(Updated with video) Last week, I noted the overwhelmingly negative reviews of Spore on Amazon.com centering on the DRM restrictions set by Electronic Arts. The implication was the Spore experience was not living up to the nuclear-powered hype that preceded the launch.
I am now reconsidering my earlier appraisal, after observing that Spore.com's "Sporepedia" has added well over one million user-submitted creations in less than 24 hours.
I checked out the Sporepedia around noon yesterday, and saw that the counter totalled more than 12 million creations. The precise number was just over 12.6 million. This morning, I checked back in again and found nearly 14 million creations, representing a daily growth rate of 10%. In the 15 minutes since I started working on this story, approximately 15,000 new creations have been added.
Of course, 1.4 million new creatures doesn't mean there are 1.4 million new users. Many players are uploading iterations of the same creature, or making a variety of creatures. Still, it indicates that despite the DRM problems noted by Amazon's reviewers, the game is still attracting lots of new customers, and encouraging them to keep playing the game.
Update: I've added a video of an EA employee demoing how to create "advanced" creatures. She starts talking at 20 second in:
More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:
- Picture This: Spore hype backlash
- Analysis: Virtual worlds: Warcraft graphics improve, for a price
- Prediction: E3 to modify format or cancelled for 2009










Comments
Pretty typical of the internet. The people who have a problem are online leaving bad ratings, and the people who're playing the game are off playing the game. And most of the people leaving ratings in this case don't own the game and aren't going to own it because of their (valid) issues with the DRM.
DRM does nothing to prevent piracy since cracked versions are readily available on the web. It just hurts sales.
What's drm??
DRM = Digital Rights Management
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