And on the 7th day, God played Spore

TinyURL'd

I have hopefully come accross, or at least sometimes mentioned, my religious backgrounds.  I am a Christian.  I say this only because of the character of which this article will be about, and his apparently militant faith.

A few months ago, I had one heck of a lot of fun with the Spore Creature Creator.  It is more addicted and incredibly fun as a bag of mables being held by a bucket of monkeys that stacked together, a la Construction, building another monkey.  Dont ask how, but I know how fun both are.  I have my ways.

Unless you are named Van Winkle, in that case, you are excused from not knowing of the ever-infamous Jack Thompson issue.  He was a fourth-rate lawyer that constantly tried to bring down companies like Rockstar for their production of apparent murder simulators.  Their relation?  Neither seem to have actually played either of their respective videogames.

Will Wright, in his genius, pioneered the ‘God-sim’ genre.  Sim City still has a massive following.  For a long time, The Sims (and its multiple sequels and expansion packs) even held the record for best selling video game ever.  Black and White, not as revolutionary, was still a greatly received game and helped anchor his foot into this new genre of his.

Regardless, this came as a surprise to me.  As is any written text, the Bible is up for numerous amounts of interpretation (and why so many denominations) and thusly the Genesis story has been talked about for ages.  The, as of now unnamed, ‘Anti-Spore’ militant, has been quoting the Bible and trying to call EA and Will Wright evil.

I think it is entirely possible that God created civilizations on other planets.  But because Will Wright has brainwashed Frank Drake into thinking that life in the universe gave rise to “super humans” on other planets that are better than us.

It is people like this that make me embarassed to be a Christian.  Had she not pulled another Jack Thompson by actually playing the game she would see how this game has been appropriately dubbed a God-sim.  Religious views aside, athiestic, agnostic or not - if God created the world, would this not be the best way for it to be done?  This game does not, in any way, try to unmount God in his throne at all.  You aren’t denying God, you are playing God, a pre-human God who is just having some fun.

In defense of Anti-Spore, she is seeing some of the light, she is just not noticing it on herself;

Someone informed me that an Attorney, Mr. Jack Thompson may be able to help me. As he has had much success in raising awareness about problem video games.

Does anyone know how I can get in touch with him?

Turns out that Jack Thompson is a terrible lawyer.
People are emailing me so much stuff, I don’t know which people are being sincere and which are not.

For example, I got a message from the supposed mayor of McCamish, KS. Claiming that he will make sure the game is kept out of their store.  I have no way to verify the info, though.

Far too often do I see Christian groups and individuals in a chronic poise to defend themselves.  I see where this is coming, I understand it.  But really, quit trying to be so damned ignorant.  You are making us all look like Jack Thompson-kin.

EDIT: Be it a Rick Roll or not, all the points I made in this thread are applicable.  As said in the linked Destructoid page, “Frankly though, it could’ve gone either way. There are plenty of people out there who would agree with the site.”

Tags: christian, ea, jack thompson, spore

Spore = Creationism ^ Down Syndrome

TinyURL'd

Critics claim that the release of the Spore Creature Creator is nothing more than an easy cash-grab.  After a few hours playing as the most retarded god since Black & White, I have come a conclusion: even if the full version of Spore were released, only % 0.002 of the entire gaming population would have gotten any further.  It is just retardededly fun.  You will laugh so much from the fun you are having, people will actually assume you have a mental handicap.  They released this part of the game merely to let the massive influx of YouTube videos and models of sexually inspired creatures in an effort to spread out the tension on our precious internetz — and yes, I said YouTube.

Initially I followed Spore as intently as Michael Jackson did the t-shirt:skin ratio of Dakota Fanning.  But dudes, it debuted in E3 2006, and it has been a long, long while since then.  Some people thought Spore might have lost some steam when its release was bumped last summer (I believe that was when).     Judging, however, by the ~900,000 custom creatures made since release (June 17, 2008), this is not the case.  So at least to me, the implementation of YouTube was a total, awesome and surprising surprise.  The community aspect of Spore insisted on this type of feature, after all.

The Creature Creator, which is only one portion of the final game, has three parts to its window.  The “building” section, the “testing” section and the “skinning” section.  The middle one, the testing ground actually has YouTube implemented into it.  The testing ground is used to test out your creature, see how he reacts to certain commands, how he walks around and how funny his (or her) babies look like.  Right in the bottom left are two buttons, one for taking photos and the other for video taping.  You can then take videos of your creature dancing around and YouTube it, showing off your creative prowess to the lesser beings on the internetz.  The bottom of the screen is where you name, describe and tag your creature — and then where you upload to the Sporepedia, allowing other players to bring them into their worlds.  Given the chance that someone extincts your creature, you are messaged thusly, giving you the option to insult them in the forums with mad caps-lock-stylez.

There is some strategy to the creating, as each item you use adds a certain amount of points to various parts of a creature, be it the ability to actually see, how powerful their charge attacks are and how fast they are.  But Maxis seems to have taken into account the fact that no one will pay much heed to that aspect of the building, and lets us throw on whatever we want.  The only problem with this game is convincing your little sister that your creature does not need three mouths inside one, even if you secretly agree.

If you do not mind the cartoon look to the game — buy it.

If you do mind — buy it.

If you do not buy it regardless – get off my internetz.

Tags: games, PC, spore