A significant video bug initially infested my Spore ecosystem, grinding the ATI video card to an unplayable couple-frames-per-second. A then-upcoming Mac OS X update was supposed to fix the problem. And yes, since that OS update, Spore plays smoothly with the high-quality lighting setting.

However, just a few hours into playing again, I ran into another visual bug that affected a single planet. The surface was only partially wrapped around the planet shape, evoking the partly re-constructed Death Star.

Did someone drain out the sea, leaving this abyss? (Click to embiggen.)

Admittedly, this single-planet bug is minor and isolated, even though the planet contains delicious Yellow Spice. And Spore is deeply complicated, with infinitely branching paths that could introduce rare issues. But this just seems to be the sad, status quo for most titles. When was the last time you played a Mac game without any technical problems? Is that standard even possible?