... Will Wright continued to think about what else he could do now that he had discovered this new scale. If people messed around with ants and kept ant farms because, on a certain level, it was easy to see ourselves in them, why not make a digital "people farm"? This, of course, led to the ant-farm-by-way-of-doll-house know as The Sims, the best-selling PC game of all time.

Through these games, Wright struck upon something essential in humanity. Messing with ants is the original "god game." Software simulations are both an extension and a refinement of this behavior. They let us focus our frustrations and desires onto something smaller than ourselves, something over which we can feel supremely powerful. We can single out a few digital people and decide if we want to make their day heaven or hell. Or we can simply watch them go about their tasks, gently nudging them along, content in the knowledge that we have the power to tear it all down at any moment. For beings that often feel powerless in the face of a vast, harsh universe, this is extremely cathartic.

The whole issue is a fun read, with essays on a variety of god game-related subjects.

A God Among Insects [The Escapist]

In spite of its marketing, Spore clearly has little in common with science, especially evolution. That's a pity, because with very minor tweaks, the game could live up to its promise. Gregory and Eldredge's critique provides several good ideas, such as incurring a developmental cost for making radical body-plan changes. Another easy improvement would be to weave relevant science into the fabric of the existing game. In the game Civilization, for example, you learn a great deal about the history of ancient cultures through a series of pop-up mini-articles. When you stick a limb on your creature, wouldn't it be nice to have an optional pop-up window that explains the real (and fascinating) science behind limb evolution?

Spore flunks, but there's still hope for its future. Once released, games often improve over several generations through downloaded software patches and new editions. Let's hope that noncomplacent families and science educators provide some selective pressure. Then Spore itself might evolve.

I can understand the desire of scientists to see a 'fun' game that is educational, but still — I'm not sure a game that got high marks on organismic biology would actually be fun. Herein lies the great truth of education and 'educational materials': it's frequently not the least bit fun. And really, that's OK much of the time. Sometimes it's OK to let a game be just that.

Flunking Spore [Science via Terra Nova]

"I haven’t seen as much of [LittleBigPlanet] as I’d like to. What I’ve seen of it looks intriguing and very cool. I've seen a couple videos of it, though. Is it out now? I don’t have a PS3."

Wait wait wait, this is where I had to stop him. Not only did I have to tell him LBP's release date (October 21st), I had to ask why the hell he doesn't own a Playstation 3. I mean, he's Will Wright, one of gaming's greatest designers, and he doesn't have Sony's latest system? You mean to tell me over the last two years the thought to acquire one, even for free, never entered into his mind?

"[LIttleBigPLanet] will probably tip the scales for me to buy one. I own pretty much every other system. There’s just been no titles for [the PS3] I’ve really wanted to see."

Oooo, burn. I image Kaz will overnight a few PS3's to Will's house tomorrow now. But c'mon! MGS4? Uncharted? Resistance?

"It was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore. They had a plan and the parameters, but now we’re allowing more authentications and working with players to de-authenticate which makes it more in line like an iTunes. I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. For most players it’s not an issue, it’s a pretty small percentage, but some people do like wiping their hard disk and installing it 20 times or they want to play it 10 years later."

I’m not sure if I totally agree it’s a non-issue only involving a smaller percentage, why else would EA care so much to go back and alleviate some of the complaints? Clearly, DRM is not the best way to go to help prevent piracy, so I asked Wright if he thinks the DRM model is here to stay or if it’s only temporary.

"I think it’s an interim solution to an interim problem. You have games like Battlefield Heroes coming out where the idea is you give away the game and sell upgrades, which works more in the Asian markets where you need to monetize it over the Internet. I think we’re in this uncomfortable spot in going from what’s primarily a brick and mortar shrink-wrapped product to what eventually will become more of an online monetization model."

Oh no :(

On the other side, Take Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick, has gone hard for the Democrats — no surprise there, considering how his games are such pariahs in the culture war demagoguery of the right. Zelnick's given $2,000 to Barack Obama, and hedged his bets in the primary with $2,500 for John Edwards in the primary, and a grand each for Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. No Hillary? Dis! Yeah, wonder why. Anyway, there are more names and numbers on the jump.

