Spore
September 23, 2008 @ 19:00
My recent forays into gaming on a computational device have taken me to playing Spore, the latest game from Maxis which bewilderingly doesn’t contain the word “Sim” anywhere in the title.
Personally, I hated all the SimCity games, I found them boring and directionless. I hated the Sims series, they just seemed to be either more boring than my life (in which case I wondering why I was playing them) or more exciting than my life (which made me sad 
). Reading most of the build-up for Spore made me think it was going to be just-another-boring-sim-game. When I read that Soren Johnson, the lead designer of Civilisation 4 (a game more addictive than any drug), was working on it my interest was piqued.
I got the Creature Creator partly as it was £5 and I thought it might entertain me for a few hours by creating some grotesque creatures and watch my girlfriend make some pretty ones but, despite my expectations, I actually ended up getting quite into it. The intuitiveness of the tool and the sheer variety of creatures that were getting created really excited me so I bought the game.
For the last two weeks I have been living like an addict, waiting to get the next fix of the game. I think yesterday evening may be the first since I bought it that I didn’t played it (instead I just read about computer games). I don’t just play for fun, I play to elevate the Globby Empire to greatness!
Xora is a friendly fellow. By which I mean he’s eaten all his fellow cells, ripped his fellow creatures to bits, massacred his fellow tribes, nuked his fellow civilisations and blown up the planets of his fellow space empires. In Spore you can be friendly, evil or somewhere in the middle. Sadly, blowing up planets and eating other creatures has proved to be far more fun than talking to them or forming trade routes.
I realise you don’t care about Xora or his mighty empire but you would if you’d created this creature from a single cell (with a mouth, but I’ll give Will Wright the right to give cells mouths) and evolved it to a mighty space-faring empire.
Really this is just a really fun game. It continuously rewards the player through the multiple stages and in-stage checkpoints and the badge/achievement system strongly appeals to the more obsessive types like me (HAVE TO GET THEM ALL) it’s just a really enjoyable experience. Add this on top of the ability to subscribe to Sporecasts and your friends feeds, meeting them in game and you just get a really fun community experience.
I highly recommend buying and playing Spore. It’s one of those incredibly innovative games that everyone should play, regardless of their preferred genre.
Posted in Computer Games
The funny part is that I was destroying a nasty agressive civilization, trading with some planets, terraforming others than I close the game and think *must go by to my life*… then I open my google reader and I read the title of a post: “Spore”
this thing is too addictive.. I have to program c++ on my free time but I just keep thinking: “man, the galaxy is huge, and you can visit ALL stars on it, dammit!”
Comment by Paulo Cesar — September 25, 2008 @ 00:52
It may be fun but it has one of the most restrictive DRM around. So I won’t be able to play it.
Comment by Narishma — September 25, 2008 @ 04:11
is it possible to play on linux with cedega/wine/something else?
Comment by Dass — September 25, 2008 @ 08:27
Whats that drm thingy about we hear about? A game which limits my rights is not something I will give any money too, no matter how good it is. But I’m not sure if I understand the issues with this game in particular.
Comment by Thomas — September 25, 2008 @ 16:43
@Paulo: Feel your pain man!
@Dass: It looks like it runs on according to this. Don’t use Cedega, they suck.
@Narishma/@Thomas: I honestly couldn’t care less about DRM on Windows. The whole platform is DRM laden so I just treat it like a games console. They use DRM heavily too
Comment by Mike — September 26, 2008 @ 00:01
That’s an interesting point about the DRM Mike. But many people don’t use Windows as an ‘archive OS’ tucked away in some gracefully reserved partition someplace, they use it as their main, regular OS. As in, they don’t use anything BUT windows. They even surf the net with windows or to work on private information using it. *shudder*
Now if I used windows as my main OS, I’d be concerned about a game behaving like a kernel module, effectively signing over the ownership of my PC to EA.
I’m very curious about the game though and I like the evolutionary theme. I had to laugh hard when I found out that some Christian fundies are whining about how Spore is “destroying” “creationism”. http://antispore.com/ After discovering this site, it took me a while to realize that a) this is not an antiDRM site, and b) this is not satire, but c) these nutters are serious!
Comment by Ava Odoemena — September 26, 2008 @ 00:54
@Ava: Yeh, I can understand that. I’m still anti-DRM but it won’t stop me buying a game because I don’t care if my Windows partition gets trashed.
That Anti-Spore site is embarrassing to non-stupid Christians. I’m pretty gutted it exists
Comment by Mike — September 26, 2008 @ 21:42
[...] if you had anything interesting to say about Spore, Phorm or Chrome then please excuse me being a noob and post [...]
