Spore Creature Creator is godlike success
by Mike Smith
By the end of the year, says Sims creator Will Wright, the player base of his latest game, Spore, will have exceeded three times the creative power of God.
Wright bases his statement -- which, we should note, was largely tongue-in-cheek -- on the efforts of the public with the Spore Creature Creator so far. This downloadable preview of part of Spore's gameplay lets potential Spore buyers try out the species-designing part of the game, which at release will then let players take their creature through its entire evolution, from single-celled organism to space-faring civilization.
This prospect enthused enough eager players that over 1.6 million new species have been created in the game -- meaning Spore's creature count exceeds the number of known species on Earth. "Our players hit 1.6 million in about 18 days," says Wright. "According to certain sources, God did it in seven. We're at 38% of the creative rate of God," he chuckles.
Wright's choice of content partners demonstrates similarly lofty ambitions. National Geographic is producing a documentary on evolution, using Spore as its entry point; it'll be aired in the week of Spore's release on September 7. He's also working on an as-yet-unannounced collaboration with the SETI Institute, the blue-sky science initiative that's analyzing radio signals from the cosmos in the hope of tuning in on ET's daytime television.
Wright hopes his project will also enthuse younger gamers. He's been watching the online response to the Creature Creator's release, and already sees the preview -- which ranks as one of the most successful downloads EA has ever produced -- engaging the fertile imaginations of the world's six- and seven-year-olds. "It's very much a Frankenstein situation: you make something, flip a switch, and see it come to life," he says. "It's a tool where an imaginative child can have a high creative output, and that's going to be a huge draw."
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Posted: 13 Jul 2008
