Will Wright's Spore caps off a GDC dedicated to the future

by Ben Zackheim { Mar 12th 2005 at 11:12AM }

One of the themes of this year's GDC certainly played out well. We got a lot of peeks at where the bigwigs think the industry is going, with a few demos thrown in for good measure. Iwata's keynote and demos, Allards's keynote and demo, the next-gen tools on the expo floor, and now the announcement of Spores, the first game by Will Wright since The Sims series.

Of course, this speech happened when I was on my way back home. It couldn't be avoided. But it sounds like the perfect way to cap off a GDC where the essence of gaming (for want of a better phrase, trust me) was at the forefront. From what I'm hearing, Spores is the kind of emergent gameplay that could make Allard's dream of a 20 million-unit best seller a reality. Hey, if anyone could reach that number, Wright's the guy.

The game lets you start as a simple life form, just emerging from the slime. You can play the game in such a way that the life form develops in specific ways. From there the game is an RTS, where you become a farmer of sorts, controlling herds of animals. Then you can begin to interact with the world around you, in a Sims-lite setting. Eventually you'll be able to travel between planets and solar systems. Apparently the demo was a real highlight of the show. Check out the forum post on Shacknews for a good perspective on the energy in the room.

Has Will Wright proven that lightning can indeed strike twice?

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