Giving to Republicans, according to Develop:
• Will Wright: (Spore, The Sims) $3,000 to McCain; previously donated $2,350 to Giuliani
• Bobby Kotick (Activision CEO) $2,300 to McCain; previously donated $2,100 to Mitt Romney
• Curt Schilling (38 Studios) $2,300 to McCain.

Does Schilling really qualify here? Yeah, guess so.

Democratic contributors, according to Develop:

• Strauss Zelnick (Chairman, Take-Two) $2,000 to Obama; had previously donated to $2,500 to Edwards, $1,000 each to Biden & Richardson
• Ben Feder (CEO, Take-Two) contributed $1,000 to Biden in 2007
• Sam Houser (Rockstar) $4,600 to Obama
• Patricia Vance (president, ESRB) $2,000 to Obama
• John Riccitiello (CEO, EA) $4,600 to Obama
• John Smedley (Sony Online Entertainment) $2,300 to Obama
• Richard Garriott aka "Lord British" (Ultima series, NC Soft) $2,300 to Hillary Clinton
• Alex Rigopulos (CEO, Harmonix) $4,600 to Obama, the maximum allowable in two cycles, plus a $28,500 contribution to his victory PAC.
• Kathy Vrabeck (president, EA Casual) $2,300 to Obama
• Gabe Newell (pres., Valve) $2,300 to Christopher Dodd

By the way, if you want to look up neighbors, bosses, professors, celebrities, whomever and see who they've supported with the long green, Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline is much more user-friendly than the FEC.

Records Reveal Political Power of Dev Heavyweights [Develop Magazine via Play.tm]

While EA was trotting out numbers, it wanted to mention that some 25 million things have been uploaded to the Sporepedia, a figure we'll presume includes all the goodies uploaded via the Spore Creature Creator. So, now you know!

Earlier today, all 2000-plus reviews of Spore at Amazon.com were deleted. Temporarily, that is, and not part of an attempt to whitewash customer feedback, according to the company.

Amazon reps told us that the deletion of the Spore reviews was not intentional, calling the removal of customer feedback "a site glitch."

"Amazon did not knowingly or consciously choose to remove the reviews," a rep told Kotaku. "The team is working on resolving this issue now and restoring all the reviews on the site."

At press time, it appears that the vast majority of reviews had already returned, with burning internet hatred for SecuROM, EA, Will Wright and Athenian legislator Draco intact. The ability to submit new reviews has also returned. Spore's single star remains at the online retailer.

"Per our policy, Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines," according to Amazon, who actually reached out to us before we got a chance to contact their public relations department. Those guidelines can be read here, should you be interested in submitting your own scathing or fawning review.

Spore [Amazon - thanks to all who sent this in!]

Without a doubt Spore is a genre-busting, piece of innovative work, but is it a good game? Did Maxis create something sublime, or does Spore still need to evolve?

Loved
Evolutionary Creationism: Spore's creature creator is almost worth the price of entry. Access to all of the game's creators definitely is. In Spore, Maxis delivers the gameplay but you create the backdrop. This mutual process of creation forms a living diorama. Something as fun to marvel at as it is to tinker with.

A Gaming Buffet: While Space is certainly the strongest of the game's five stages, the others shouldn't be written off. The first time through, one might have the urge to rush things in their race to get to space. But once you've played through the entire game, Spore allows you to go back and play whichever stage you want as a standalone.

I Kill Because I Care: Spore's plentiful creators got a lot of face time in the long lead up to the game's launch. And they're fun, but you don't realize their full impact until you play the game. The creature you lead across galaxies, across a universe, is the same one that started as a blob in a tidal pool. The species that calls for your help from Planet Kotaku is the same one you fought to evolve from animal to tribe to, finally, ruler of their planet. Those moments of play, stacked up on you way to space travel and full on strategy gaming form a strong emotional bond, a sense of duty rarely felt in a computer game. These are your creatures, your responsibility and defending them isn't just fun, it's personal.

I Am The Master of My Own Destiny: Other games talk about creating your own gameplay, but rarely do any deliver on this level. You can make everything for your creatures to their clothes, their cities, their vehicles, their planets, even their national anthem. And once you're done creating you can decide on how you want to play: Aggressively, subvert through trade, give peace a chance. Spore is an amazingly open game that still manages to work within enough framework to keep things challenging.

