I'm doomed.
The Media Lab at my place has installed Spore, and I just got a rare chance to take it for a little test run this morning.
Normally, said lab is locked up and away for fear that our unworthy selves will either make off with loads of expensive computer parts or maybe play games all day (yeah, like it's different from people sneakily watching Youtube the whole day.)
I don't think it's likely that I will have too much more opportunity to mess with it in the lab during work, but it does look valuable enough and relevant enough for certain aspects of biology and natural selection/evolution shtuff to consider for use in some of our lessons. It's going to take a bit of fast talking to ally up and network such things into being, but me being me, I'd like to have lots more experience with said teaching tool before I start talking out of my ass.
Which kinda means... I gotta buy and play Spore. At home. DRM-issues not withstanding.
Sighs. Ok, it's not really that much of a burden. What I saw of the creature creator was immensely fun. Very much like the flexibility of City of Heroes' character creator, except for more cartoony cutesy creatures. I can definitely forsee a few enjoyable hours or ten lost in an attempt to be uniquely artistic or just a fan attempt at copying something dragon-y, or spike-y or game-y, etc.
The Cell Stage has the addictive quality of a Flash Game of eat or be eaten. Eventually, it might grow tiresome, but it has a couple hours potential replay value trying out herbivore, carnivore and omnivore strategies.
The Creature? Stage started slowing down a little. My creature had somehow through its choices in the Cell Stage ended up a wussy little herbivore, and its special ability picked up was something called "Siren Song." Despite managing to beat the head in of one teeny creature that was smaller than me, practically everything else was much bigger and in self-defense I had to try and lull them with Siren Song and make nice and "sing" to them to be successful.
Not wanting to fight the vagaries of evolution, I went with it, singing nest after nest of creatures into submission, and of course, my next allowable evolution was something beak-like that allowed Level 4 Sing instead of Level 1 or 2 Sing. (Oh great, a songbird for eternity.)
I managed to get through about two somewhat-boring generations of this, opening up a couple more peace-making options like "dance" and something called "pose" which I have no clue what it did, because I had to stop and race off to other work duties.
Still, there has to be another couple hours of gameplay worth exploring in here. The total peace route, the beat-em-all-up violent way and a mix of the two.
So I've more or less convinced myself that Spore is worth getting. The question is, at what price, and when?
Because I googled Spore and found that Maxis/EA has done the whole "Sims" thing with their Spore franchise. Game, bits and pieces of the game, some add-ons, expansion, the works.
I do not just want the cheapo Creature Creator for $9.99 USD. I know I definitely want to try the other stages, both for work and play reasons.
So I must get the basic Spore package at the very least.
However, in their infinite greed of moneymaking, Maxis/EA has released something known as the Spore: Creepy and Cute Parts Pack for an additional price. The stuff inside is -probably- not worth the price they are charging for it, but then again, if I can get Tec-Drome to bundle it more cheaply, being able to have more costume, er, 'parts' options is never a bad thing as City of Heroes demonstrates.
To make matters worse, I have found out that they are also releasing on June 23rd, the Spore expansion: Galactic Adventures - an MMO-gameplay lookalike where your Spore creatures get to beam down to different planets, click on exclamation marks and do quests to spice up the much-maligned Space Stage gameplay. (I bet they were planning this all along, that is why the 4X stage felt like it was missing something to people.) They are also offering user-created content, aka you get to do quests other people make. (And I'm sure we know how that's going to turn out a la MA system, multiplied by a factor of young kiddies plus extra-annonymity.)
So no, it seems rather unlikely that I would be willing to just buy Galactic Adventures just like that. Unless I turn into a rabid fan of Spore and then regret not getting it, and then have to rush down and put down extra $$$ to pick it up a month or two later.
However, the very fact that such an expansion is going to exist makes me question whether I really need to get Spore NOW now.
Because if I could hold out and wait, and wait, and wait for August to December or even next year... you know what's going to release, right? Spore: The Platinum Pack! Where all this crap gets bundled in and sold at a bargain price as a last ditch attempt to attract cheapskate late-adopters like me and get one last money spike on the graphs.
Truth to tell, I regret being an early adopter of games like Neverwinter Nights and Fear. Yes, I sort of enjoyed the original game, I raced to pick up the first expansion - which I sorta neglected to install for a while - and before I knew it the SECOND expansion had turned up, then a THIRD, and I got myself confused as to which was which and may have bought one or two extra copies or missed one - and then the salt to the wound was that they release the platinum pack that has it all bundled later.
*grumble*
If it were just me, playing it personally, I'd probably be content to wait it out. Of course, I'd have to fight off the slight addiction that says I gotta play it now cos I just tried it this morning (lots of other games to distract me if I really focus).
With the extra rationalization that I just might be able to use this for work, my willpower is eroding mightily quickly.
I'm still not pleased about the DRM. It may just end up locked for good in my desktop with my laptop being unable to have a copy of it for work purposes, but at least I'll have the playthrough experience and be able to identify usable portions as an educational tool.
Now this coming end May is actually going to be fairly busy, so I'm not sure if I have the time to design new lessons. Then again, I have a course in June that just might benefit from this. In June, I also have to organize and prepare for other things that suck away available time. Yet if I don't start now, the time will never be found because things always expand to fill up all available space...
Pfft. To buy or not to buy. And when.
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