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Creatures 4 Update   
Snails

Snails
Canada  


  6/27/2016

The following was posted on the facebook of Creatures 4 7 hours ago:

Hello from Spil Games to all you lovely Creatures fans!
In case you missed the exciting news - check out our announcement on the upcoming Creatures game.
All of us at Spil Games are working hard to bring Creatures to a new generation of gamers and we’re excited to see the love we have for the game is shared by all of you. We have a big task ahead of us and we ask for your patience in the coming few months while the project is taking shape.
Spil Games


It then linked this.


I'm GarbageSnail on SecondLife and Scum (GROSS)#4691 on Discord!
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  6/27/2016

Thanks for letting us know about the update, Snails. Have you submitted a news article to the front page? (I believe the offical game name is actually Creatures Family, for future reference.)
 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  6/27/2016  5

Ah yes, Spil Games. Developers of such classics as My Dolphin Show, Sara's Cooking Class, and Troll Face Quest: Video Memes. Host of popular websites such as GirlsGoGames and AGame. What an ...impressive track-record.

I surely want to see a Creatures game from these clowns wonderfully talented team. I can definitely see they have the customer base and experience in developing the sort of complex, intelligent, cutting-edge AI game Creatures is known for.

 
Congested

Congested



  6/27/2016  1

Well they ARE aiming for an older audience, so I think that in a way, that's a good thing.

i cri everytiem
 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  6/27/2016  2

I'm glad it says its for web as well as mobile. I don't own a cellphone, lol. So if it's free to play and for web-browsers I can try it out at the very least.

But if they're using the Creatures 4 models... consider me meh. The Fishing Cactus Norns look like monkeys with big ears more than they do norns to me.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
klanderso

klanderso


 visit klanderso's website: klanderso.com
  6/27/2016  1

Congested wrote:
Well they ARE aiming for an older audience, so I think that in a way, that's a good thing.



Aiming is one thing, hitting is another. I think Creatures as a mobile game won't work unless it's severely dumbed down for the childrens. And of course, then it won't truly be a Creatures game, it'll be Farmville with Norns.

 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  6/27/2016  1

Though if it is dumbed down there is a slight chance that people who discover the series through this would move on to the better games. I discovered the series through the first Play Station game. One day I decided to look up an old game I played as a child online and imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were more games in the series and that they were even MORE impressive than the game I played!

That said, it would still be a major disappointment to not have a new, good creatures game. Seriously this series was created when I was in grade school, I am honestly surprised that there has never been a game made with all the technology advances to rival/revive the creatures series yet.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
Lurhstaap

Lurhstaap


 visit Lurhstaap's website: Addicted To CAOS
  6/27/2016  1

It's just too much work and too much money. None of the gaming companies want to touch it. We're lucky Steve Grand is one of those beautifully obsessed monomaniacal geniuses.

Conclude with killer catchphrase.
(Lurhstaap)
"This is not knowledge -
this is information!"
New Model Army, "Courage"

 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  6/27/2016

Yeah, that's true. :P Still I always find myself playing games and being like "I wish this was more like Creatures..."

Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
GirlySatan
Devil COBbler

GirlySatan


 visit GirlySatan's website: GirlySatan's Main Page
  6/27/2016

It's aimed for older people which I think is a good sign. No dumbing down for the children if its for 20yrs+

Devilishly Yours,
GirlySatan [devil]

 
Mandymom

Mandymom



  6/28/2016  2

I honestly wouldn't trust them. It's most like going to turn into some horrible cash grab. Scientific games don't have a place on the market, and never really did. Most people are stupid because society pampers them, doesn't say they have to be intelligent, and believes that ignorance is fine, when it is really horrifying. The only reason we are even alive is because of brilliant minds that pulled through from all the ignorance. Look at dumb tweets, for example. I find it scary that one could be that stupid. Science is an art that is quickly slipping away.

Grendels aren't so bad, but I love Ettins! They're adorable! The complexity of creatures is quite amazing.
 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  6/28/2016  4

I dunno, I don't think we should really take the "others aren't smart enough to handle it" road when it comes to the creatures games.

