I kind of figured this backwards. He said that he looked at Half Life's terrific score, and realized that the score doesn't necessarily indicate the game's commercial success. Therefore, he felt free to design the game without aiming at a higher meta score. I don't see how this could be understood otherwise.

thats utter bollox, seriously oh im going to make a game, instead of basing it on a good story or theme i will instead find a game taht gets 80-90% on metacritic and sold s**t loads and thats my game???? it makes no sense, whats next gears 3 yeah we checked out nintendogs score and its sales a decided that gears would follow that way!

If that's his excuse you know he's really grasping at straws. Spore is a bad, bad game and he knows it.
Apart from the concept and the customisation elements (which doesn't really pay off as the evolution is inconsequential) everything has been done before in a more interesting and dynamic way. The gameplay is over five years old and to cap it off is incredibly unbalanced for both hardcore and novice alike.

Yes. It's obvious he should have just made another Generic FPS Shooter Sequel 4 game. Instead of trying to, y'know, innovate.

Innovation??? sure spore continues the Sim trend to the next level but come on, it was gonna go here eventually anyhoo, the guys just blabbing on about metacritic scores because spore got 87% if it got 97% then he wouldnt of said anything, the games missing a whole lot of something, once your past the designer elements your left with not much!