Three years ago, Will Wright blew my mind with his GDC (that's the Game Developer's Conference to those not in the know) demonstration of Spore. In his presentation, he explores the wondrous world of procedural generation, evolution, and sandbox gameplay. Starting from a little skeleton, the game creates actions, music: a literal world around your little creature. Everything is made on the fly. As the game progresses, your animal evolves, transitioning to the sea, land, civilization, and finally space stage. If you haven't seen it, click here [google.com].

Three years after first watching that extraordinary video, I finally have an install of that very game on my hard drive. Why did you sell yourself out, Will Wright? Is money that much more important than your reputation? Will Wright and EA shipped a hollow version of what we were promised. The game was made cute, the mechanics were made shallow, and the 2005 game has disappeared. In 2005, we were introduced to "procedural verbs:" verbs that are created by mixing others. When Will moved and bit with his creature, he invented a drag action. Where did that disappear to? What about swimming the ocean? Why was that entire stage removed? Will Wright's response: "we looked at the Metacritic scores for 'Sims 2', which was around 90, and something like 'Half-Life', which was 97, and we decided - quite a while back - that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of 'Sims 2' than the Metacritic and sales of 'Half-Life.'" [mtv.com]. Way to sell out your loyal fans. Spore is no longer a procedural game! There is no procedural music, no procedural animation, no procedural actions! It's insulting that Wright and EA would deviate from their fanbase to "casual gamers."

This isn't to mention the SecureROM DRM that ships with Spore. Short story is that irate Spore followers have squashed the game down to a one star rating on Amazon. If you want to know more about that whole mess, click here [theregister.co.uk].

Will Wright, EA, you designed a great game. I still enjoy Spore as it is now. But, you leave me yearning for what you exhibited in 2005. You were proud of that, you shouldn't be proud of halving your ambitions and delivering such a truncated product.