I mean, I'm kinda smart but there are loads of people smarter than me. I mostly love the creatures games because of the cute creatures and watching them live and survive under my care. They don't really pass on genetics like real life animals do, so it's not really that which draws me in.

Science really isn't slipping away either. If that were the case technology would not be advancing at all. People would not want to study anything like that. I think most of the observed 'stupidity' is just because we now live in an age where social media exists. Where in the past people's opinions were only heard by those close by, nowadays they can express their opinions to the world.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
Lurhstaap

Lurhstaap


 visit Lurhstaap's website: Addicted To CAOS
  6/29/2016

I agree with FaerieHawk. Nothing's really changed - we're just seeing stuff that used to be invisible. Humanity's collective unconscious is easier to peer into these days, and like our individual ones, it's got some ugly stuff in!

And yeah, definitely don't fear for science - it's in excellent shape. I'm an aggressive science-data devourer and I never lack for new yummy bits of data to nom on. XD


Conclude with killer catchphrase.
(Lurhstaap)
"This is not knowledge -
this is information!"
New Model Army, "Courage"

 
Mandymom

Mandymom



  6/30/2016

A person once tweeted a picture of their social security card, not joking. When people told that your identity can be stolen like that to her, the op replied with letter for letter, but I cannot show the emoji, it may not work on your devices, it was a sassy one to her I suppose. "How can yall steal my identity when ya'll don't look like me won't work" There's a lack of puncuation marks too. At least she knew to capitalize the beginning of her sentence, but didn't capitalize the second one. She needs grammar lessons. Really badly. But, she lacks common sense so...what good would that do? Anyway, the fact that these people exist upsets me. I was in a bad mood when I posted that. Really sorry. At least the Creatures series is not dead. I should be grateful that they're making a new one.

Grendels aren't so bad, but I love Ettins! They're adorable! The complexity of creatures is quite amazing.
 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  6/30/2016

There's always been people who are that oblivious to the world around them. It's okay though, I understand where you're coming from. That sort of thing can be very frustrating for most people.

(I know the exact picture you're talking about, I've seen it too! [nlaugh]


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
RisenAngel
Sanely Insane

RisenAngel

Manager


 visit RisenAngel's website: The Realm
  6/30/2016  2

Guys, let's keep this topic on the subject of Creatures 4/Online/Family news, please. It was what it was created for.

~ The Realm ~
Risen Angel's Creatures Blog


 
Mandymom

Mandymom



  6/30/2016

Finally, some rationatily here. Grendel_Man, can you help me find mine? I misplaced it.

Grendels aren't so bad, but I love Ettins! They're adorable! The complexity of creatures is quite amazing.
 
Snails

Snails



  7/5/2016

Woah, this thread sure did derail for a moment

I'm GarbageSnail on SecondLife and Scum (GROSS)#4691 on Discord!
 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  7/5/2016

That's my super power apparently. :| Super sorry guys.

Even if the game isn't as great as the regular series is, at the very least I can probably get some enjoyment out of it. I mean, I have played both play station versions and I enjoyed them for what they were.

I'm not as good at the internal genetics of creatures, I personally love the physical appearance genetics getting passed around, though!

I'd really love for creatures to pass down their appearance genetics over generations. Like say, mom has blue fur, dad has yellow. Child has some mix maybe, and that color just slowly changes over the generations.

I also liked how the Cavern Norn from Online was visually much different than the regular norns. That's something that creatures 3/DC's norns really didn't have much of. Besides fur color, hair, and eye color they were basically all identical with the same ear shape tail and body shape. I'd love to see norns with bigger bodies, different shaped ears, unique tails, and other special features that set them apart from other norn species. THe C1 norns were wonderful in this regard. I can't really say much about C2 since I've never really seen much from that game.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
DrWhite

DrWhite



  8/31/2016  2

So, these teaser games are supposed to start appearing this summer, but tomorrow is September already with nothing in sight. To be honest I'm not exactly hyped for a 'teaser game' which will probably just be something goofy with Norn models, but I think we've just come across the exact same problem as with Big Ben and Fishing Cactus - sluggish development and lack of communication.

