Shoutie

[the Monkeys Uncl...]

Hmm, here's some questions:

I've heard that once you pass from one phase to another, the controls and editors change. Will we still be able to modify our creature when we're in the city stage, or modify the buildings in our cities when we're in the space stage?

Will it be possible for users to add their own body/vehicle/building parts to the existing library in the game? Will there be an easy editor for this, or will it require programming know-how?

[Jirnsum]

As an expansion of TMU's question: will the game be moddable?

[Rexer]

These are all very good suggestions. I have been putting them in a list of questions to ask.

Coverage of Spore Community Day at Simphoni will take place all of the upcoming weekend. It will take several forms. There will be a Spore Preview thread with my observations and impressions of the game, including any screenshots, photos, and video I am able to take while I am there. I will be taking a 8MP digital camera with video capability and loads of SD Memory (about 10GB) and battery life, so I won't run out no matter how many photos and videos I take. There will be interviews with developers and possible others at Maxis. We will have a Simphoni Podcast Spore Special, in which I hope to be able to include audio interviews with some of the folks at Maxis. In addition, I will post a travel journal in our Food, Travel, and Hobbies forum. Upon my return, I plan to make myself available online all weekend to discuss Spore and Maxis and the trip in the forums, in the Front Page articies, and in the live chat box.

[toroca]

Will you have access to check for new questions after you fly away? If not, I could call you thursday evening and read you any new ones that appear.

[Rexer]

I do not know. Some of you like Toroca have my cell phone number and I will have it wirh me. I will have a laptop with wireless capabilities but I do know know whether I will have an available connectin, or a computer at the studios that I can check in the odd times. I don't see checking in here on Friday at all while I am actually at Maxis, because I imagine my time will be better spent soaking up information. However, I will have my phone in my pocket on the vibrate mode so that I can at least know if I get a call, even if I cannot answer it at the moment. Leave a message and I will phone back when I am able. There is no time limit on my voice mail.

I am compiling all these questions and a few others of my own into one document and printing it to take with me, as well as a few articles from this and other sites in order to do more reading on the plane.

[toroca]

Here's a question that just occurred to me. If you don't see it in time, don't worry about it.

Has Maxis given any thought to preventing the kinds of problems users experienced with certain Sims 2 items (particularly the Bon Voyage expansion) thanks to the SecuROM anti-piracy software? As huge as Spore's launch is expected to be, it'd be kind of embarrassing if as many players have problems with it as did with Bon Voyage.

[Rexer]

Things were pretty quiet at Maxis yesterday, not counting eleven Spore fan site representitives and owners invading the Studio and completely disrupting everything.

Seriously, for the past three years activity cresendoed to what is reported by those who where there to be a fever pitch until last week when Spore went gold. Now that that has happened, about half the desks were vacant for our mid-morning tour. The reasons for that were either because the time had come for vacations, now that the project was completed, at least the initial one, and ready for shipping, and because Gold status reduced the pressure so that developers were free to come in to the office at their leisure. I'm not sure how much of which, but the atmosphere was very laid back among the Maxisians. What I got was the impression of a great group of highly creative people throroughly enjoying what they do for a living, and I sensed that I would have gotten that impression even if I had seem them when the stress was on a few weeks ago.

The experience of visiting Maxis cannot be described in a single post, so I will stretch it out over several posts later tonight and tomorrow, and I will talk about it with Trixin on tomorrow's Simphoni Podcast. I will post some videos and photos, including a few of Will Wright's "office", which doesn't look like any top executive's office in any conventional way. Will himself was not there; he was in Asia no doubt promoting Spore. And while it would have been terrific to get the chance to meet Will in person, in retrospect I think for most fan site owners his presence would have dominated the focus, when talking with the developers, getting an extensive demo, and actually playing Spore for several hours accomplished a great deal in terms of getting information out to the Spore community. At the end of the day, there were only maybe two questions that I might have liked to as Will himself that weren't answered in full by the Maxis staff and getting hands on the game. And those aren't really about the game anyway.

