Isles of Scion

Erotic nuerotic
sensual stupidity
catatonic clarity
disjointed reality
where are we

Can’t tell
friend nor foe
can’t feel
fake from real
can’t break
fear’s wax seal

criplling cognitive
catastrophies crushing
human happiness
heralding harm
pain and poverty
injustice insulting
man and mind

Ingorance excites
endless evils
coming forth
like wicked weevils
leaving us wishing
for another meal
but hunger rises
as we succumb
to impish guises
trickery and treachery

In the end
our own nuerosis
cripling condition
co-morbid ignorance
will end our existence

I think there is an incredible untruth in this world: the idea that nothing can really be done to alleviate harm, poverty, and all other negative aspects of life. - Me

  In the US alone, each year 711 billion (and rising) dollars is spent on the military budget. Vast amounts of this money are used to maintain archaic weapons of war and weapons of immense destruction, enough nuclear weaponry to devastate every living organism on the planet lies within the borders of the US alone. Millions are spent each month on dead end projects and used as tokens of appreciation in response to sponsoring a political party or party member. A recently hotly discussed topic was the Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere” which was a 400 million dollar project to connect a single airport and 50 residents of a small pair of islands to the city of Ketchikan, Alaska. While “as far as I know” much of this money was blocked, there was still a road built that cost 25 million dollars and was merely made so that the money quote “wouldn’t just go back to the federal government.”

  So we’ll just use these three incidents, these things that happen monthly in the case of pork barrel spending, and yearly in the case of the US military. Firstly the idea of 400 million dollars for a completely pointless bridge. What could be done with 400 million dollars if spread effectively? Well the WFP (World Food Programme) provides a service where for the purchase of a 60 (51 some places) dollar bag you can feed a single child for an entire school year. Every 5 seconds a child in the world dies from hunger something that people take with stride whenever they hear it. This means that the money to be spent on that bridge could/should have fed 6,666,666 children, at the cheapest I’ve found online it could/should have fed 7,843,137 children. That is almost 8 million children alleviated from the fear of not eating, able to study and help further themselves and in doing so further their own countries. With the 25 million dollars spent on that road they could have alleviated hunger from 490,196 children by being smart shoppers for an entire school year. I find this hardly unreasonable as I can manage for a small bit more than that for a year myself.

  So what is so impossible about this? If we can hand millions to oil companies and millions to building some silly bridge to 50 people, why is it so impossible to feed nearly 8 million? How is it acceptable for this to be the case? When did we begin relying on the mean-world hypothesis to justify all our feelings about things we cannot individually heal.

  The US government alone could alleviate most world diseases and all known world hunger for 195 billion dollars year. This is an astounding number until you realize that this much is spent by the US military on Iraq every hour: 14 Million dollars. That’s 274,509 hungry children that could have been fed every single hour of every single day during this occupation of Iraq. It has been cited on countless newspapers and web sites that the cost of the Iraq war will reach 3 trillion dollars before its end. That’s 3,000,000,000,000 dollars, the most expensive military project since World War II. But we will return to that in a moment.

  We spend 589 billion more dollars on military than our next greatest competitor (in military terms), we spend 641 billion dollars more than our second largest competitor and finally we spend 71 billion dollars more than the entire rest of the world aside from China and Russia. This is absolutely ridiculous. Yet when people are told this they shrug and make a minor disapproving comment. I am starting to feel that I’m the only person anymore that realizes we are in a Democracy. A government that is ruled by the people. 43% of federal taxes goes to the military, nearly half of all the money that the population of the US pumps into the government is spent on sustaining nuclear weaponry (Enough to equate to 150k Hiroshima Sized Explosions), inventing new more efficient ways of killing people, and throughout it all still not appropriately raising the income of the very soldiers that sustain the military. Now in reference to the US Military Annual budget I’ll let a video do the talking.

  http://truemajority.com/oreos/

  I think the flash video here says it better than I can, while the information is slightly outdated in one respect, China outspends Russia on the military budget, mostly thanks to the immense amount of money the US has loaned from China to fund the Iraq war (One of the major reasons we now have a 10+ Trillion dollar debt). However the rest is pretty straight forward.

  When the ball falls, and the fingers start getting pointed it comes down to those who make the true decisions. It is not the job of the government to act with piety, in fact the large complaint of many people is that the government and politics in general are filthy. However this is always used as an excuse to stay out of politics, thusly leaving only the filthy people to participate. We cannot demand the best from our government without choosing the best for our government, if US citizens keep electing greedy uneducated people they will continue to see a government that acts with intense greed and little thought. We decide who lives or dies, as (for now) the worlds most powerful nation, it falls upon us to help the world. If  you treat those around you with respect and help them when they are in a time of need, the will in turn do the same for you. However if you treat those around you as if they are criminals, or deserving of their fates, they will likewise return the favor in kind.

  I don’t want to hear from people anymore that it is impossible to alleviate the issues of the world. If the argument of “Throwing money at things fixes nothing” then why are we spending so much on the military? I feel in the balance of creation and destruction a simple law must be ascertained. We can do as much good as we can do harm, considering that we as a nation have the force to eliminate all life on Earth, likewise we have the power to elevate all life to a level of least agony. How can one nod understandably at the thought of a single bomb killing millions in a few short seconds, but argue against the concept of feeding the same amount.

  Anyone in the educational field especially should not take this view of apathy, because it is the views of the teachers that will in many strong ways adjust the views of the students.

