Spore! Not the chemical weapon kind

Will Wright, who incidentally has more than a passing resemblance to Louis Skolnick from Revenge of the Nerds, is developing theDarwinian love fest, Spore. Wright shouldn’t feel averse to being called a nerd, as it’s these nerdy powers that have enabled him to create some of the most famous and well-loved games in recent memory.


As the creator of Sim City, Wright introduced me to a world, even at a young age, that I could fully control and manipulate. Ok, so this might have led to some slightly totalitarian tendencies in later life but it was immensely enjoyable. Apart from building and destroying your city in a multitude of ways it was maybe a bit too easy to learn tricks to placate the city’s population. This all changed when Wright developed the much loved and blood shot eye inducing, The Sims.
It could be argued that The Sims was the first mainstream game that truly achieved gaming audience equality. Judging by a recent focus group I attended on The Sims the sheer volume of female participants proves to me that this really is a game for everyone. So, whereas in Sim City you controlled things on a macro scale and The Sims allowed fiddling with individuals lives, Spore moves to the next natural evolution (boom boom.)

You start off as a single celled organism in primordial goo. From there you’ll have to eat and fight, as you grow larger. Then you become a fully-fledged creature that you can design any which way thanks to an ingenious modelling/creation system. Next you become a tribe and so on until you become an intergalactic species.


I wont say more than that, as you really should check out Will Wright's TED lecture. Ignore the cyborg type arm strap that he’s sporting and you’ll be fine.