Spore

[Alexander]

For those who haven't heard about it, it's the next big title coming from Will Wright of Sims/SimCity/SimX fame.

Here's a google video link from last year's GDC. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198
The speech was stopped mid sentence at the end, perhaps this huge honkin' download is the more complete version. http://www.sporewiki.com/images/media/GDC-Spore.avi
As the GDC presentation commences, I found myself wowed by every step foward he put. In fact, I call him a madman.(only out of jealousy)

The idea of bringing up and manipulating a single celled organism, to a fully intelligent and heavily armed force in the galaxy is well... just mind bending. In fact, I'd argue it'd make a lot of the gaming industry look quite primitive and dull.

The Wikipedia entry lists a possible rumored release date of late 2006(I really doubt it). We can expect to see and learn more of the title at the next E3, and probably even more at GDC.

[V-Dawg]

Holy shit. That's all I can muster after watching the clip.

Damn, this is probably the most ambitious game project I've ever seen. It just skyrocketed to one of my most wanted games as of now. Simply amazing.

[Cauton]

Wow. I've read about Spore before, but I never understood the scope of the thing before watching that GDC demo. That looks totally awesome. The idea of using other player's content to populate worlds is ingenious, and will allow for crazy amounts of variation. I wonder, though, if the lack of clearly defined goals at the later stages of the game might not work against it. Because even if freedom and sandbox play is fun, I personally always get a bit bored and unmotivated if a game lacks a well defined goal.

Still looking forward to it a lot, though.

[MeshGearFox]

The lack of a defined goal can be perfectly fine if the simulation is in depth enough. However, I don't know if that's the case here. Spore seems to be saccrificing depth for scope. This might not be the case though, or it might be an exception where the scope is enough to save everything.