(no subject)

[unbibium]

So far, I've been educated on the following ways EA could ruin Spore:

1. Withhold part of the gameplay so they can sell it as an expansion pack.
2. Sue anyone who airs the video from GDC 2005 -- the unedited version indicated an air of ubersecrecy at the end.
3. Get sued by Paramount. I couldn't tell whether they ripped the original Star Trek fight score or composed a sound-alike. It probably doesn't help that Wright said his stock races would be based on the Klingons and Borg, rather than euphemizing them into "the warrior race archetype" and "the technological singularity archetype".
4. Get sued by the Care Bears. Though I like how he said that the cloud-filled "Caring Kingdom" implied that the Earth was the "not-giving-a-shit kingdom".

Comments

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

3. I dunno, basing the behavior of a race on the behavior of another race isn't too infringey, I don't think. I mean, shit, he mentioned Uplift, and hopefully David Brin is sitting around his house all excited that his books will sell again.
Not that I should underestimate the rancor of publishers.

I seriously would be surprised to see EA neuter anything about Spore; Will Wright, should he choose to leave them, would break some shit for sure.

[jecook]

I thought that Hasbro and EA currently had "some form" of agreement between the two...

(hasbro owns the Care Bears license)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That business about the stock races made me wince, actually; I'd prefer to see something other than Klingons, Vulcans and Borg with the serial numbers filed off. That's boring.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Since the user will be able to create their own races, perhaps Spore will spawn a race more famous than any of them. And perhaps there will be more ambiguity than we think over which stock Spore race corresponds to which stock Trek race.

I notice that the year-old demo and the allegedly-newer screenshots both feature the same tripod-lemur species.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I wasn't worried, since he was talking about "personality sliders" when describing the asynchronous download of another user's solar system following his use of the SETI tool near the end. I'm sure that even the archetypal races that are represented by the Klingons, Vulcans and Borg will have random (within limits) variations to keep them from becoming too recognizable.

To me, it's the same as the earlier levels where the game is populated by predators and prey to keep the ecosystem, at least from your creature's perspective, in balance. Add enough sliders and you've got a real marketplace of ideas.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I think it's ludicrous to suggest that Paramount could sue EA over a presentation that used famous music-- at worst, GDC might have write a check to ASCAP-- or the mention of famous fictional races that're trademarked by same. They'd have to prove that Will Wright's many-legged "Buttface" or dog-faced knuckle-walker "Hangdog" would be easily confused with pointy-eared humanoids in order to win their suit, and all the lawyers who are that ambitious are already into personal-injury law. It's not as if one-note archetypes are breathtaking works of originality, so the Klingons don't have a monopoly on being warlike at all times, nor do the Vulcans get to be the only emotion-denying logical schmoes in the universe of universes.

Now, there is the matter of people creating rip-off works using the games, such as the user development a Carebear world. There was recent chatter about Lionhead's "The Movies" that someone would re-create "The Godfather," (particularly since all the media and apparently one of the first movies you make is a 1920s/30s mobster movie) upload it and maybe even sell it, and get sued by Paramount (I believe they still own The Godfather)-- to what degree is Lionhead at fault, and who is going to fuck this up for everybody first: a game-user or a trademark/copyright owner?

As for 1., you're right, but they'll do it anyway because it's how they make money on The Sims and, as I'm now experiencing, Battlefield 2.
2. As if. The horse is out of the barn, and this sort of preview primarily appeals to people who have some grasp of the significance of Will Wright reinventing gameplay (again) and are already saving their pennies to buy Spore.