Mr. Wright first destroyed my free time around twenty years ago when he developed the first SimCity. Unlike most games, you could never “win” at SimCity; but you could build very cool cities and I spent many many hours days doing just that; all the way up to SimCity 4 in 2003 which would still be sitting on my hard drive if I hadn’t recently built a new games machine.
Wright then went on to design The Sims, which has become the biggest selling computer game of all time. Personally, I hated it; developing people, sending them out to work, holding stupid BBQ parties; it was just too much hard work and too much like real life. If I wanted real life (which, generally, I don’t) I would live it, not experience it through a computer game.
Still, there was some hope. About four years ago Wright started to talk about his next project, initially titled Sim Everything, later changed to Spore. A game of ambitious scope: start as an organism in the primordial soup, and evolve over millions of years to take over galaxies (note to creationists; obviously this is not based on scientific fact. Further note to creationists; you are stupid).
We knew it would be a while before we saw the game, but three and a half years is a long time to wait. But last week it was finally released and I was eager to get my hands on it. First I tried to download it but of course, just like my friends at Adobe, Electronic Arts would not let me download it in Thailand, and the likes of Amazon would not ship it overseas. But never mind, the game was to be released in Thailand, and sure enough I found it sitting on the shelf in my favourite games shop in Tuk Com.
But the owner, who has sold me many games over the years, expressed concern that the game was in Thai and, although she had a piece of paper that explained how to change the language, she was not sure that the technique would work. Never mind, I was eager to try and bought a copy, only to find that indeed the technique described did not work. In Europe and the USA the game comes with many language packs so you can choose which language to use. In Thailand they only include the Thai language pack because everyone who plays games in Thailand speaks and reads Thai……
Bugger.
A bit of searching on the game DVD and it seemed like the language files were quite small, I just needed someone in Europe or the USA with a copy of the game. An on-line chat with my son, who was considering a purchase anyway, and I soon had a copy of the files and the game working in English.
I loaded the files to the web, wrote out an instruction sheet on how to change the language, and presented it to the nice lady at the games shop this morning. She was very happy because now she can shift loads of copies to all her farang customers. I am promised a substantial discount from now on.
Meantime, I have evolved from the primordial soup and have a very long-legged herbivore nibbling away at high-hanging fruit. Quite a while before it is in a condition to conquer space. Meantime, my son has e-mailed me to say he was playing till 0300; I suppose that is partly my fault, although most of the blame belongs to Will Wright, the destroyer of free time. If it’s 0300, it’s probably a Will Wright game. Or a bar girl.
A Spore creature with the ability to hide up its own arse in perilous situations. Something of an evolutionary dead-end I expect:
Comments 🔗
2008-09-12| Billy saysThe Apple Apps store offers me (for GBP 4.99) something called “Spore Origins” to run on my iTouch, I imagine it is a hobbled low-tech version of the one that comes on DVD and best viewed with a 30" monitor and run on a minimum of 4GB of main memory.
Perhaps you would be good enough to try it out and advise?
2008-09-13| Spike saysIt’s very pretty, but limited in functionality compared to the “full-size” version. Works well with the accelerometer; hope that bit of info is not too boring for you.
2008-09-13| Billy the Brush saysUnfortunately you were unable to answer my request within my 30 second attention span so I bought it anyway. It is indeed stunning to look at and am pleased to report most excellent progress having already been able to name my creature. It’s Fred by the way.
2008-09-14| Spike saysFred, conqueror of nations, builder of civilisations. Has a nice ring to it.