I will post a list of the people I met, i.e., the new friends I made at Maxis and at other fan sites in a future ppst several hours from now. For the moment, I have not slept at all since awaking on Friday morning before the visit to the studios, due to occupying an aisle seat on the redeye flight back east (nothing to lean against while sleeping, and I simply could not sleep without it.) I will also post some photos, some videos and some audio clips of Q&A sessions over the next several hours.

Regarding multimedia from the event and our conduct while at Maxis yesterday, the agreement that all us fan site owners signed limits us only very slightly. It stated that we were allowed to take photos, but not to reveal any concept art we may see. It is difficult to know what is considered concept art and what is not, so if I inadvertently do reveal something I should not, I ask the folks at Maxis to let me or Jirnsum know and we will remove it at all speed. We were asked not to take photos of Maxis staff members working at their desks who were not participants in the Community Day activities, because there were no blanket releases for those, and getting individual releases from everyone was logistically unfeasible; So, you will see photos of vacant desks, but that is because I did not tale photos of the desks where people were working, it does not mean that the place was completely vacant. Also, the agreement states that all photos and video taken by us fan site owners during the event are the property of Maxis, not that of we who took them. We were allowed several hours to play Spore, but not to take photos, screen shots, or videos of the screen while doing so. We are free to write our impressions from playing Spore, but not to write reviews of the game. I asked for greater clarification of this rule: where is the line between relating my experiences playing it, and writing a regview?, After discussing it further, what I am allowed to say about the game is very liberal, and all that I am not allowed to do is to write something that is overtly in the form of a review, such as giving the game a score, rating, etc.

I will start a new thread in the Spore forum specifically to discuss what I learned about Spore from the Community day. There is a LOT of new information to talk about, and I will get to it all over the next several hours. I will make myself available through the rest of the weekend to answer quetsions and discuss the Spore, Maxis, and the experience of participating in the event. In addition, I will visit each of the fan sites who were present at the event and say hi to their communities from SIMphoni, and invite each of those site owners to come here and post informatoin about their sites in our Web Sites forum as well.

I will say a few things before ending this post, however. I now know for certain that the folks at Maxis are in tune with the fan community. They read all the fan sites, and all the developers and creative folks there have their favorite sites and favorite forums. Sporelings was mentioned to me a couple of times while I was there, by Maxis people who have been following the comic. Maxis folks have been keeping up with and reading Simphoni all along, there can be no doubt, but speaking up and identifying themselves individually as part of the Maxis team is not always the wisest thing to do if you're at the site because you're also a fan of the game you're helping to create, or wanting to get unbiased samples of feedback and impressions from the community.

Also, Theresa Duringer (MaxisCactus), Community Director for Maxis, did an outstanding job of getting all the logistics worked out, coordinating the program, making sure whatever we needed was taken care of, and generally making our experience pleasant and the Spore Community Day a huge success!

The events of the day were as follows. Times are approximate.

9:15 am meet with MaxisCactus in the lobby of the hotel and walk to the studios for a continental breakfast (several of us had already met one another over breakfast at the hotel).
9:30 tour the studio with Sarah Fuchs (MaxisSarah).
10:00 meet with Carol (Sorry, I have forgoten her nickname and didn't get her card) for a hands-on demo of Spore until 11:45.
11:45 to 12:00 a light lunch.
12:00 to 4:00 pm PLAY SPORE! The fan site people got to play with a the release version of Spore for four solid hours!
4:00 to about 5:00 PM: Q&A with five developers.
5:00 to 6:00: TGIF with pizza and beer. I am told that this was not a Community Day event, but a regular weekly thing at Maxis every Friday, and we were invited to take part since we were there for Community Day! This must be the coolest place to work on the planet!
From 6:00 until each of us was piicked up by limos back at the hotel loby, MaxisCactus and we owners sat in the lobby and talked among ourselves about the community, our sites, games and gaming in general, and really got to know one another better before saying goodby (for now).

