YourGamer.Net

When Artemis (one of the trolls in moonstruck chat room) told me that there was a Spore demo leaked, I thought he was screwing around with my head. This is a sport in the moonstruck chat room so i take it with a grain of salt, but he wasn’t joking and the link he provided was valid. I won’t link you the torrent because I am still uncertain as to whether or not it is a leak or a legitimate demo release, and I don’t wish to be liable for what may or may not be construed as infringement. All that aside, back to why I have a huge gamer stiffy for Wil Wright’s Spore.

When I had downloaded and installed the Spore Creature Creator demo, I was pleasantly surprised when it  started perfectly on my meager laptop. I spent the rest of the night messing around with the many options. It’s not complete in the selection of creature parts, but it being a demo of a small part of a game. This came as another surprise; apparently, EA games is selling the Creature Creator as a small digital toy. This made me think, “Is this worth it?”

The price is low, and from the looks of it, it will be a download only option. This still does not alter the fact that EA is selling a partial product when the full product is merely a few months away? I have a feeling that the marketing department at our favorite corporate game monger, EA games is behind this. I can see why someone would be willing to get the creature creator as a solitary application, but I feel that they are missing out on a great marketing tool by charging for this small piece of software. If they had given out this software completely free, in lo of charging, they would get more overall sales of the complete product than they would otherwise. Let me tell you how.

If they give out the Creature Creator for free, they develop a fan base that will be encouraged to buy the full version each time they play. Not through nagware, or feature limitations, the shear fact that it is only a small part of a whole game would be more than enough to create the constant desire in the gamer’s minds. Also, the extraneous content on the whole product is dependent on the data base of creatures created by the Creature Creator stored online. Building up the community between creators and players would also be in favor of the profit margin. By building a constant exchange between those two, you have a self expanding marketing campaign that borders on viral, thusly pushing the primary product into the public eye. They touch a little on this with the option to upload video’s of the creatures directly to YouTube (yes, by now there is probably a flood of those types of videos on youtube right now).

I can’t say for certain if Spore is going to live up to its hype, I found the controls and options intuitive and smooth. The selection of content was limited but this did not hamper its impact. The bonus material options, such as the videos, animated avatars, and pictures, make the demo quite fun to mess around with.

My suggestion is to search online for the leaked demo, (*coughthepiratebay.orgcough*) and play with that until your pre-order of the real game comes in. All I can say is that whether or not it lives up to the hype, Spore with indeed be a great game.