I share GimmeCat's cynicism. At this point I'm not even sure why anyone is touching the IP. The handful of us left in the community can't be worth trying to rook by stamping "Creatures" on a F2P mobile game, surely? But I have no confidence that we're looking at a genuine effort to make a Creatures game that operates like a Creatures game. It would be great to be proven wrong.

 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  8/31/2016

Man I totally forgot about this. :( I had a feeling that we might not see the teaser games (I am a big skeptic of stuff at times).

Why you gotta play games with mah heart, people who try to make new creatures games.


Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  1/1/2017  1

Summer came and went, and still nothing - least Fishing Cactus had the nerve to keep us up to date. Spil Games seem more interested in their crappy online web games than Creatures.
 
Rha

Rha



  1/2/2017  2

I think they just bought the license super cheap, thinking it's a regular cute children's game, probably backing out immediately when they noticed how complex a true to the originals game would be and that if they make a simple tamagotchi they're better off selling as a new franchise, seeing as the only ones remembering the original wouldn't even care for it or even boycott.

Also they broke the sacred rule of not giving any kind of launch date until you're 100% sure, ever.



 
FaerieHawk

FaerieHawk



  1/2/2017

Man I just really want a creatures 4. ): Why can't someone who actually has a heart for it buy the rights for once.

Between my love of cookies, tea, and the observation of genetics in nature I'm practically a Shee.[ngrin]
 
GimmeCat

GimmeCat



  1/2/2017  2

The sad state of AI is, nobody is researching and developing the kind of intelligence Steve Grand was building with Creatures, so nobody else could possibly do it the same level of justice on the same tiny budget. Enthusiasm for proper life sims seems to have died out in the 90s.

These days, AI means text-to-speech algorithms and self-driving cars and robots that can climb stairs and serve tea, which is all very impressive, of course, but it isn't really AI, is it, just a complex series of scripted responses to situations and keywords, nothing truly intelligent about it.

I've stopped longing for Creatures 4. Grandroids is the spirit and essence of Creatures 4. That's where we should focus our attention, because the work he's doing is literally groundbreaking, never-been-done-before levels of true AI. It needs all the support it can get, because he's the only one in the world bothering to simulate an actual sentient brain.

 
Kinga

Kinga



  2/7/2017

There's a lot of research on artificial intelligence/life but it's not done for the purpose of making games - it's done for research, for developing neural networks, and home AIs like alexa, to name a few. AI doesn't have much of a market in games. Creatures has always been a very specific niche genre that requires a very creative and a very tinker-y mindset to really get into. In some ways it's not really a 'game' moreso than it's an engine. It's meant for kids that are into STEM and would love chemistry kits and science fairs. In a lot of ways creatures is special, and a bit inaccessible to a lot of game studios. I think the best way to get a good creatures 4 would be a game studio working *in tandem* with a research institute that is dedicated to ALife and AI.
If you have just a game studio developing it you'll get a cash grab, pay to win watered down game like what cactus was going for... Because 99 percent of game studios will have NO experience with AI at all. So let's just turn it into the lowest-hanging fruit. [ntongue]

 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  2/7/2017

Sadly free-to-play games are what sell these days - if a studio were to release a game like Creatures today without a lot of press coverage it would likely fail, as Creatures is quite a niche series. It's simply too complex to be marketed as a simple virtual pet game, which I must add have severely gone downhill during the past few years. Just look at the mobile app stores for virtual pet games and you'll see why.
 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  2/7/2017

I think the main force behind Creatures at the time was because Virtual pets were quite a thing initially, though it died down as the years passed it was enough to reach Docking Station. I know Creatures isn't quite a "Virtual pet" and more of a life simulation but it was the closest that you could equate it to in the gaming market.
 
