Given the conference's acronym, it only seems fit that Will Wright's ambitious Spore have a presentation at this year's Design, Innovate, Create and Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit. However, in an atypical move for the Sims mastermind, Wright asked four members of his development team to do most of the talking.
Ocean Quigley, Chaim Gingold, Jenna Chalmers and Alex Hutchinson discussed their roles in the development cycle and explained the hardship of trying to make the game not only work, but work efficiently and with as simple amount of input possible from the player:
- Quigley focused on the challenges of letting players create their own species and objects while avoiding any potential problems associated with said freedom.
- Gingold discussed making object editors simple and powerful, expressing his mantra that "if [the game testers] don't notice that it sucks, then it must be good."
- Chalmers' presentation outlined all their ideas for the space travel missions, and how she hopes the final game will be able to create new, entertaining missions on the fly. Though she noted that many ideas will not make it to publication, one mission that gave us a chuckle was having to drop a T. Rex onto an unsuspecting planet.
- Hutchinson's speech covered his role as the overall gameplay designer, and lauds Spore for its ability to splice genres.
See Also:
Joystiq Video: Wired Spore Event, featuring Will Wright and Robin Williams
