EA teams up with Robot Chicken for edgy new Spore DLC.
One of the regular criticisms of EA’s Spore was that it lacked any gameplay depth. What little there was seemed to cluster at the end of the game, in the space stage – until then, Spore comprised of cut-down snippets of popular genres.
While this was great for beginners, it severely let down gamers who expected a bit of depth from a title that had been talked about in publications like New Scientist and Time. It seemed that most of the investment made into Spore neglected the game and fixated on character and item creation utilities that were capable of a enormous number of procedurally generated outputs.
To try and add some gameplay and longevity to the game, EA is soon to release the Galactic Adventures expansion. This combines both pre-made content and a new adventure creator that allows players to create their own planetary missions for intrepid space explorers. In order to make said expansion seem cool to gamers and cynical adults, EA has enlisted the team behind Robot Chicken to create a series of missions that will be available as downloadable content (DLC) for the expansion.
The announcement is accompanied by a video, which shows the Robot Chicken staff coming up with three new missions. There are a lot of unnecessary introductions to each member of the writing staff, news that the world’s second most famous ginger, Seth Green, isn’t there, and some very silly looking missions. While the sheer self-indulgence of the video may get a bit much, the kicker comes at the end when the staff are asked for a few one- or two-line ideas that will then be made into missions by Maxis staff.
So, the Spore Robot Chicken DLC will actually be three missions designed by the team, and a bunch of other missions inspired by them. I really do feel pity for the poor sap at Maxis that gets given a bit of paper scribbled with ‘Giant flying poop-monster. Lolz’ and then asked to make it into a mission.
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Fresh confabulation