Spore review

Disclosure: I own stocks in Activision (ATVI) and I do not own stocks in Electronics Arts (ERTS). My review will most likely be biased against EA due to personal gaming preferences.

Spore’s history

Spore is the upcoming flagship of EA with about 10 years of total cooking time and 4 years of hardcore development time, this is one of the bigger projects in the gaming industry. I fully expect to whore this franchise out till every little toddler has played it 10 times.

Written for financial evaluation

I am writing this review for a different reason than your normal game review. Whether or not I personally like the game does not matter (For the record, I don’t). The reason why I spent $50 to buy the game and review it, when so many other reviews have already been posted on the web, is so that I can personally assess the impact that this franchise might have on EA’s stock price. I am what people call a hardcore gamer and this game is made for the casual gaming crowd. Please take that into account when reading the rest of the review.

Will it make money?

My short answer is: No. Not as much as Starcraft 2 will make. Its publicity, did reach a lot of people due to its infamous delays and the promise of several games in one. Its marketing pitch has always appealed to the hardcore gaming crowd and as such, have always been shown within the hardcore gaming crowd. Which is the only reason why I am even aware of this game. This is why I doubt the game will see much sales. .. Because they pitched at the wrong crowd.

Reaction from hardcore gamers

I am probably the best basis to use to gauge hardcore gamer’s reactions and I can sum it up in a few simple sentences. It is a dumbed down repetitive boring game with herculean DRM that I don’t agree with. It almost felt as if the VP of marketing interfered with the game development last year and told everyone that it’ll be for the casual gamer’s market instead.

The money model

Activision Blizzard is probably the best model to use as an example of how to make money in the gaming industry. Piracy is unavoidable, which makes the traditional model of selling CDs a money loser. Since spore has no subscription fee and no specialty hardware that comes with it, it WILL be pirated. The 3 install DRM placed on the cd will limit resale value of the cd itself and is supposed to bring in more money from more cd purchases. They did not expect how pissed off the consumers were, to the point that people are returning their purchases.

Casual gamers?

Casual gamers reactions are the bigges factor here. To evaluate this, I took a step back and reviewed why casual gaming exploded in the recent years. I didn’t have to look far, all I had to do was look at Nintendo. What did they do to make gaming mainstream? What are the important factors involved in Wii and DS?

Yes, it was the type of physical interactions brought on by these platforms which made casual gaming explode. If you take a step back and look at Spore on a PC with the traditional mouse and keyboard, you will see the problem that I see.

Conclusion

Spore will not turn the ship around for EA and I believe they noticed the problem as well since they announced a version of Spore for Wii. Once those come out, we might be able to see a turn around. Until then, EA is still missing a successful flagship product that doesn’t give them a net negative money flow.