Deep Space: When you finally arrive there, space isn't just another phase in the game, it is the game. That's not saying that those first four stages of gameplay were an elaborate tutorial, not at all. Each offers a unique take on a well-known genre. And each is fun in its own right. But they're very streamlined takes on gaming, very straight forward. Space, on the other hand, offers endless play and deep possibilities. Alien abduction, inter-galactic warfare, spice trade, city building, planet molding: Space is where it's at.

Hated
Shallow Waters: While the lead up to space can be good fun, many of the early stages are so stripped of nuance they can be annoying. I found the tribal and civilization stages to be particularly irritating. Why can't I group by hot key in the tribal phase? Why is the path-finding so horrendous? Why do I only get to choose from a few weapons? Those stages could have used a bit more care, the guiding hand, of a hardcore strategy gamer.

Lets Not Be Too Creative: Creating in Spore is a blast. Making your own creatures, your own buildings, your own vehicles, tons of fun. But I don't always want to do it. The game knows this and it allows me to choose from other people's creations. Great. But I have to choose every time? Every planet I take, every city I capture I have to choose? Are you kidding me? Would it hurt to include an option to automatically randomize my cities so I don't spend a bulk of my space-conquering time as a glorified interior decorator?

Hello Ground Control It's Major Tom: Games crash, that's a fact. But Spore seems to have a nasty habit of crashing when things get hairy in battle. I suffered at least four crashes in Spore all but one of them in the middle of space combat. To make matters worse, Spore doesn't seem to have an auto save feature. Slightly unstable game and no auto-save is a really bad combination.

I'm Walking Sideways Because I've Used Up All My Up And Down: It is a spectacular sight the first time you break free of your planet's gravitational pull and slide into space. Even more awe-inspiring is your first zoom out from planet to galaxy to universe. Imagine, you likely think, I can go to every one of those tiny dots of lights and raze cities and exterminate entire species. But after a handful of hours of traveling between galaxies, zooming in to planets, zooming down to the surface, it starts to get tedious. My species can now travel through black holes, it has planet busting bombs, but they still haven't figured out how to trade spice without dipping down to the planet's atmosphere. Tragic.

Simple Complexity: Will Wright is, as I've said before, the master of taking complex systems and breaking them down to their basic components and then reassembling them into something we can all understand and play with. Spore is final proof of that ability. In it gamers play with evolution, tinker with planet structure and atmospheres, mess around with economics and strategy. And the game is incredibly easy to understand. But throughout Spore there are needless interactions, simple design flaws that tend to clutter up the experience. The end result is a fun and simple game that feels at times needlessly clumsy.

Spore is a spectacular game, one that everyone should experience. What it does with genre blending is amazing. What it does with user-created content will, I think, deeply impact the industry and how games are made in the future. But Spore is not without its flaws. It feels at times not totally baked. For every thing I love about Spore there seems to be another that bugs the hell out of me about the game. In fact this love/hate relationship I have with Spore seems almost purposeful, as if Wright wanted to create a game of such balance that even its attributes have to be a sort of yin-yang of praise and problems.

Does Spore live up to its lofty expectations? Was it worth the wait? Most definitely yes. Is it the game of the year, perhaps the best title Maxis and Wright have ever produced? No, not yet.

Spore, developed by Maxis, published by Electronic Arts and released on Sept. 7 for the PC and Mac. Retails for $48 to $50. Reviewed on PC. Used all creators, played through space to space level and Omnipotent rank. Earned Spore Fan Achievement.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Rather than a blistering attack on Spore's neo-Darwinist pro-evolution agenda and pollution of our children's precious bodily fluids — a post to the site today revealed it was in fact an incredibly elaborate Rickroll.

In a post entitled "Understand my beliefs please" the creator of the site laid out a scripture-heavy exegesis culminating in the following nugget of pure genius.

But the Bible teaches us that God was not done with man. For we were His creation and He then spoke to Noah in Genesis 8:21-27 after the flood. “21. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never gonna give you up. 22. “Never gonna let you down.” 23.”Never gonna run around and desert you.” 24. “Never gonna make you cry.” 25. “Never gonna say goodbye.” 26. “Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.” 27.”Never truly believe anything you read on the Internet. There will always be cases of Poe’s Law.”

