Come on, it has to be on hold for at least another year before being considered for vaporware status, much less the ten years that have earned DNF the championship crown of vaporware. 
I will say this much.
After Civ 4 came out, there was a myriad of users with rather severe issues, ranging from “annoying” to “game crippling”. It took them months to get everything ironed out.
If Spore releases, and starts right up and doesn’t require several hundred megs worth of patches, would it be considered worth it?
Tristan, possibly. The issue is though that the majority of the gaming world won’t see it that way. They’ve been hearing about Spore for 3 years now, or however long it has been and regardless of solidity and strength, it’s going to be a disappointment with the expectation that has been raised A) by Wright’s name and B) by the time it has been in dev.
– IG
Three years? Sheesh, if that’s your idea of a long time…
In my admittedly not so expert but reasonably informed opinion, from the start of development to getting sent out in a package, three years is not unusual for a new game that isn’t based completely off a predecessor. Dashing out another NFL This Year involves tweaking the engine, having the artists revamp the graphics for another year, get pictures of the new players, and plug in the new stats.
The problem is, this game got announced when it was conceived. People expected it out in one or two years because that’s the usual amount of time you have to wait to get a game after it’s announced. But games usually don’t get announced until they’re at a stage of development where they can actually say Yes, We Are Making This And It Probably Won’t Be Shitcanned.
But he’s too big a name – just having his name on a project ensures people are going to buy it, especially since The Sims came out. It got announced way too early.
Well…yeah. I thought that when I heard about a game, I assumed it wasn’t for a computer that hasn’t been invented yet.
The problem is that the longer it goes, the more it will get hyped up and the less likely it is to meet the hype. Then again, the last game I actually waited for like that was SimCity 4 and I really liked that one so there you go.
As vaporware goes it’s not even in the same league as Duke Nukem Forever, but a game “Scheduled for release” two years away essentially does not exist in any way that matters.
“Spore” at this point could be a great game or it could be SimGolf. It’s impossible to say whether it’ll be good, bad, or indifferent, because if it’s two years away, the gameplay isn’t even close to being designed, and the sudden release date shift suggests the possibility that a lot of what was done has been abandoned in favour of doing something else. For that matter, the 2009 release date is a guess. It could be 2010, or 2011, or never, or it could end up morphing into a radically different game, or two games, or whatever.
I think everyone should just forget about this game completely until release info firms up.
Look forward to Crysis instead, if you are clamoring for a reason to upgrade your system(or the upcoming Starcraft MMO)
Man, Black & White itself was a watered down, sucky version of Black & White. At least, of the ridiculous superhype that had floated around about that game until it finally came out.
My fears with Spore are that there’s a similar sort of hype process going on.
ETA: Read the rest of the thread… nevermind…
That’s the problem. What would have been a great game if released in 2006 will look hopelessly dated in 2009. And it wouldn’t be the first time Will Wright bit off more than he could chew. I remember when the original SimCity 3000 was supposed to be all 3D with an ability to place buildings at any angle. Well, it ended up going back to the old grid model and it took about 10 years for a city sim game to actually do all that (City Life).
My guess is that the graphics and creature editor are mostly complete (nothing particularly groundbreaking there), but the AI has a long way to go.
I’d say the creature editor is the single most groundbreaking thing about the game. Everything else in the game has been done before (well aside from the streaming user content into your game I suppose) but molding what is supposed to be a ball of clay with 100’s of pieces to add to it and the thing actually walks and behaves as it should? Never seen that before and can only think of one or two games where something even close to that occurs.
My wife and I are both looking forward to creating our own little creatures. Sadly our goals are different. I have a book called Barlowe’s Guide to Extra Terrestrials and plan to see how close I can get my creatures to various Sci-Fi creations (yes I’m a huge nerd I know) while she plans to make ‘cute’ creatures and see what works. Blah girls.
My GF doesn’t care for videogames all that much, but I think she’d get a kick out of seeing a fuzzy pink Tyranosaurus with a bow on it’s head.
But other than making some funny or weird creatures, I suspect that the SimCity/Civilization/Populous aspect of the game might be a bit weak.