Will Wright’s sim-everything hit stores last week to some harsh criticism (I hate DRM). I rarely write reviews on Prodigeek, but wanted to give attention to Spore’s unique failings as they help clarify the joy of the god game genre.

Wright gave gamers two of the best god games ever, Sim City and the Sims. Both games appeals to hardcore and casual players (shocking) by giving players a sandbox with unique rules to experiment in and explore. Spore lacks the experimental and exploration that makes god games worth player. Instead, Spore is a primer in video game genres, giving casual players a taste of the other games they can play, then scaring them off with an obtuse yet bland final act.

The best way to understand god games, and why Spore fails to join the genre, is watching gamers discover how not to play the game.  You could spend hours building a huge city and then destroy it with an alien invasion or hurricane. The Sims allowed you to trap your Sim in a room with no toilet or better, set them on fire.

Only in the final Space stage can you wreck havoc, and even that is tame, giving you strict criteria for planet teraforming and killing creatures before you can see them writhe in pain.

I don’t think Spore needs to be a sadist’s paradise, but the freedom to play however you want to is what makes god games appealing.

Spore’s other major feature, its creators, are amazing pieces of technology. I compare these creators to the Sims home creator which, even though it was far simpler, was so much more rewarding. The interior design feed the game and lent itself to how you played from enhancing stats to peeing standing up. Spore relied on a barebones system where more feet didn’t make you faster.  The lack of complexity made upgrading your character as simple as using the most powerful pieces, even if they didn’t fit your creature.  And once you entered the Tribal stage, all those stats became meaningless rendering the highly publicized Creature Creator obsolete two hours in.

Spore never evolves into being the god game it set out to be. Instead of being an all powerful influencer, pulling strings with the click of a mouse, you are an evolving amoebae with just enough influence to get to dinner and back. Even once you enter space, you still just a guy in a ship with no armada or easy-to-destroy-type weapons.  Spore remains an unsatisfying action/strategy game because Spore never bills itself as one.

Spore could have pushed the god game envelope with a universe of exploration, allowing more complexity in the creatures created by letting experimentation dictate gameplay - how would five arms really benefit you.  And to keep the creation going later in the game, let us play god by creating new creatures, prey and predators, to infect other planets with. Unleash a flying T-Rex on the bunny planet and see them try to fight with floppy tanks.  I would totally pay $50 for any game that allows that to happen. Unfortunately Spore does not.

EA released the long-in-development Spore this weekend, packed with repressive DRM.  Gamers have responded by flooding Spore’s Amazon with one star reviews (more than 650).  EA limits Spore to only three installations.  Uninstalling the game does not increase that number, leaving paying customers to prove they legally purchased the game to EA for permission to play the game.

All this happens in the name of preventing piracy. But Spore has been available on Bittorrent sites for almost a week sans DRM. This leaves paying customers to deal with restrictive DRM.

EA knew a public relations nightmare was brewing when it announced the DRM back in the spring.  After public outcry, EA removed part of the DRM requiring a validation check every 10 days, but EA kept the three installs limit that is frustrating gamers.

So piracy is running free and paying customers are pissed off.  How is DRM supposed to work again?