Social & Behavior

Introduction to Social Behavior

In Spore the term ’social’ is thrown around a great deal, as it is both a creature attribute and an intricate piece to the overall Spore gameplay. Being a social species, is to have the ability to (positively) interact with other creatures and species. It presents itself in different forms depending on the phase, but in short it allows players to develop beneficial relationships with others.

Creatures are born alone, grow with others

Socialness is more than simply developing a friendlier, more diplomatic creature. Socialness is sometimes a necessity for survival. This becomes very apparent if you are to create a somewhat small and meek creature. The only way such creatures can survive in the dog-eat-dog world that is Spore, is to socialize and form herds. Weak creatures can become rather intimidating when they travel in large numbers, a predator would definitely think twice about venturing against a large group. On the other hand, a smart, social carnivore may form a hunting pack to counter herbivore herds. Your group will also help protect each member’s eggs, they will have your back no matter what.

Tribal Through Space

By the time you reach the tribal stage, your creatures will have developed a certain state of thought - aggressive or passive and diplomatic or a mixture of both. At this point, while the physical evolution of your species has ended, their way of thinking continues to develop. Depending on how you control your tribe and what tools you make available to them, they will either develop to be very emotional or very logical. These trait refinements continue with you as you enter the civilization and space phases and it influences how other groups of creatures interact with you on a diplomatic level.

Culture

Throughout Spore you are essentially developing your own culture, is your species cold and calculating or is it artistic and peaceful? The way you control and develop your creature (and later its species) physically and socially actually determines how you will have to play your species in the later stages. If throughout the creature and tribal phase you developed a peaceful and social species, it might be quite the challenge to conquer your galaxy through military means - diplomacy might be a more natural option. But the opposite is just as true, an aggressive species will have a heck of a time convincing other civilizations that their intentions are noble and pure.

Social Activities

Very few ’social’ activities remain unknown, they probably won’t become apparent to us until the game is within our hands. Nevertheless, here is a short list of social activities known at present.

1. Mating Call / Mating
2. Singing
3. Charm
4. Dancing
5. Join a herd or pack
6. Playing music - drums and saxophone
7. Diplomacy

Will Wright on Diplomacy & Attitudes

This is still kind of a fairly rough design … basically, depending upon your culture and their culture there is a matrix based upon these sliders… There is a three-dimensional matrix of how emotional or imperialistic social creatures might interact with these separate beings. And between that matrix it will basically come out that they are very arrogant towards you or they are very fearful of you and in fact you’ll need to build in this general region in order to have a stable relationship. You do actions with them before you actually even talk to them by giving them things or just doing things on their planet, but they might interpret these things as hostile. So I might give them a gift to make them less hostile depending upon their culture, I won’t know what these sliders are until I start interacting with them. Then once I establish communication then there is a very kind of bad translation where I get rough sense of what they’re saying that gets better over time. (Gaming Steve, 2005)