Pingback by WP-reCAPTCHA failure… - mike arthur dot co dot you kay — September 27, 2008 @ 01:27
Don’t be gutted please:-) Their wild fantasies are not your responsibility. Actually it was insensitive of me to post that comment/link in the first place, not realizing that you are religious. I’m so used to techies not being religious, I had posted that comment before having had a thorough look around your blog, at least the Christian part. So I apologize if I came across like a jerk and hurt your feelings. I usually only poke fun at religious people when they’re not around:-))
I was partially socialized as a Christian myself, growing up in the r/catholic part of Germany. I eventually realized I was atheist when I was quite young, as a vegan today I could not accept Jesus as my savior anymore, even if I’d ever start believing in an intelligent force again. The reason is that I don’t regard Jesus as a messiah based on a grave theological problem. Pythagoras lived a while before Jesus, and he was the first who formulated something akin to vegan ethics. So these considerations were around that time and area, if Jesus, or Mohammed as a matter of fact was (in the theological sense) indeed a prophet of prophets, he could have not ignored the ethical rights of animals the way he did. The Jews too ignore the ethical rights of animals (anyone who is not vegan does), but they have the theological advantage that they have no messiah with a “final, supreme” message. So while today everone is ethically required to live vegan (since the 1940s, as that was the time when B12 could be fermented through bacteria without the help of animals), the Jews can claim room of interpretation for taking so long to include vegan ethics, whenever they do. Both Islam and Christianity don’t have option anymore, as they both claim messianic “perfection”, having overlooked this fundamental stumbling block. When the *full implications* of this error will hit these two religions, it will cause a great theological crisis for them, I think.
Comment by Ava Odoemena — October 22, 2008 @ 18:06
I SOOOO want to get spore, but have a feeling that my laptop isn’t quite up to supporting it – especially since Jay has added all his music.
And Ava you completely lost me with the whole vegan/B12 thing. I’m sure your belief in it is solid and i am not mocking it – it is just beyond me. I hold a much simpler belief – if God had not intended us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.
Comment by Soon to be Mrs Wilken — October 24, 2008 @ 10:05
“if God had not intended us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”
Smug aggression is usually a sign that someone understood something, but didn’t like the implications. That’s OK. If I had to abuse a God to justify an avoidable killing, I’d be confused and irritated too:-)
Which God are you referring to BTW? I’m honestly interested, because I collect Gods in a list*¹ and am always happy to catch a new one I didn’t know before. Humans are animals, mammals to be precise, and are made out of meat… So your God grants you cannibalism? How does that fit within the typical schemes of “universal love”?
–
¹ I skip the 800 Million Hindu Gods, most of them have no name nor reference in any script.
Comment by Ava Odoemena — October 26, 2008 @ 22:08
@Ava: that wasn’t smug aggression from “Soon to be Mrs Wilken”, it was quote that was on a spoof PETA site (People Eating Tasty Animals) that has since being shut down. I thought, vegan or no, that it is quite an amusing quote.
We’re not confused or irritated, we disagree. The Bible states that animals were made for mankind so I don’t have any problem with eating them. Ultimately, we’re biologically suited to a omnivorous diet. The justification for eating animals over people is that animals are not “intelligent” with all definitions of the word and most religions believe that they do not have a soul.
It’s interesting that you seem convinced that one day most people will agree with you and we’ll all feel terribly guilty. As you’ve said, veganism has been around for a while and this hasn’t happened and I don’t think it ever will.
How can you justify eating plants or bacteria which are both considered alive? What would you do if plants or bacteria were discovered to be sentient, starve?
Comment by Mike Arthur — October 27, 2008 @ 00:22
> @Ava: that wasn’t smug aggression from “Soon to be Mrs Wilken”, it was
> quote that was on a spoof PETA site (People Eating Tasty Animals) that has
> since being shut down. I thought, vegan or no, that it is quite an amusing
> quote.
Ah I see. Irony or satire is sometimes hard to catch when English is a secondary language, I’m not very deeply into the US vegan or antivegan scene. I still don’t find it amusing though. It can only be amusing if you ignore the billions of animals killed each year. For me, there is no funny aspect in that. It’s like making fun of children in Thai brothels, sort of: “If God didn’t want old men to have sex with young children, why did he give them genitals.”
It’s really the worst sort of joke you could recite in presence of a vegan (or a children’s rights activist in latter case).
