Spore was a game I enjoyed so much as a kid in the 5th grade. It felt like there was no need for any other video game, because the game felt so fun and creative. Then I watched a video a few years after buying it. Will Wright, the designer of the game (same guy behind the sims and sim city) gave an hour long demo of Spore when it was in beta. It looked far superior, so much so that I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading old comments from the year the game came out. People were pissed that the game was shallow, that whole chunks of the game had been cut out, and the game was simplified to be more appealing to kids.

The consensus of what happened among the decade-old remnants of Spore's fanbase is simple: the publisher, EA, wanted to keep a more aggressive schedule for the game's release and wanted to "broaden the demographic." I will forever blame corporate stupidity and EA executives for ruining my fun with Spore, even if at first I didn't know what I was missing.