Maxis: 'Spore expansion can top LBP'

Spore senior producer Morgan Roarty has been weighing up the similarities between the Maxis game and Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet, as well as their relative strengths.

Speaking to us at a recent EA event, Roarty contemplated whether LittleBigPlanet had stolen all of the hype surrounding user created game content in recent times.

"We've had plenty of noise on our day," he said, later adding, "I was already at Maxis for a couple of years working on Spore before I heard about LittleBigPlanet so I don't know if they were inspired by us.

"They don't have anything near our numbers of things created," he asserted, noting that around 200,000-250,000 creatures, buildings and vehicles are created daily by Spore players.

"I don't think their base editors are as easily accessible as our editors, I think we really have that on them," he continued.

While speaking passionately about his game, Roarty insisted there's "no ill will" between Maxis and Media Molecule and also acknowledged that there isn't "a lot for people to do" with their creations in Spore, "where as in LittleBigPlanet you can make stuff with those things".

He went on to explain that Maxis will address this shortcoming in the upcoming Spore expansion. It'll allow you to completely customise planets and create adventures to share with other players using new editing tools.

"They can't give people our 64 million [Sporepedia entries]," Roarty, who's Galactic Adventures' executive producer, added of Media Molecule. "We want to get that 64 million to have that kind of functionality and then we're going to be happy."

Roarty went on to reveal that Galactic Adventures "wasn't our original expansion pack idea", saying "it was [originally] more of an added fiction" across all of Spore's stages that allowed gamers to replay "all of the levels in a different way".

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hmm what do you guys think? I think this expansion may help Spore reclaim what was lost in its huge hype.

I'll definetely be buying Spore once my new laptop comes anyway.

I don't think LBP is GOTY, but it beats the shit out of Spore and that expansion won't change anything for me

Spore sucks. Nothing can fix it.

Hmm spore...what's spore ? DRM comes to mind but after that nothing...

Spore... man that game must have disappointed many people. Not me personally because I was turned off by the childish art style from the beginning, but PC gamers had truly high hopes for Spore.

The expections were so big for years, but after the game released I hear no one even mention Spore anymore.

@slimebeast

Spore was meant to be another "Sims"

The problem I see right in his own statement is the 'we've got more stuff' type arguments.

LBP is a great game to play, and its just fun seeing the crazy stuff others manage to come up with, stuff you'd never imagine initially. Spore has a great premise but is actually not that fun overall, and it lacks the genuine spark that LBP has.

Sure, LBP isn't for everyone, but it delivers what it intended whereas Spore really did miss many expectations.

LBP is not a game that was expected to be awesome, due to early buils and turn out to be crappy minigames with a DRM included. My biggest disapointment in gamming.

Spore sucked hard!!! Terrible, terrible game.

Kinda, the 1st and last stage were interesting though.