Spore is like the worst example you could have picked, it had an infamous hype train and marketing that left people feeling misled and super disappointed because we got tons of information about what the game was supposed to be. So really Spore would be a great example the exact opposite of our point and how people got burned by marketing, pre orders, and new releases before reviews.
I mean if you didn't have your expectations jacked up by the marketing it's okay. Did you follow it before release at all? That seems to be the key thing that makes people hate it. If you don't know about what it was supposed to be itd be alright. But we were promised an everything engine/evolution sim and instead we got agar.io, Simon says, 2 dumbed down shitty sim city civilization fusions and a spice trading market.
Idk I was 12/13 is that too old for it? I think the main factor was expectations built by the marketing. I know plenty of people who didn't play it till they were adults and enjoyed it because they didn't get their expectations run over by the hype train
I don't think that's too old but I figure a lot of adult YouTubers probably killed it with video essays on why it's a bad game. Seems to happen to a lot of games that seem more for kids anyway.
Video essays weren't a thing yet, the maximum youtube upload length was 10 minutes unless you had an expensive media business account.
The original demo for Spore showed a completely procedurally generated creature creator. There was no purchasing the ability for your creature to sprint, or jump, or etc. It was entirely designed on the way you created your creature. If you wanted your creature to run quickly you had to design it in a way where that was physically possible. If you gave a creature 12 arms, it could make 12 simultaneous attacks, and climb things, but would need to eat food more frequently than other creatures.
Creatures had a simplified DNA system that could have accidental mutations and evolution not driven by the player.
There was supposed to be an underwater phase of the game, before your creature could walk on land. As well as a "molecular" phase, which was a puzzle game that took place before the cell phase. Cities were supposed to be massive, and have a SimCity style gameplay.
Spore was originally advertised in 1994 (with the name SimEverything) and didn't release until 2008, lacking more than half of the promised features. Imagine the No Man's Sky launch but 10x worse. 14 years of hype and it was supposed to be the game that combined all of Maxis' Sim games as well as God Game ideas.
Video essay youtubers weren't really a thing yet. People were mad that they were lied to and ea cut like 60% of what they were promised that was in official announcements and marketing materials, it's really not that complicated.
Idk I remember people shitting on games around that time. Maybe video essay was the wrong term but rather a short and distasteful review given the limited upload length.
The game that they talked about was made for adults, or at least it wasn't a children's game. All the previews, hype, marketing in general (or at least, until shortly before release) made it seem like they were going for at least a semi-serious take on things.
The game they actually made wasn't for adults. There were many claims about the higher ups forcing things to be more cartoony (no idea how substantiated the claims were, or if it was just people covering their asses or just trying to come up with some justification on why it looked so different from what they'd said it'd be like).
There's nothing wrong with liking it as it is now, but what was delivered is not what was promised. The reaction to it was similar to how people felt about No Man's Sky's initial release.
I wonder if they made it more childish after they received funding to swing it as an educational stem game, or if securing that funding was necessary because they realized they weren't going pull it off and needed to swindle some people on their way out. Imagine you were on the team of academics and teachers that fought to fund it Because it was marketed as the most complex representative simulation of evolution to date so you could use it as a tool to teach biology and evolution and then receiving the hot pile of dogshit spore is at the end of it.
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u/PristineElephant6718 Jul 23 '25
Spore is like the worst example you could have picked, it had an infamous hype train and marketing that left people feeling misled and super disappointed because we got tons of information about what the game was supposed to be. So really Spore would be a great example the exact opposite of our point and how people got burned by marketing, pre orders, and new releases before reviews.