On February 6, 2009, Hirnsausen revealed to the Sporum world the existence of “Evolutions!” A free and open source game being developed by a university in Berlin. A game very similar to Spore, but with “totally realistic body parts, many more options (and parts!), and amazing gameplay”. Except that it was just a hoax meant to pressure EA into making changes to Spore to make it more realistic. In the end, he and some other forum users decided to make Evolutions! a real game. A branch of that group took their concepts and renamed it “Thrive” after some issues with the administration.
That old post from this forum that no longer exists serves as the earliest reference related to Thrive. Over the past sixteen years, the game has experienced numerous ups and downs, volunteers came and went, and it achieved several milestones. Now, we have a real video game, not just a bunch of ideas. We have an almost complete Microbe Stage! Just a few years ago, this seemed like a distant dream. I was stunned to read on the Development Forums, after the 0.8.0 update, that the developers were discussing Thrive 1.0 as something that would be coming soon.
That said, I am writing this to express my gratitude to everyone involved. I want to thank the community for being here. Personally, you all were the closest group I had during the last 6–7 years.[1] I want to thank the developers, both past and present, for your dedication. It’s thrilling to see the progress of the game every weekend and follow the discussions on the forums and Discord. It’s great to play the game knowing it was made out of passion, with each developer donating time and effort to make Thrive better and better. Thank you.
I was thinking of posting this at some point, either now (since it’s an anniversary of the Sporum post, which I also consider to be Thrive’s anniversary) or after the 1.0 release . This date came up first, though, and the thread about Buckly leaving made me want to write this right away. I guess I have to do something different by then.
AnthropocenianAge
(AnthropocenianAge Arthropleura wants to give you a hug!)
2
I did not know that the ideas for Thrive were this old! Happy 16th Birthday, Thrive! Thank you, @DeepSix, for making this post!
7 Likes
aah31415
(The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)
3
Crazy that Thrive will most likely be atleast 30 years old as a project when it releases at the very earliests…
Also keep in mind that with multicellular split into two parts, 2.0.0 should come around a year after 1.0.0. An another “major milestone” to be reached in the foreseeable future I guess.
Edit: Hhyyrylainen disapproves of this method of dating Thrive’s age. So no Thrive’s 16 today.
I would argue that Thrive as itself didn’t begin back then yet. Mainly because Thrive was started by splitting away from Evolutions!
Feeling abandoned, some users broke off from Evolutions! in early to mid 2010, taking the most fleshed-out concepts via the backup forum and one other forum to a new development forum (*). A poll was conducted and Thrive was chosen as the new name. This forum was the centre of Thrive development for most of its early history.
So the people who started Evolutions! weren’t the ones who started Thrive, so I would not count Thrive’s age to have started from then. Thus I think at most Thrive should be counted to have started 15 years ago.
aah31415
(The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)
6
I feel like this situation is similar to saying that we should count Bizantine Empire’s lifespan as having started back at the early days of Rome, when it was just a city…
2 Likes
Lipovomit
(A lone Slugcat who lost their family.)
7
1.0 release