History of Thrive

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Thrive is a game in development by Revolutionary Games Studio which the player controls a species that evolves from a single-celled organism to a galactic god having realistic gameplay.

Spore

Spore is a game made by Maxis, featuring a gameplay that guides the player species from a "cell" to a space civilization which was concieved in 1994. In 1997, Maxis was adquired by Electronic Arts.

By 2005 early previews of Spore appeared to live up to Wright’s hopes, and many fans of simulation and video games in general were hooked.

A schism emerged within the Spore development team. According to Wright, one group of developers wanted heavy realism while another wanted to emphasize cuteness and child-friendliness. There have since been accusations that the cute camp was backed by EA sales directors in the hope of appealing to children, hence selling more copies, but these claims have never been confirmed. Whatever the reasons, after missing its slated release date of 2007, Spore was released in 2008 to mixed reviews. Critics praised its effortless editing abilities but found gameplay shallow, with many of the features highlighted in the 2005 presentation missing. Fans loved the creativity aspects but some were angered at how EA/Maxis had shied away from realism and depth. In their view, it didn’t live up to its grandiose vision.

Almost immediately fans called for sequels or expansions to fix these issues, and while Maxis created several DLC packs, none addressed the core complaints: no realistic evolution, needlessly cute aesthetic and lack of gameplay depth. Concepts for improved versions abounded, but few had any rigor or attainable goals.

Evolutions!

An Evolutions's organism editor art.

In June 2009, a Sporum user named Hirnsausen posted screenshots about a game named Evolutions!, a promising and more realistic version of Spore and was being developed by students at the Berlin University. Some time after the announcement the user revealed it was a hoax. The intention of starting such a hoax was to make EA or Maxis address Spore’s issues regarding realism. EA never noticed, but they thought it wouldn’t be so terrible to make this concept into a real thing. Notable members included Hirnsausen himself, ParadoxJuice, and ~sciocont. They wrote a basic design overview, with the realism going to an extreme, from editors for organs to editors for events! But as the entire team was composed of dissatisfied Spore fans and not many programmers or other developers, there was no proper work done except some gameplay mechanic concepts like ~sciocont's organism editor and planet editor, society centres and some prototypes made in Scratch. Some notable members of Thrive’s history appeared, including US_of_Alaska, Tenebrarum, Commander Keen, Inca and The Uteen. They all joined the Evolutions! forum at one point.

Much like the development of Spore itself, many people grew to dislike each other, but this time it was Hirnsausen versus pretty much every other user. Spambots were appearing, Hirnsausen was too absent to deal with them all, and he didn’t give anyone else the same power as he did. Because of this, some users made a backup forum in case the worst happened.

Many users packed their bags and took the most developed concepts and made a new development forum. The new game was called Thrive. That happened in somewhere in the 2010’s. Hirnsausen returned to try to bring back Evolutions but was too late as the forum shut down forever… Some developers found Thrive, others were never found again… This marked the beginning of the development of Thrive.

Static Development

In 2010-2011, Thrive was now fully different from Evolutions! and the forum was active, with ~sciocont as the leader and other moderators to deal with spambots. Other developers went to the Sporum to ask more developers. Several programmers appeared during this time, most notably Bashinerox and roadkillguy. Bashinerox was the most skilled out of them all until he disappeared without a trace. Following that, the forum was just speculating ideas with almost no one to bring them to life. Most discussions never made it into development. Understandably, the programmers felt overwhelmed.

In an attempt to expand their presence on the internet, the developers made an IndieDB page, which had more news updates. A devblog also appeared, being written mostly by ~sciocont (and also NicktheNick in the future.) In an outsider’s perspective the project looked like it had a bright future, but almost nothing was happening. In 2012, Seregon made a Thrive codebase which the developers still use, but it was mostly experimental.

Due to the community being frustrated at the lack of progress for the game, it resulted in the other programmers and eventually the last remaining one, roadkillguy, to abandon the project. He believed the team was in the wrong state to ever create anything tangible, having been founded by ideas people who had a distorted perspective of what was achievable, rather than programmers who knew how difficult it would be to implement ideas suggested by ‘everyone and their dog’. Without the help of programmers to bring ideas to fruition, this left the project in a dark state. This was most likely the first time the project has faced true doubt on when this is even going to be released. At this time some people joined the game (NicktheNick, Seregon and Oliveriver), but also many people left the project during that time.

The Rise and Fall

By 2013 the project had recovered a little from 2012, but still had little chance of succeeding. It should also be noted that the opinion of Spore had gotten a bit worse as even some of the biggest fans of the game use it as the reason why EA is so bad as a game company. Eventually, it got to the point when some redditors were angry that Spore hadn’t lived up to its potential, and linked the Thrive forums. It quickly made it to the front page and suddenly the forums had gained a lot of popularity. It was utter chaos, but was also a blessing: it gave the project programmers.

At this time a new website was programmed and made by oliveriver, WJacobC, and ~sciocont during 2013 as well. Later, a new microbe prototype was made and it simulated Darwinian evolution. A bit after that, developer Oliveriver made a now popular concept animation to demonstrate what the microbe stage would be like.

Nimbal was the most important of these programmers. With ~sciocont, NicktheNick and the other developers, he made the first Game Design Document for Thrive. Others made prototypes, and a few months after the influx, the project was in its fasted development rate at the time. roadkillguy returned for a bit to express a little contempt and probably left ^[when?].

Eventually the activity declined and updates were slowing down. Another developer named jjonj joined during that and he was the only programmer who worked actively on the engine. In an attempt to stop useless discussion, the developers made a separate section for the developers, and it worked, but led to the fan discussion sections to be worse than before.

Thrive 0.2.1

Suddenly, the project had changed forever once again. It was no longer just an attempt to make Spore what it could have been, but an entirely different game as a whole. This new perspective had changed the project for the better. Development was slow once again, but this time also game-changing. During that time, Nimbal made the first version to actually look like a playable game, before leaving, and jjonj finished what Nimbal had begun. In 2014 moopli rejoined the game after leaving in 2013 and he accelerated the release of 0.2.3.

Later, developers such as tjwhale and StealthStyleL joined, but ~sciocont, one of the most important developers left.

Game Changing Developments

In mid 2015, the forum structure for Thrive was clearly not working well. So it was obvious something had to be changed, so the devs split the forums in the development forums and the community forums, and it worked and pleased everyone, as fans were allowed to do more stuff while development discussion will be properly discussed. The old forums was abandoned, but as much of a loss that was, it needed to happen as it became full of malware.

Thrive 0.3.0

During that time, TheCreator joined as a programmer and began to work for the membrane needed for 0.3.0. It was one of the biggest changes in the history of Thrive ever made, as it made the cells look like actual cell shaped cells. It was released in 2015, followed not long after by 0.3.1.

Since then, the game’s progress depended on the developers free time and progress for the game was relatively semi-medium. Also, the team released annual dev blogs, which usually included new releases, mini updates and events.

A twitter for Thrive was also created to remind everyone that the development team wasn’t dead. At the time, Thrive was stronger than ever.

The Engine Change

After the release of 0.3.4, it was clear that the old engine wasn’t working for Thrive so they had to change it. However, that meant one thing. They were going to have to rewrite the whole game in Leviathan, which was the new engine.

It was a very dark time, with the project seeming as dead as ever, and even some of the dev team were beginning to have their doubts.