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Spore (2008 video game)

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Spore
Screenshot of gameplay
Developer(s)Maxis
Publisher(s)EA Games
Designer(s)Will Wright
Platform(s)Windows, PSP, DS
ReleaseQ1 2007 or later
Genre(s)Simulation
Mode(s)Single Player

Spore is a computer game designed by Will Wright that simulates the complete history and future of life. The game was first revealed and demonstrated to the public during a speech on procedural generation at the 2005 Game Developers Conference. It is currently being developed by Maxis and is scheduled to be published by Electronic Arts by April 2007 at the earliest, though no definite release date has been announced.

Spore is, at first glance, a 'teleological evolution' game: the player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex animal, until the species becomes intelligent. At this point the player begins molding and guiding this species' society, progressing towards a spacefaring civilization. Spore's main innovation portends to be Wright's use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness. Wright said "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."

At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game[1]. More information about the game will be revealed at E3 on May 10 to 12, 2006.

Procedural generation

Main article: Procedural generation

Because the Spore gameworld is procedurally generated, it can be as large, varied, and detailed as it needs to be without an expensive team designing each element individually. This emphasis of function and algorithm rather than manual data creation also helps users' creatures, societies, cities, and planets to react realistically to a wide range of customizations.

In Wright's first public demonstration of Spore, he created a tripedal creature in the creature evolution editor. The game then figured out how a lizard with three legs and a prehensile tail should walk. Wright then showed several pre-made creatures which moved realistically, despite their exotic design. Other examples showed insectile creatures with multiple heads and six legs, a walking bird whose massive head caused it to tilt while turning, and a dog-like creature with a set of unusual branching limbs. He also demonstrated a creature that looked exactly like a Care Bear, indicating that players could create animals similar to those found in nature or popular culture.

Wright noted that he hired a handful of demoscene programmers and artists because of their familiarity with procedural generation.

Other game mechanics

Spore will be a simulation that "ranges from the cellular level to the galactic level". In his GDC speech, Will Wright likened the style of game-play of each stage to an existing game:

  1. Microbial stage, similar to Pac-Man
  2. Creature stage, Diablo
  3. Tribal stage, Populous
  4. City stage, SimCity
  5. Civilization stage, Risk and Civilization
  6. Spacefaring stage (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), with some elements reminiscent of Destroy All Humans!
  7. Galactic stage, which is a giant sandbox game

Will Wright has said that the game was also influenced by many TV shows, movies, and toys, such as Lego and Star Wars.

Each stage of the game determines the starting point of the next stage. In the GDC presentation, the creature that Will Wright was presented with upon the transition to that stage, was based on his earlier microbial creature (in having 2 legs, a tail, eyes and mouth in roughly the same positions.) He also mentioned that how each stage is played develops the creatures personality, talking about how the creatures could be logical or emotional based on the tribal stage.

The last stage of the game, in which the player is in control of a space ship (the UNO 1) with an interstellar drive, appears to be a giant sandbox mode. The player will be presented with the option to 'metagame': while there will be no goals set by the game, the player can make up their own games and goals to play out, such as terraforming other planets, or being 'Big Brother' to another alien race by watching over them and helping them along in secret. This was described as reversing the gaming convention of freeform tutorial modes followed by goal-oriented endgames. Spore is much more goal-oriented (survive, eat, reproduce, etc.) in its early stages and gets more open-ended and free-form as the game unfolds. At the UNO1 stage the player will have access to tools, such as the creature editor, from previous stages. Will Wright referred to this style of open-endedness as a "T" game style, referencing the relatively linear path until the galactic stage of the game where the game switches to greater open-endedness.

Wright calls the game a "massively single player online game". Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), catalogued and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games. The data transmitted will be extremely small — only 1 kilobyte, according to Wright, who presented an analogy: think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the "phenotypes" of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc.

When the player progresses to a new stage, Spore will import creatures as needed. For example, if a flying carnivore is needed to balance the ecosystem, a creature that fits that description will be downloaded. The editor also allows the player to design things ranging from species to custom buildings and vehicles. That includes tanks, submersible buildings, submarines, boats, and UFOs. If the player has no internet connection, Wright mentioned, it is possible to fit tens of thousands of objects and creatures on the game's disc itself, due to their small size. This means that people with no Internet connection would still have a balanced ecosystem, even if it happens to be more limited in diversity.

Development history

Wright snuck a Spore design document into an issue of Wired Magazine in February 2004 (see the "Evolve! Will Wright's Grand Unified Theory" linked below).

Following several years of development, Spore was first introduced to the public on March 11 2005 in Wright's lecture about "procedural content generation" at the Game Developers Conference.

It was officially unveiled two months later at E3 2005, the industry's annual trade show.

GDC 2006 featured two Spore related talks, Building Community Around Pollinated Content in Spore and "Spore: Preproduction Through Prototyping.

A video released on YouTube (1) shows "unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 [2006]", and includes a rehauled creature editor, a first look at the texturing tools, as well as glimpses at other aspects of the game.

Trivia

File:Gaming Steve Spore Logo.gif
Leaked Spore logo
  • A supposedly temporary Spore logo was leaked on GamingSteve.com by the site's owner, and can be seen on the right. While a different logo has been displayed on both the Maxis website and the official Spore website for some time (as part of the introduction video), the logo featured on Gaming Steve was given to the site owner long after the Spore website's introduction was created.
  • Will Wright originally intended to call the game Sim Everything, but needed a codename to use during the development process. Over time, however, the team came to prefer the name Spore, as it fit the game very well. He went on to state in an interview that "not putting 'Sim' in front of it" was "very refreshing".
  • Steve Glicker of Gaming Steve has leaked four Spore concept art images:
  • Speculation that the game may be released for the Xbox 360 gained ground after an Xbox executive mentioned Spore, along with other games, when talking about innovative games for the 360 [2], though there had been another (pre-360 release) statement by Stephen Glicker. [http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=209.0.
  • Will Wright has expressed interest in Nintendo's Wii console, this could mean a port of Spore for Wii.
  • More recently, evidence of a version of Spore for handhelds surfaced in a Maxis job listing looking for a developer for a portable version. [3]
  • Maxis Senior Development Director Eric Todd said at his lecture at GDC 2006 that Spore is "not shipping on [consoles with] controllers...yet."
  • Will Wright made a reference to Kid Pix during the terraforming demonstration. Kid Pix is an educational art program designed for children aged five to twelve.
  • The Spore website's flash navigation contains a hidden Easter egg [4] showing Will Wright in the game development room with what appears to be posters of influences and Spore-related artwork.

References

Template:SimUniverse

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