Spore

We've reported on the many PC game deals that were revealed last week for the big Black Friday shopping weekend. The good news is that some of those deals have been extended until today. The bad news is that the so-called "Cyber Monday" event for online shopping deals has few PC games on the list.

Amazon.com has a number of Cyber Monday deals for console titles but only one for the PC gamer; Spore is being sold for $19.95 today only. Gamersgate has a Cyber Monday downloadable game deal today as well; it has a package deal of the two Runaway adventure games for $29.99. If there are any other Cyber Monday exclusive PC game deals out there that we have missed, let us know and we will add their listings to this post. Otherwise it looks pretty barren out there.

Update: Gamestop's Cyber Monday sales are up and surprise, surprise, surprise: They have some decent PC game deals out there. They are offering a free copy of the $19.99 Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack when you buy the original Spore game. Here's a list of the other deals:

• Red Alert 3: $39.99 (regular), $54.99 (premium)
• Warhammer Online : $39.99
• Unreal Tournament 3 : $14.99
• Tomb Raider Underworld: $29.99

They are also offering a boatload of downloadable titles at 25 to 50 percent off. Among the highlights: World in Conflict for $22.49, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War Soulstorm for $29.99 and Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts for $14.99.

Spore continues to stay atop the best selling list of PC games and today the game's publisher Electronic Arts announced a new contest where one person could win a trip to next month's Spike TV's Video Game Awards just by creating a 60 second movie using Will Wright's alien evolution sim game.

Using Spore or the Spore Creature Creator (either full or trial version) you are asked to create a wild 60 second video and upload that movie to the Spike TV site by Dec. 2. The winning video will be selected by a panel of judges (which will include Wright himself) and the winner and a guest will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the awards show and meet with Wright himself. He will also be getting Spike TV's first 'Game God" award at the event.

This patch updates Spore to v1.03 and can be used if the automatic update does not work. The patch includes a short list of bug fixes and enhancements, but most notably puts 24 new creature limbs into the game. Keep reading for full patch notes.

Download Spore v1.03 Patch (106 MB)

As promised last week, Electronic Arts has released a new patch for their best selling alien evolution sim Spore (the patch is only available via automatic in-game downloads or through the EA Autodownloader program). In addition to fixing some bugs the patch also adds 24 new and free creature limbs that players can use in their creature editor to customize their creations some more.

You can see what the new free limbs look like in the above image. Of course you can also make the lead and actually buy the Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack which ships out this week in stores. This first Spore commercial expansion adds even more creature parts for use in the editor.

If you though you had to pay money to get new creature parts for EA's alien evolution sim game Spore, think again. According to the email-sent Spore newsletter, the next patch for the game will have some free content, "Patch 3 is coming soon - make sure to download it when it arrives. We're happy to include 24 free new limbs for your SPORE creatures - dial up your creepiness with insectoid and exoskeleton legs."

Meanwhile the first paid expansion for the game, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, is due out next week for $19.99. EA has a released a YouTube-exclusive trailer showing off some of the new content in the expansion.

Last month, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Electronic Arts' DRM set-up for Spore, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the publisher, alleging that EA did not disclose the use of the SecuROM software in the alien evolution sim game. Now Game Politics is reporting that EA has been hit with two more lawsuits, each alleging the install of the SecuROM software without their knowledge.

One lawsuit centers around the software being installed with Spore Creature Creator, the stand alone creator editor. The other is for the software being installed with The Sims 2: Bon Voyage expansion pack, released a year ago. In the latter case, the person claimed problems with their PC arose after installing the expansion. All three plaintiffs in the SecuROM lawsuits are represented by the same lawyer. EA has yet to comment on these lawsuits.

Time magazine has posted up a list of what they think are the 50 best inventions of 2008 on their web site. In between selections like the Mars Rover, the moving skyscraper, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (that qualifies as an invention, apparently) the list include's EA's alien evolution sim Spore at number 20.

The listing, which refers to Spore as "The Everything Game", is like reading about Will Wright's latest creation before its release last September, when everyone was thinking it would be the next major PC game title. We are wondering if Time has even read a review of the actual product which have described the game as good but not great. The magazine needs to go back to the drawing board on this list; it clearly is misinformed.

