Liveblogging Will Wright Discussing His Inner Otaku At Comic-Con

Spore creator Will Wright is addressing the massive Comic-Con crowd at ballroom 6CDEF right now, talking about his own nerdy obsessions, a topic attendees are quite familiar with. Wright is talking about his otaku bent, the Stanley Kubrick directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film, which features aliens, evolution and space travel quite prominently, is clearly a perfect lead in to talk about the upcoming Spore.

Will's obsession with the movie sounds hardcore, as he talks about his hunt for a lenticular version of the 2001 movie poster. He finally came across one, a poster that he ultimately had Gary Lockwood aka Frank Poole from 2001, sign.

Will's now moving into other topics — his obsession with aliens, the acceptance of video games as an art form, and the evolution of the book, among other topics — moving at a mile a minute.

Spore E-Card Creator Goes Live, Makes You An E-Card God

Planetwide Media has launched the MashON Spore E-Card Creator, an online app that uses Spore monsters, backgrounds and props, in conjunction with the fun of word bubbles, to create custom virtual cards. With the right submarine placement, you too can create your own Spore penis monster and e-mail it to your parents.

The release notes that e-card fans can add their "customized content from the Spore Creature Creator," an option we don't have handy at Comic-Con this week. Our efforts to make snappy dick jokes with the MashON app have met with unsuccessful results. Perhaps you'll fare better.

Full release after the jump!

AT&T Customers Get Mobile Spore Exclusives

Excited about mobile Spore? Well, if you're an AT&T customer, you're pretty much in luck, because AT&T has signed an agreement with EA to make Spore Origins for mobile phones exclusive to AT&T until the 4th of September. Uh, take that, Sprint subscribers?

Both AT&T's high-speed internet customers and mobile customers get exclusive Spore goods, not just the phone users. New AT&T high-speed internet customers get a free copy of the full downloadable PC Spore, which AT&T probably hopes will entice Spore junkies to get out from under their old provider.

There's also an "AT&T Edition" of the Creature Creator Demo, but it's unclear how that varies from the version everyone else can download.

Hands On: Spore On iPhone Is Pretty Much FlOw

Got to check out Spore running on iPhone at EA's E3 booth, a version of the game that focuses exclusively on the "Cell" phase. You're essentially a little blob swimming through the primordial soup, snapping up smaller amoebas as you go and avoiding the large, ugly spikier ones. Your objective? Make it to the sandy shore, where hopefully you can stand on two feet like a real freak of nature.

The recent launch of iPhone games has demonstrated that the phone has the potential to be a great-looking game platform graphically, and Spore is no exception. In fact, it looks fantastic — it's color-rich, featuring numerous mesmerizing layers of parallax that give glimpses of the next layer's challenges slipping by in the distance on your way up through the ooze.

I got to give it a whirl — a tilt?

The Spore creators have started releasing prototypes, apparently modeled on certain parts of the title's overall gameplay, and now you can download and explore the first: "ParticleMan."

EA's E3 Line Up - We're Going To Need A Bigger Website

Don't expect me to sum up Electronic Arts' E3 2008 presence in a couple of paragraphs. It's far too huge for just a quick rundown, so I'll just give you the pertinent points. The line up includes soemwhere around 38 games, including four games for the iPhone, three for the iPod, and four mobile games - including the upcoming Wolfenstein RPG.

They got a demo room filled with top-notch titles like Dead Space, Warhammer Online, Mirror's Edge, Mercenaries 2, and Madden 09, as well as the EA Software Showcase booth, which will be showing off even more games - The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, Crysis Warhead, and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 to name a few. Throw in partner games like Rock Band 2 at the MTV booth and Valve's Left 4 Dead and you've got a whole lot of real estate for the gaming press to cover in a very short time. Hit the jump for the full monty, including listings of which games are up for coveted E3 awards.

Hey, You've Got MGS4 In My Spore Creature Creator!

Last month Electronic Arts contacted me to see if I would be willing to create a Spore creature for charity. The idea was that 70 handpicked "celebrities" from the Internets and meatspace would create a creature and send them to EA, which would in turn allow the public to vote on the best creation.

The winner of this little Sporelebrity contest would have $15,000 donated to the charity of his or her choice. Going up against such truly famous people as Carlos Santana, Emeril Lagasse, Richard Branson and Stan Lee, I know I don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning. But if by some bizarre twist of fate people selected my TickleMeKotaku creature (which has a prehensile Tickleme Elmo tail) then $10,000 would be donated to Child's Play and the remaining $5,000 would be donated to Jennifer Ann's Group.

Since most of my competitors are absolutely crushing me I have no problem urging you to vote and vote often, really often, for TMK. They announce the winner on July 18, I'm told.

Spore Vote

Late last month I got a chance to sit down with Will Wright and a few other game writers to check out the full Spore. Having spent a week or so creating meatspace Fruit Fuckers, Spiders and a TickleMeKotaku, I was already pretty versed on the game's Creature Creator.