Poe's law, if you were wondering, states that "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing"

Kudos to you, sir or madam, although far from pouring oil on troubled waters you may only have inflamed further religious argument - the existence of that Rick Astley video being the best argument for Atheism Richard Dawkins never had.

Understand my beliefs please [Antispore.com via Dagbladet.no]

GameDaily
Spore might best be viewed as a set of games that introduce casual gamers to the basic concepts of a real-time strategy game. Simple resource gathering, basic combat strategy are presented here in candy-coated ease with a personalized character that they'll grow to love. Gamers with any RTS experience will feel that Spore is a step back since buildings and vehicles don't evolve, simple attack strategies focus on merely overwhelming enemies with brute force, there's no technology evolution, and there's seemingly little reward apart from evolution.

1UP
While Spore's got its highs and lows as a game, it's still a genuinely new and interesting piece of software. Fact is, Spore's most fascinating aspect isn't its epic scope or its imperfect juggling of multiple genres...but that it is, paradoxically, a community/social-network-driven game where you don't actually interact with other people. You won't find an actual "multiplayer mode"; Spore's social foundation is based on sharing and social networking (via the in-game buddy list and "Sporecasts") — so while you never connect directly with other players, the game shares their content with you (and every other player). It's a community — and it's driven without any actual contact.

Eurogamer
What makes it work is how much you like your own creature, and what you encounter. There are herds of Star Wars walkers, beached baby seals that slide along the ground, moustachioed gremlins... What's that coming over the hill? It's a reference, to a videogame or film or cartoon or internet meme or book or TV advert. Watch out for our Bank Holiday sofa sale species; they don't bite you at first, but the interest gets you in the end.

G4 X-Play
Think of the game as an interactive Rorschach ink blot, bending and folding to match the personality of the person playing it. Friendly, vicious, and everything in between; Spore allows you so many ways to meet your goals that you'll be temped just to start over again just to see how the other half lives. Once you hit the great dark yonder of space, the game allows you so many mind boggling possibilities that you can get lost in simply rebalancing the ecosystem.

Crispy Gamer
No two star systems in Spore are alike. Some have binary stars in the center...Mine, the heart of the Feldspar Empire, has two planets in synchronous orbit. When cruising across my homeworld's rocky alien landscape, you can see the neighboring globe looming there in the sky. It just struck me that I'd like to carve a big, beaming smiley face into that world, so that when my people look up into the heavens they'll know that, yes, there is a God, and that, yes, that God loves them. That ought to blow their tiny little minds. I did, after all, make them in my own image. (no numeric score assigned)

Me? I've yet to evolve past the tribe stage myself, but my critters look marvelous.

Here's the run down:

Civilization series
Grand Theft Auto series
Battlefield series
Advance Wars on the DS
Flight Simulator series

Wright ownership of a DS confirmed. Now hit up the link for why Wright likes these games.

Will Wright Picks His Top Five Games [MSNBC, thanks Pugnate]

JT: I keep thinking about the generation that's getting exposed to all this wonderful, rich opportunity of game-playing as education, and that they expect to be able to manipulate the real world the way they do the game world. How do we bridge that? How do we turn them into socially functioning members of humanity on one planet?

WW: It's funny, because I think they are able, more and more, to manipulate the real world like the game world. If you look at the tools that they have available on their cell phones, Google Maps, and such, the amount of formalized information that we can extract from the world around us is skyrocketing. And it's very much based upon things like game interfaces.

JT: But the fact that they can use that interface and pull up this information hasn't changed one iota of the information content. They're just accessing it.

WW: Oh, they're consumers of it, correct. Although more and more, they do have the ability to produce it ....

Worth watching — or just reading — even if it is a little 'out there.' Then again, what would you expect from Will Wright and an astrobiologist?

Jill Tarter + Will Wright [Seed Magazine]

Rather, he thought that there was fun to be had using the phones capabilities - such as the camera - to enhance and interact with the player's surroundings.

"It could be about making you more aware of your surroundings than you would have been without the game, rather than focusing on the game and ignoring your surroundings."