We are now less than three days away from what is looking like one of the biggest, if not the biggest, US Presidential election turnouts in history. As a result, game companies are trying their best to exploit their titles to reflect "election mania" if you will. We've already reported on Mercenaries 2's plans to add Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as playable characters in an upcoming update (which the PC version will likely not get)

Now the Spore team at EA's Maxis studio have gone and created the images of all four of the nominees (Obama, Palin, John McCain and Joe Biden) in their alien evolution sim game. This are not creatures made in the creatures editor; these characters are actually custom spaceships made by the development team. You can download and fly around in the Space stage of the game as these folks via the Sporepedia on the game's official web site.

Electronic Arts is apparently planning a revamp of their forums next week for the Command and Conquer franchise (along with a new C&C web site). However it looks like EA is planning to do something a little extreme in order to keep the sometimes bloody retoric down. According to EA community manger "APOC", "Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account."

That means a comment on the Red Alert 3 forums that gets you banned will not only ban you from the Red Alert 3 game but if you own and have registered games like Dead Space, Spore, Crysis Warhead and others you are banned from playing those games as well. As "APOC" states, "Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)."

[Via Blue's News]

Electronic Arts just came out with its financial numbers for its latest fiscal quarter that ended September 30 and the results are a bit disappointing. Even though the company recorded $894 million in revenue for the quarter, an increase compared to $640 million for the same period a year ago, EA still recorded a net loss of $310 million compared to a loss of $195 million for the same period a year ago.

EA is planning to cut its work force by about six percent which they state will save about $50 million for the company That should affect 540 people out of EA's 9,000 total workforce, according to Gamespot.. On the bright side they state that their two big PC game releases for the quarter, Spore and Warhammer Online, sold 2 million and 1.2 million copies, respectively, for the quarter. EA will have a conference call at 5 pm today where company executives are likely to give more details on their current and future plans.

As we get closer to Halloween we think about things that go bump in the night. Electronic Arts wants us to apparently think the same way as new screenshots from the upcoming Spore Creepy and Cute expansion pack are just a tad on the creepy side.

While this first commercial expansion to the alien evolution sim is "merely" for the creature editor portion of the game, EA has already announced plans for a major gameplay expansion in spring 2009 that will add planet landing and missions to its Space stage. It will also have an Adventure editor for people who want to make and share their own missions with others. In the meantime you are advised to be creepy.

Remember how Spore creator Will Wright said that his alien evolution sim would help stimulate interest in science? Well a bunch of real scientists have just given the game a failing grade. The magazine Science (published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has posted up an extensive article on the game on its web site where it states, ",...the problem isn't just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong--it's meant to be a game, after all--but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong." The article goes into quite a lot of detail of what's wrong with Spore, both as a game and as the way it protrays real science.

Not only do these scientists feel that Spore is a disservice to the things it's supposed to champion, some were upset that they were interviewed for a documentary about the game that was included as a DVD in the Spore Galactic Edition (and also shown on the National Geographic Channel). According to the article, "They said they had been led to believe that the interviews were for a straight documentary about 'developmental evolutionary' science rather than a video promoting a computer game."

Spore continues to do well for Electronic Arts and in November we will see if that success extends to a creature parts expansion pack. The publisher just released the first screenshots showing off some of the parts of the Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack which we have added to our overall Spore screenshot gallery.

While this first commercial expansion to the alien evolution sim is "merely" for the creature editor portion of the game, EA has already announced plans for a major gameplay expansion in spring 2009 that will add planet landing and missions to its Space stage. It will also have an Adventure editor for people who want to make and share their own missions with others. Until then you will have to make due with creepy and cute. Enjoy.

Download the Spore Creature Creator demo at Big Download right now

This patch fixes a number of different issues users reported to customer service and on the Spore forums.

Download Spore v1.02 Patch (96 MB)
Check out all Spore downloads

How much more DRM in games discussion can you have for one week? Apparently at least one more time. This time the opinion comes from Will Wright, the creator of EA's Spore that really brought this debate to a head last month. Wright has kept silent about his views on the subject but Kotaku got him to chat about this as he was accepting an award for Spore during the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards ceremony Wednesday night

Wright admits he should have paid more attention to EA's DRM plans for the game, saying, " It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore." On the subject of DRM being used to combat PC games piracy, Wright states, "I think it's an interim solution to an interim problem." Wright apparently sees the future of PC gaming akin to what EA is doing with the upcoming shooter Battlefield Heroes, saying, "I think we're in this uncomfortable spot in going from what's primarily a brink and motor shrink-wrapped product to what eventually will become more of an online monetization model."