> We’re not confused or irritated, we disagree. The Bible states that
> animals were made for mankind so I don’t have any problem with eating them.
The Bible also states that you should murder homosexuals and burn women.
Just because it stands there, doesn’t mean you are forced to do it. There are plenty of vegan Christians who read the Bible otherwise.
It also states that you should not kill. That animals were “made for mankind” could also be interpreted as “to be appreciated by mankind”. However it’s quite clear that Jesus was speciesistic, running pigs over a cliff and sharing out fish and so on.
> Ultimately, we’re biologically suited to a omnivorous diet.
Yes, this however is the very reason why we can be vegan. Just because we can eat everything, doesn’t mean we *must* eat everything.
> The
> justification for eating animals over people is that animals are not
> “intelligent”
There is enough evidence to the contrary. Intelligence is not a valid criterion, because it would mean you could eat retarded humans. Actually, the fact that animals can experience pain is sufficient for the attribution of ethical rights.
If you’re honestly interested and willing to research the arguments I recommend Gary Francione, a professor of law and animal rights activist. I think he even has a blog, and he wrote books on the issue. A blog commentary is not really the context in which the issue can be handled appropriately.
> with all definitions of the word and most religions believe
> that they do not have a soul.
Well personally I don’t believe humans have a soul. There is no evidence of such thing. So again, this is religious belief being used to attempt to justify the avoidable death and suffering of billions.
> It’s interesting that you seem convinced that
> one day most people will agree with you and we’ll all feel terribly guilty.
It’s called the gravity of truth. Religions had to accept that earth is not flat and that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Undeniable facts are historically integrated into theology, I am convinced strongly that just for the sake of self-sustainability, religions will integrate rational vegan ethics. Currently, vegans factually form the ethical elite of humans, living vegan is the practical maximum of an ethically coherent lifestyle. Churches risk having their authority eroded by this fact, if they don’t integrate vegan ethics (which are neutral as Einsteins theory of relativity and can be integrated to all religions), it means the center of power will automatically shift towards vegans.
The first religion which is actively seeking to integrate vegan ethics are the Jains.
> As you’ve said, veganism has been around for a while and this hasn’t
> happened and I don’t think it ever will.
Modern veganism has been around since 1944 when Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson and has since grown exponentially. Apart from us ethical vegans, there is support from a completely neutral corner as well, and that is the biophysical limit of the planet. Animal based foods already occupy the majority of the planets agricultural space, however, just a minority of humans can actually afford animal products.
With the growing affluence of China and India, the biophysical limit will soon be reached in crop production. Non-vegans use, ironically, much more plant matter than vegans, because the animals have to be fed with a multifold of plants as are needed when the plants are consumed directly.
So, non-vegans have, in about 10-30 years a choice. Insist on animal products and watch other humans starve, or share good vegan nutrition with all.
> How can you justify eating plants
> or bacteria which are both considered alive?
Because plants, bacteria, yeast, mushrooms have no properties and abilities for which they need to be granted ethical rights. No central nervous system, no pain, no escaping behavior, no will for sexual choice to name but a few. However the presence of even one of such abilities and properties automatically means the factual presence of ethical rights and therefore harm is to be avoided.
Life is secondary here, ethical rights will also be attributed to robots once they convincingly exhibit these properties and abilities.
> What would you do if plants or
> bacteria were discovered to be sentient, starve?
Plants and bacteria, as well as yeast and mushrooms (and some other non-plants) have been sufficiently researched and found not the be sentient. The question doesn’t arise. It’s like saying: “Well maybe triangles have a fourth side.”
And even if plants would be discovered to be sentient, it would still be necessary to be vegan, as the vegan diet requires the least amount of plants compared to non-vegan diets. It takes 9-15 plant calories to produce 1 animal based calorie.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand your response, it’s very normal. But veganism is merely necessary, not sufficient. Womens rights did not solve all the planets problems. Just as civil rights. These are merely small steps towards a solid civilization. If you will, animals are the “next women” (fill in any barer of ethical rights) in our expansion of ethical consideration.
As a philosophy though, veganism has so far withstood any serious critiques. It’s coherent, which is why it will spread based on ethical considerations, and, more forcefully, based on the biophysical limits of this planet.
Comment by Ava Odoemena — October 27, 2008 @ 14:42
Ava, I’m all up for a good discussion but you your tone is incredibly patronising and completely unwilling to admit that those who disagree with you have valid arguments. There’s not a whole lot of point in continuing this discussion here or otherwise as you won’t change my mind.
Comment by Mike Arthur — November 1, 2008 @ 18:01
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