Fancy seeing a selection of the 1.589+ millionSpore creatures created so far? This batch of crazy critters was hand picked by Will Wright himself as an example of how crazy, imaginative and realistic Spore's creatures can be, if the players are creative enough. Click the image above to begin the tour, which includes the following:
If you need proof that numbers can be twisted to represent absolutely anything, then Will Wright has you covered. His basic argument goes like this: In the span of 18 days, Spore Creature Creator users were able to top 1,589,000 species in about 18 days, a feat that took God 7 days to accomplish. So, by his math, users of Spore at operating at 38 percent of God's capacity, or .38G. A closer look at his math is right after the break.
The blaspheme-o-rama continued as Wright said he suspected that by Spore's official launch users will be at 1,589,000 species a week or 1G. Which left us wondering ... just how long would it have taken God to make Spore?
This isn't so much a news post as it is a 129-word, one pic reminder of why we love Will Wright so very, very much. Reason 1: He made (is still making?) Spore, a game that's so whimsically flexible that everyone's favorite three-dimensional friend, the Weighted Companion Cube, can be recreated fairly faithfully.
For reason two, you're going to have to squint a bit at Wright's shirt ... yeah, that's right, "SAVE SETI AT ARECIBO." Will Wright isn't afraid to take on the tough issues, mister, like the effort to convince Congress to continue to fund Arecibo Observatory and our continuing search for life beyond earth. We don't know what kind of nerd cred card you were thinking about playing today reader, but don't bother. It's already done been trumped.
As equal parts excuse and contrition, I feel it's necessary to add the following disclaimer to this writeup: spending thirty minutes with something like Spore is like spending thirty minutes on the history of the Russian space program or spending thirty minutes on the theory of evolution (or any other seemingly disparate discipline you may find in one of Will Wright's famously schizophrenic presentations) – it may be deep enough to wet your toes but there's an ocean out there. At a recent EA event in Los Angeles, myself and the rest of the E3 Judges had an opportunity to get our feet wet (figuratively, of course).
Before being lead into a private demo area with a half-dozen high-end gaming rigs outfitted with the latest build of Spore, Will Wright – along with what seemed to be every other team at EA – gave a short presentation covering ... well, he covered a lot (see above). I was able to extract two fascinating details from my furiously scribbled notes.
First: Wright (and EA we presume) was hoping to have 100,000 creatures created by the time the game ships in September; of course, they beat that in the first couple hours. In fact, they had announced the night before that 250,000 creatures were created and, after getting a quick real-time check during his presentation, estimated they would hit half a million before the end of the day's event. (They did).
Second: Wright told us that they expected to "exceed the world population of 3D models in Spore" within the first couple months. If we heard him right, that means there would be more 3D models in the Sporepedia than every other game, movie, you-name-it combined. And, wrapped in the embrace of Will Wright's own special reality distortion field that afternoon, nothing seemed more plausible.
1UP has a nice video interview with Will Wright where he discusses various elements of Spore. He covers the different stages of evolution in the game, the AI built into the creature creator and tells a good story about a really mad cow.
For Civ IV fans, Wright also briefly talks about Soren Johnson's contribution to the game. Johnson left Firaxis last year to go work on Spore and help the team streamline the title. The full interview can be found after the break.
We didn't believe it at first, but sure enough, if you spin the galaxy on the Spore Creature Creator main page fast enough (just click on the bottom left and quickly move your cursor to the right), Will Wright's face pops out to say hello! (Thanks and hello, Matt B) Check out the highlights for today:
We dropped by Maxis' offices today to get our feet wet in the stand-alone "Creature Creator" component of The Sims architect Will Wright's epic cell-to-galactic-civilization sim, Spore(which hits in September). Set to launch on June 17 in two flavors (a $9.99 "full version" and free downloadable demo, also included with The SimCity Box) the creator could be incorrectly described as a "utility" – in fact, as we found while tinkering with it, the Creature Creator could very well have a life of its own. Read our full impressions after the break.
EA today passed out some new media of Spore's first stage, the "Cell Phase," a top-down 2D minigame that looks a lot like flOw (but, you know, maybe, actually ... fun). Perhaps not coincidentally, flOw's original designer Jenova Chen was briefly employed by Maxis, suggesting that Spore's Cell Phase may be a direct evolution of Chen's elegant Flash-based creation. Like its predecessor, Cell Phase features a player-driven microorganism, a little fish in the primordial ooze, which can be designated as herbivore, carnivore or omnivore before crashing into the ocean by way of immaculate meteor. The primary objective is to eat -- and not be eaten -- as you "earn DNA" and collect parts to enhance your creature's abilities (read: grow legs and get on to the good parts). Everybody's gotta start somewhere, eh?