[oppie]

That sounds like an awesome experience Rexer! While understandable from Maxis' viewpoint, it's a little disappointing that you weren't allowed to take screenshots or record videos. I'm personally very interested in the editors other than the Creature Creator, like the vehicle or building editors. It would be nice to have some screenshots of that, but I guess I can wait the two weeks to get my hands on that myself.

Anyway, words can't express my jealousy! Being invited to a community event like that really would be a dream coming true!

[Gil]

Sounds great Rex, contact me if you have anything for the frontpage. Can't wait to hear more and to hit that publish button!

[Rexer]

We were not allowed to take screenshots or videos while we were playing the game, but we could, and I did, take videos during the Demo, when Carrol was playing. Also, I have video of most of the Q&A session with the devs.

[Rexer]

During the four hours all of us were playing Spore, MaxisCactus and Brian were available to ask questions and provide help. The room was eerily quiet considering the number of people there, as all us site folks were wearing headphones and engrossed in playing Spore. Also, the game is very intuitive and it teaches you how to play as you go along. So, while she was waiting for someone to ask for help, MaxisCactus picked up a sharpie (a brand of felt marker in the states) and started idlely doodling on the walls to pass the time. The rear wall of the conference room is one huge dry-erase board. After we were done playing, I asked her to pose by her art work. thanks fo Arti from HookedOnSpore for taking the photo for me, since my camera batteries were totally dead from taking photos and videos all day.




Here are the fan site people who were there:



I am not revealing the members' real names, that's up to them. You all already know mine because I make it public but others may choose not to do so. And Jud Hudson has his real name out there anyway, so I included it.



Standing, from left to right:

Geekorama from SporeTube (Spore Profile)
xDreamache from xSpore.com (Spore Profile)
Rexer from Simphoni (Spore Profile)
Artistvrd from Hooked On Spore (Spore Profile)
Hydromancer from Sagan 4 and Sporewiki (Spore Profile)
Petreak from Sporesite (Spore Profile)
Rybolton from Sporeum and formerly from Simtropolis (Spore Profile)

Seated:

Cyven from MySporePage (Spore Profile)
Jud Hudson from SporePrograms (Spore Profile)
LadyM from Gaming Steve and Sagan4 (Spore Profile)


And in addition to Maxis Cactus (Theresa Duringer, Community Director), A HUGE thank you to the following Maxis people for meeting with us, putting up with us, and having seemingly endless time and patience to answer our many many questions:

Tour: Sarah Fuchs - Producer
Demo: Caryl Shaw - Producer (MaxisLucky)
Hands on Gameplay session: Brian Marble - Tester

Q&A panel:

Lucy Bradshaw – Executive producer
Thomas Vu – Producer
Tm Bui - Engineer
Bob King – Art Director
Chris Seifert – Audio Engineer

[djVanDrake]

WOW! MaxisCactus is a very talented lady. Just doodling? Looks rather impressive to me.

Looks like you had a great time.

[oppie]

WOW! MaxisCactus is a very talented lady. Just doodling? Looks rather impressive to me.

Agreed! That's some artistic talent! When I first saw that picture, I assumed that those were just 'panels' specially made for community days like these. By the way, isn't having a wall completely consisting of 'whiteboard' a completely awesome thing? If I didn't work at a software company where there's no need for huge wall-filling drawings, I would suggest getting one of those to my boss.

[Jirnsum]

Wow! Sounds like it was a very well organised event Rex!

Initial comments by ladympire: http://ladympire.com/wordpress/?p=556

[Gil]

Wow, that's some talent!

And you met dr Vu !

[Jirnsum]

Simprograms' comments: http://www.simprograms.com/?p=1290

[Gil]

from the above mentioned simprograms photoset:



Commies!

[Jirnsum]

...or just a great sense of humour I suspect the latter

[Nick C.T.]

Great pictures Rex! Looks like you had a great time, and you don't look too shabby either.
I imagine people who work at Maxis have a great time by their office design. So open and airy.

[Rexer]

Thanks. I have loas more stuff to post, including pictures and video, and some interesting audio that we'll have on the podcast. But I am still running on a sleep deficit so time is an issue in getting everything out there. I will, though.