A Spore Post Not About DRM

I haven't played Spore myself, but I've watched my wife play it plenty. In fact, as I type this, she's making her fourth or fifth trip through the game and seems intent on not letting up until she's experienced everything the game has to offer. I do not foresee that happening anytime soon, however. You see, my wife has discovered the wonders of downloading and importing creatures, buildings, and vehicles that other players have generated in their own time with the game. Her universe is now populated with icons from the Harry Potter and Star Wars universes.

For most players, this wouldn't bother them. In fact, I believe most will see it as a selling point. "You mean my creatures can fly around in an X-Wing? Schwing!" But for me, I can't help but be boggled thinking about the ramifications of incorporating characters from popular media into the game.

Spore is a cultural artifact itself. To take this significant game (It is a Will Wright creation! Say what you will, it's still important.) and transform it into a repository for other iconic members of the popular culture encyclopedia seems akin to God building an island and forcing his favorite things to live there.

Her planes are little Quidditch players on brooms for crying out loud.

The reasons this notion has perplexed me are varied:

1. This is going a step further than a player simply naming a character after something they like. Instead of calling their pixilated equivelant WolverineXX3, they're actually generating the character to carry its likeness and then letting it reproduce and attempt to eat their babies. Really, if Wolverine is in Spore, he will eat your babies.

2. Just like encountering your friends' Mii's while playing Wii Fit, having these creations in your world seems, to me, to only serve as a reminder of other things going on in your life-be it movies you could be watching, comic books you could be reading, or CDs you could be listening to (if you still listen to CDs), these items will distract and take you out of the experience of playing the game. Imagine if you were playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance and you suddenly had to fight Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson. The result, as is the case with anything Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson related, would not be cool.

3. While broadening the experience of Spore, the ability to include other pop culture icons actually limits it. The surprises head out the window when you micromanage every evolution in your world. It's like biting into a Kinder Egg knowing what you're going to find. Seeing an AT-ST is cool, but doesn't lend itself to any surprises. That is, until the damn thing eats your babies.

I know the God Game genre relies heavily on manipulating your world, and Spore, truly is the embodiment of that mission. I still feel that too much customization can take away from the experience, and create unreasonable expectations for players in the future.

I recall a time, four years ago, when I was playing City of Heroes and ran into a gang of folks who'd rolled characters identical to the Fantastic Four. I can't recall my character’s garb, but I can guarantee I'd made a concerted effort to be unique. After all, if you're going to be your own hero, or create your own world for that matter, why would you want it to be modeled after someone else's?