Kinga

Kinga



  2/7/2017

Doringo wrote:
I think the main force behind Creatures at the time was because Virtual pets were quite a thing initially, though it died down as the years passed it was enough to reach Docking Station. I know Creatures isn't quite a "Virtual pet" and more of a life simulation but it was the closest that you could equate it to in the gaming market.


Yeah, I can see this. A lot of the little creatures websites and geocities also included Petz and other such games. People really loved the idea of virtual pets when creatures was in its heyday.

 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  2/7/2017

I think the main thing that sparked the virtual pets trend was the Tamagotchis, but I am not sure.
 
Brynn

Brynn



  2/7/2017  1

As Rupa mentioned, Creatures is in the unfortunate situation of being a complex simulator that's packaged as a game.

My first instinct, as someone who works in video game development and also college-level education, is that it should be developed and marketed as a learning tool (schools are becoming more and more interested in the learning potential of games, and we've gotten much better at making it less heavy-handed about it.) It might not have much potential at a university/post-doc level, because I think it might be easier to observe biological systems in real life than developing and THEN observing virtual ones...but Creatures could definitely have a niche in high school or community college level courses. Maybe a cute critter can be what saves a freshman's enthusiasm for science! (Because unfortunately, nurturing enthusiasm isn't something that's done very well in the current education system.)

Maybe I'm going off topic here, but I think Creatures could benefit from being able to control the amount of complexity the creatures have/you observe. Maybe one world has 0 chance for genetic mutation, but has airborne pathogens, so you can see how fast disease spreads depending on population density. In another world, you have mutation rate cranked way up and lifespan reduced to observe evolution and adaptation. We already achieve this with breeds, but it would be interesting to have this as a global setting for individual game instances.

Unfortunately, there's barely any money to be had in development for education, much less "video game" development for education. It would have to be a project where you're in love with the potential result, not the potential money.

(Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I just had Thoughts)

 
Rha

Rha



  2/7/2017

Rupa wrote:

If you have just a game studio developing it you'll get a cash grab, pay to win watered down game like what cactus was going for... Because 99 percent of game studios will have NO experience with AI at all. So let's just turn it into the lowest-hanging fruit. [ntongue]



You're right, but how would such a studio hope to survive without external funding? This is not the type of stuff that typically gets funded so it's very unattractive to work on, sadly.

We're trying to get funding for a petsim type game, our presentations and pitches need to show clearly that it is a genre worth investing in and that we can make this as profitable as possible as fast as possible, of course these people don't care about complexity or anything like that.

Still, what you and Brynn said made me think a bit about this, maybe we could get funded by and work with some sort of educational institute or w/e, however it is very difficult and I doubt there would be any interest in that here.



 
Geat_Masta

Geat_Masta



  2/7/2017

I wonder if we get can Spil to sell me the Creatures IP for $4.
 
TheDrunkenNorn

TheDrunkenNorn


 visit TheDrunkenNorn's website:
  7/11/2017

I kindly disagree with Brynn;

Creatures doesn't interest me as a consumer because of it's merit as a learning tool... it interests me because it's a Sims-esque simulator game. :D

You're right in the complexity part though. My prediction is it's either going to be an overly simplistic SIMS ripoff with cute dudes, or it's going to be a ridiculously intricate numbers game. Either way, no fun. It seems that CactusFace Studios was going with the former. A shame, but then again we might not get Creatures 4 due to the wondrous mismanagement. I hope so.


That cute little bugger in my avatar is <UnNamed> from my Creatures 2 Wolfling Runs! Click here if you'd like to know more.
 
C-Rex
Lollipop Lord

C-Rex


 visit C-Rex's website: The Norn Nebula
  7/11/2017

Still no news on Creatures Family. Why couldn't the IP have been snatched up by a games company that actually cares about the fanbase rather than just trying to make a quick buck or two?
 
Munknorn93

Munknorn93



  7/11/2017

C-Rex wrote:
Still no news on Creatures Family. Why couldn't the IP have been snatched up by a games company that actually cares about the fanbase rather than just trying to make a quick buck or two?


Some folks will never understand us...


Lover of cute
 


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