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Developer of Spore says he's OK with users' creations
Electronic Arts Photo
Spore lets players choose the ways in which creatures evolve and interact.
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Published: September 11, 2008
Will Wright is not offended by the explicit monsters that some people have created using his evolution simulator, no matter which private parts they may resemble. In fact, Wright said he's been impressed with the indecent beasts spawned by a slimmed-down edition of Spore, his much-anticipated but difficult-to-describe game.
"When you give players creative control, you have to expect they're going to do the unexpected," the prolific video game designer said. "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others."
That means Spore -- out now for Windows PC and Mac -- allows players to ban such critters from inhabiting their user-generated universes. Of course, there's much more to Wright's eight-years-in-the-making game than Spore-nography made with the "Spore Creature Creator," a standalone character editor released in advance of the full game.
Creating life forms from scratch is only a piece of the final game, which allows players to go from squirming singled-cell organism to fully fledged space-dwelling civilization. Published by Electronic Arts and developed by Wright's Maxis studio in Emeryville, Calif., Spore takes a microscopic look at players' choices and their repercussions.
Unlike Wright's people simulator The Sims, which became the best-selling PC game of all time, the ever-changing game play in the five levels of Spore fluctuates based on decisions made by the users about their species, such as choosing to become a carnivore over a herbivore or deciding to destroy other creatures instead of socialize with them.
"You can play through the entire game without killing anything," said Wright. "It's very challenging, but it's also very beneficial. When the game initializes the relationships of other creatures or tribes or civilizations for the next level, many of those relationships have to do with how aggressive those creatures perceive you to be."
When Wright speaks about Spore, he refers to it as a brand, not just a game or franchise. It's a business lesson the 48-year-old designer and Maxis co-founder learned after releasing The Sims in 2000.
"The Sims felt like we tripped into it," he said. "We weren't thinking of The Sims as a brand. We were thinking of it as an offbeat computer game. With Spore, we had the confidence that the players would always exceed our expectations if we gave them more creative control."
Spore can be played offline, but part of the experience includes the ability to share the creatures, buildings and vehicles online. Players can comment, post videos and download copies of other users' inventions from the "Sporepedia" and use them in their own game. Wright says that Spore can go even further than that.
"Spore is an intersection between science and creativity," he said. "You can apply that to almost any format."
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