I was interested in at least trying Spore...

By Jonathan Stark · September 20, 2010

... until I read this idiotic quote from Will Wright:

We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. Spore has more depth than, letâ€™s say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around ninety, and something like Half-Life, which was ninety-seven, and we decided â€” quite a while back â€” that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.

Comments 3

honestgamer Staff Sep 20, 2010

Not nearly as idiotic a quote as you suppose. You've obviously interepreted it as a "We'll make a rubbish game for more money" quote, but the more likely interpretation is that Wright would rather make a game that appeals--and sells--to the masses than focus on making a specialized, hardcore game that appeals to a smaller group of people who (let's be honest here) probably weren't going to buy it in the first place even if it had been tailored toward them.

Halon Sep 20, 2010

Gonna have to agree with Venter. He was trying to say that he'd rather make a casual game that everyone can enjoy over a game that is better received by critics but less appealing to the general public.

And that's kinda how Spore turned out. It's fun, but simple and lacks the gameplay depth of some other titles. Which is good or bad I guess depending on how you look at it.

zippdementia Blogger Sep 20, 2010

Ah, I see. That makes the sentiment better, but it was still an extremely poor choice of words for Wright to use.