Henry Watson Fowler, in The King’s English, says “any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same.” - Wikipedia

It can be said that many things about SPORE incite debate, upset, creativity, and inspiration. I say inspiration separate from creativity in that it is inspiration to look at your life, the world around you, and how you feel about things. I in part have been greatly inspired by SPORE and my experiences within it (for those 150 or so hours) and of my time on the forums. I feel that SPORE has some amazing irony rapped around its structure that people continue to pick at.
We look first at the desire of SPORE. As cited from Circuit City, “•Epic Scope — No other game has come close to SPORE’s scale or ambition.” It is true, in theory there is more surface area in SPORE than in any other single game that has ever been created (to my knowledge) however it can also be said that much of this surface area is hollow. It is procedurally generated and provides only the most linear room for interaction. It is actually the latter of this statement that I find most true: Ambition.

If you watch any interview all the way up to even the national geographic video that came along with the Galactic Edition (Yes I purchased it) you will find a man with incredible ambition. I have not to this day listened to any other game designer/developer that has inspired me in the ways that Will Wright has. He showed me that in a world of ever declining physical quality and ever increasing visual surface beauty that there was at least one person who ‘got it’. He spoke eloquently in between sips of his coffee and explained things in terms that not only gave me hope but even sold a few hundred PC’s when I worked at the pre-mentioned Circuit City. His words were on a level that most people can only find if they get ‘really’ high and walk into a Sunday morning church choir.

It was his attraction to one of the most fascinating parts of our universe that really caught my attention, something that I to have had a deep interest in: Evolution. Evolution itself was the first cinder block in the construction of the home that would be this digital galaxy. As he spoke with the people at NASA he made note that “While we cannot mirror reality, we will never go counter intuitively with reality in order to enhance gameplay. We want to educate and entertain.” It was this statement that has stuck with me the longest. Because as I look at SPORE I see endless situations where it was not a mere omission of an incident but a complete reversal of reality.

Point A being the ability to fail. I think that all games require some level of failure, it is failure that teaches us the means to succeed. It is the very possibility of failure that gives all life meaning, something to conquer and to rise above. This is dutifully missing from SPORE. As you create your create there is no actual thought involved, there is no placement that can enhance or detract from your creation (aside from Cell Stage). You are essentially handed the keys to the car and a beer and told that nothing can possibly go wrong. While this opens the door to incredibly diverse creatures they all inevitably fall apart under scrutiny, what we sit upon in the end is millions and millions of meaningless recombinations of the same twelve or so essential components…not components for success…but components for quickest success.

I have, as I imagine a few others have, completed the entire SPORE campaign without every touching my CELL creature. It’s slow, entirely possible, and in no way difficult. This tells us that in a game based around evolution that in fact evolution has no meaning, it is an unnecessary component to an ever changing world. That in fact walking upright is as meaningless as the ability to think, as these evolutionary traits are by the very definition of being evolutionary meaningless.

All the the worlds most successful games have loss, even two of Will Wrights most famous creations, Sim City and Sims had great loss within them. A Sim you had been playing with for months could burn alive in a house fire as you watch hopelessly from the sidelines. Forgetting to pause your city while exiting to the restroom could have you returning to a burning husk of a town with powerlines torn and people dying. These things helped keep the player alert and active and in turn helped make success satisfying and delightful.

Adaptation is defined by the reproductive success of a creature. The creatures who reproduce the most are the most successful in the animal kingdom. This may sound harsh but it is true. Creatures with the most beneficial mutations are the ones that spread the fastest and generally the ones with the least beneficial mutations die off entirely. Much like that SIM that you made who was too stupid to make himself a sandwich would starve on the bathroom floor whimpering in a pool of his own urine (yes you can do that in Sims). Reproduction is completely unnecessary in SPORE as is any mutation option you are given. Because from the moment you start the game you are guaranteed to succeed, it’s just a matter of how long it is going to take you.

Now had this game been marketed as a feel good design program with optional game play demos for your creatures I’d of passed on it and congratulated Will Wright on entering into the 3d market of animation. However it was marketed as a game, not only that, it was marketed to the Sims players. A group of people who have been dealing with dynamic caricatures of themselves and friends for years. When you enter this game you find at first that your character has a dynamic attitude and you find incredible excitement, but with each new creation you realize you are still dealing with that first creature…except with a different mouth. After a few hundred creations you find that the brain growing in that little avatar is the same brain from the last 99, that you are entering into parallel universes across the same timeline…not a single unique galaxy (or ‘universe’ as they market it).

There is no substance to SPORE above the attractive coating and two dozen or so easter eggs (yes there are quite a few). I can think of no word that describes the entire aura of SPORE better than Irony, because it is indeed an instance where the surface meaning and the underlying meaning are entirely exclusive. I have learned much from this experience and I think the reason it hurts me most is to see one of the people I respect the most on this earth has been affiliated with something that has disappointed me nearly the most. Perhaps only trumped by the actions of the American Voters, the governments of major nations, Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers, Masters of Orion 3, and the treatment of the Education system.

So with that. I’m wiping my hands of this. I’m pulling my support for the patch and other files and moving on to other things. Hopefully I’ll get to work on a web based game this winter and invite many of you to help me beta test it. Otherwise this is it for me, hopefully some other hopeful will turn this into a voluntary part time job and take up my general discussion buddy list. I was hoping that a show of friendliness would spawn discussion between consumer and producer however that was a very dreary hope.

I do feel at this point that Maxis is no longer the company that it once was. I will however be hard pressed to ever put the blame of that on Mr. Wright. Because as I’ve said before, he’s one of those people I will likely always respect.