The full Spore, as we've talked about in detail before, is broken down into five phases which allow you to take a single-cell organism and run it all the way up the evolutionary ladder to a space-exploring civilization.

My concern, after watching the Spore demonstration in Leipzig last year, was that the game wouldn't live up to the spectacular creation tools that are so integral to Spore. I worried that it may be more of a series of toys strung together than a full-blown game.

My time with the game managed to ease some of those concerns.

When Spore PS3 Controller Creatures Rumble!

Spore can be used to re-create 360 controllers. Yay.
Spore can be used to re-create Wii-motes. Yay.

But did you know that Spore has the raw power to re-create PS3 controllers? It can even do that boomerang-looking proto-type controller. This all comes from searching "PS3" in the Sporepedia, a search that also brings up the MGS4 MkII. I haven't found a 2600 joystick in there yet. (Did find the Wii Zapper).

Look through the gallery below for a quartet of Spore PS3 controllers that will walk and scavenge in the land of Spore. I look forward to visiting a Spore world populated by warring factions of game controllers. What are you going to put in your world?

When Spore Wii-mote Monsters Attack!

Back when we posted the Spore Creature Creator created Xbox 360 controller, that was a pretty big deal! Well, if only because everyone was too busy making Penis Monsters. Seems like folks have moved onto other creative endeavors — like the Wii-mote, for example. A quick search turns up twenty or so Wii-mote monsters, all of varying skill level.

Hit the jump for a look at more.

Spore $80 Edition Announced

Excited about Spore but dismayed by the low dollar specs? Who plays $50 games anymore? Fortunately, EA has upped the ante, giving gaming's upper class snob a more premium Spore buying option, known as the Galactic Edition. In addition to the game, the $80 package comes packed with a "Making of Spore" DVD, a second DVD with the National Geographic Channel's "How To Build A Better Being" video, plus an "Art of Spore" mini-book, a fold-out poster that's already pre-creased and a 100-page "Galactic Handbook."

That Spore poster had better have a large image of Will Wright sporting his best denim on at least one side and have a scratch 'n' sniff patch that reeks of Wright's brand of cigarettes. We appreciate the finer things in life, too, you know.

Spore Galactic Edition [GameStop]

You want proof that people have far too much free time? Kotakuite Steven dropped us a line this morning to point out that the Sporepdia at Spore.com has just surpassed the one million creature mark merely a week after the release of the Creature Creator. Big numbers, even though we've technically slowed down since last week's 350,000 milestone.

At this rate, if my calculations prove correct, we should be completely and utterly sick of seeing Spore creatures by the time the full game drops in September.

Sporepedia [Official Spore Website]

Sonic, Master Chief, Goombas and, of course, Super Mario have all been added to the Sporepedia, reports MTV Multiplayer. Also in the catalog, Yoshi, Metal Gear Ray (props for at least thinking outside the box there), the Chimera from Resistance, and an ass-ton of Metroids. Super Mario looks like a muppet, and Sonic looks like Spike from Gremlins in purple-face.

I suppose I should applaud the Spore Creature Creator, because it's such an outlet for energy that would otherwise go into cosplay. You can waste a ton of time surfing Sporepedia for obvious video-game homages. So let's get a pool going on the next video-game character to be added to the Sporepedia. I'll lay out the odds:

Pac-Man: 1:5 OFF
Mega Man: 1:2 OFF
Asshole Dog from Duck Hunt: 60:1
Fygar from Dig-Dug: 8:1
Roman Bellic: 150:1
Slippy from Starfox 64: 4:1
Michael Vick from Madden 2004: 6000:1

Find others? Post links in the comments.

Master Chief, Mario and More Invade the Sporepedia [MTV Multiplayer]

If you can get to the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco (1 Stockton Street) by 7 pm PDT today, you can catch a one-hour demo of Spore — this would be the full bore Spore due out in September — led by the creator himself, Will Wright.

Interestingly, I'm in Washington D.C. for the weekend — normally we publish a little BART jaunt away from S.F. So if someone up that way can pop in and ask Will what, specifically, will get you banned for making Sporeporn beasts in Spore Creature Creator, I'd be obliged. Use as many clinical terms as possible, like, is an apparent glans by itsef banworthy, or must it also be attached to a shaftlike appendage? Also use "frenulum" and "taint."

The official EA release with who/what/when details is after the jump.

Spore Creature Creator Bowser Compatible

Sporepedia: 350,000 And Counting

OK. We get it. You like the Spore Creature Creator. Just don't like it too much too soon, OK? It's poor form to gorge yourself on garlic bread before the main course arrives. I say this because, having just popped on to have a little browse on the Sporepedia, I see there are already over 350,000 creatures on there, a number that'll already be higher by the time you read this. Really, 350,000? Don't you all have, like, jobs?

[Sporepedia]