Don't miss the Cell Phase trailer posted after the break!
If you're the megalomaniacal sort who wants nothing more than a race of sentient creatures of your own design bending to your every whim, we have good news! The Spore Creature Creator, once only dated for the murky, fingerprinted window of June, has now been specifically nailed to June 17. If you're megalomaniacal but also too cheap to spring the $9.99 for the game, you'll be happy to hear that a free demo will also arrive that day on the Spore site.
Once the full game arrives on September 5, you'll be able to import in all your created beasts. Until then, they're a perfect way to see if friends and family love you enough to feign interest in the computer animal you made.
While reaffirming Spore'sSeptember 7 release date, VP of Marketing at Maxis Patrick Buechner has told IGN that both trial (free) and retail (premium) versions of the creature editor are coming in June. The trial version will be available for download and in The SimCity Box, while the retail version should be available in stores around the same time Box launches.
"The free Creature Creator has about 25-percent of the creature making parts from Spore. The retail version will have 100-percent," said Buechner. Any creations you conjure can be shared online via the upcoming Sporepedia, and they will be compatible with Spore once it's released. No price was given for the retail version, and it wasn't mentioned whether any discount would be given to those who pay a premium to be teased about Will Wright's evolutionary time sink.
The top-selling video game of all time has just surpassed another milestone, as EA announced that The Sims, which has been released in more than 20 different languages, has now sold 100 million copies the world over since it sprang from the mind of super-developer Will Wright in 2000. The first game's expansion-laden release was followed by The Sims 2 in the fall of 2004, while the recently announced The Sims 3 will drop sometime in 2009, for the first time letting sims venture beyond their front doors and into the neighborhood.
The idea of 100 million of anything is difficult for us to wrap our brains around, so we cornered Rod Humble, the brand's studio head, to pick his noodle on The Sims, particularly with regards to the franchise's expansion-heavy history. So, with pets, night-life, and even magic tricks to pick from, what add-ons do players continue to ask for that's not yet available? Says Humble, "Right now our players are keen to playing an expansion pack that focuses on living in a big city...other ideas I've seen in the community include a rave/party pack and science fiction pack." Little green sims? We can support that.
Look for the complete interview with the EA exec on The Sims franchise, expansions, and where it goes from here later today.
If you're a Sims fan you've probably been obsessively counting down the days until March 19 when EA would reveal more details on the next iteration of their profit center popular series: Sims 3. The official siteseems to be down at the moment [update: it's back up!], but we received some details from EA in a written statement we can pass on.
Expect a new engine with a new, much more detailed Create-a-Sim feature. There are more physical and personality options for Sims, in fact, the release boasts over 700 million combinations. All of the objects in the world are going to be more customizable too. Also, as we already knew, your neighborhood is going to be a bigger factor in your gameplay. It all sounds promising, but don't get too excited just yet: There's no specific date, but EA says the game won't drop until 2009.
Do you love Will Wright? Like, really love Will Wright? Do you love Will Wright so much that you could listen to him talk for a half hour about things that are only tangentially video game related? It's for the special fan like you that we present "An Evening With Will Wright," a talk held at an off-site bar during last month's Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco.
We were there, so here are some simple instructions if you want the full virtual experience: get yourself some mini hot dogs and french fries (the victuals at the event) and some free booze. You'll probably find yourself irritated at the people talking over Will Wright and wanting nothing more than to have fists so large that you could simultaneously punch all of them in the face. Trust us, that's part of the experience too. Part 2 is right after the break.
Tonight had a chance to attend a speech given by Will Wright at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. "This is the first time I've ever spoken to a drunk audience," he quipped. Before the speech, Electronic Arts PR Neil Young warned everyone that this would not be a speech about Spore. That's all subjective, of course -- Wright's talk, spanning everything from social science to pop culture, show an insight into his psyche and drive for Spore better than any video game session could.
The point Wright started out was the negative connotation in the use of words such as franchise, brand and property, instead preferring the term "worlds" (though, we should note, he used franchise and brand a few times). Star Wars is presented as an example of a fractal timeline, with smaller iterative stories adding to fill in the gaps in between and around the major arc originally presented. Other successful worlds include LEGO, James Bond and Godzilla.
