Steven Johnson, Colbert Report guest and author of Everything Bad is Good for You, wrote a thoughtful piece on Will Wright's Spore in yesterday's widely read New York Times Magazine entitled, "The Long Zoom." Like any writeup of Wright's simeverything, Johnson's includes equal parts hagiography, history, and hype, imbuing Wright's unreleased masterpiece with transcendental potential.

Johnson's title refers to Spore's ability to zoom from the microscopic level all the way out to the galactic level, recalling the Eames' influential Powers of Ten (video embedded above). Wright's collaborative presentation with musician Brian Eno on "generative art," arranged by the long-term thinkers at the Long Now Foundation, also suggested a more cerebral sophistication than we're used to seeing, and reading about, in video games.

If you think the hype for Gears of War may be hard to live up to, consider Spore, a game that is beginning to more resemble a panacea for all the gaming industry's myriad ills than a clever expansion of the Sim- series.

[A faux pas, and a personal pet peeve: Charles and Ray Eames were not, in fact, "brothers" as Johnson writes, but an enormously successful husband-and-wife design team, responsible for everything from the aforementioned Powers of Ten film, to their famous molded plywood Eames Lounge Chair.]

See also: Spore figurines!