lately).

As you might know I’ve been very interested in using Spore to motivate an interest in science. At the same time we want to make a fun, humorous, playful game. The superpowers in the game were added both to make early decisions you make in the game (cell, creature, tribe) continue to have consequence in the later levels and also to add more humor and playfulness to the overall experience.

If you look at the Civ superpowers they are more realistic for the economic and Military strategies than they are for the religious. We could have labeled the religious powers differently (maybe enhanced memetic transmission or fundamentalist jihad) and given them the same rough effect but they would have felt a bit more gritty and out-of-character with the rest of the game.

Usually when we hit design bumps like this we like to fall back into humor, it’s something everyone can relate to and most tend to then view it as a metaphorical solution to something that’s below the simulation level of detail.

A good example of this was in The Sims when the characters needed to do things that would have been messy to simulate. For instance when a sim needs to change clothes they jump in the air, spin around and are redressed. That’s obviously not the way it works in reality. Also if they need a small object they always pull it from behind their back (the “everything comes out of your butt solution”). Most players understand these methods as a humorous metaphor for what would really happen.

The space level of Spore has a number of abilities that I guess you could argue might have technology solutions but that I personally view as highly unlikely (such as traversing a wormhole). Again these increase to playability and narrative density of what’s possible in the game.

At the end of the day I think the “educational” impact of Spore is less important than the “motivational” impact. In other words, I’d rather promote an interest in the larger world around us instead of downloading known facts. To have the largest impact we first and foremost need to make a game that’s compelling and fun to play.

This is a fascinating debate though (which is why I felt like I had to comment a bit) and I don’t mean to end it. In fact I would love to hear everyone weigh in on what they think about the creative license that we’re taking with these subjects.

- Will Wright

For example there are religious abilities which by any other name would be called magical, such as faith healing which actually works.

That kind of un-realism is what these people were complaining about, not simply the inclusion of religion.