"I can imagine mobile platforms evolving in that way, in that they interact with the world around us in a way that changes our perceptions in a really interesting way," said Wright, "Games could increase our awareness of our immediate environment, rather than distract us from it."

Will Wright talks Spore for DS, iPhone and mobile [Pocket Gamer]

PC Games gives Spore 73%, talk of release date online embargo emerges [VG247]

It almost feels like a zombie at this point; it's the walking dead. It's such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race....Right now we're in this kind of dicey, do we have an event, what event is it, which one do we go to? I think we're in an uncomfortable transition zone when really the real E3 died a couple of years ago.

Probably the best analogy yet. You can't bring it back, it's already dead, so all that's left is either let it keep wandering around causing harm or suck it up and put it out of its misery.

Will Wright: E3 is "the walking dead" [Gamesindustry.biz] [Image]

"When you give players creative control, you have to expect they're going to do the unexpected," the prolific video game designer said. "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others."

This is from a post on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website, which aims to educate readers about the game, but not before touching on simulated genitalia first. See? The mainstream press isn't all that different from video game bloggers after all!

'Spore' designer spills on explicit creatures [SeattlePI.com]

Even as I type, teams of misshapen, feather-crested spidergoats are ferrying the Gold disc over to the DVD factory with a note from Will Wright and a calender with a big red ring around September 7th.

The 'proper' versions of Spore for the PC & Mac will be accompanied by Spore Creatures for the Nintendo DS. iPhone owners will get their callused multi-touching fingers on Spore Origins on September 4th.

Spore Goes Gold, Definitely Arriving September 7 [Shacknews]

"With Spore, we're looking way outside the game space, such as TV, movies, etc. We're basically planting the seeds to spread Spore out to a much wider group of people than would ever play a computer game"

I not sure how I can see how it would work. I mean, Spore is all about being able to create your own, personalized form of life and then cast it off into the stars. A television show or movie with a set cast of characters couldn't come close to capturing the creative freedom afforded by the game. Isn't releasing an amazing game enough?

Electronic Arts aims to license Spore movie rights [Reuters]

Stephen Totilo of MTV Multiplayer sat down with EA CEO John Riccitiello to talk about crediting on the front of game boxes. Why, he asks, aren't top talent like Will Wright featured on the cover of their creations?

In music it’s typically a writer and a band of four. With films it’s a couple of lead talent, actors and actresses, a director and maybe a cinematographer. With games it’s typically 30, 50 100 people that make these things and they’re all integral to the process. So I’m absolutely in favor of bringing forward the teams. But the team dynamic in creation of our product is quite different than other forms of entertainment.
...
I’ve always been of the belief you should give credit where credit’s due. And I think in times past major publishers would say “This is an Electronic Arts game” or ‘This is name-the-
other-publisher.’ It’s from them and it’s all about them. And the truth is, it never was. It’s really about the teams that create this stuff and we’re big believers in that. And I’m personally all about that. Again I don’t think there are any creator in the industry that would say it’s them individually making that happen.

The short answer, Riccitiello doesn't ever see Wright's name appearing on a box. Then he goes on to explain why Spielberg's name did appear there, back-peddling all the way.

EA: Why Will Wright’s Name Shouldn’t Be On A Game’s Box (Or: How To Give Proper Credit) [MTV]

Also, as an acknowledged genius, people must always be asking him to be their Phone A Friend on Millionaire, which must get really tiring.

Now, even the Atheists are all up in his face. Can't a visionary games designer catch a break?

In focus groups, Wright was surprised to hear that 'Militant Atheists' had been offended by the inclusion of religion in the game.

"So far I've had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the atheists."

What is more surprising is that the atheist testers picked out the inclusion of religion - surely it is the fact that the game is basically an Intelligent Design simulator that should be causing a mass Amazoning of The God Delusion?

Most criticism of religion in Spore is from "militant atheists", claims Wright [Eurogamer]

In a new interview with Level Up, Wright explains why letting users create their own Spore creatures was so key to the experience:

You never really hear game players telling each other about the cool cut-scene they saw in the games they are playing but they’re always talking about the cool unique things they discovered to do on their own. By focusing on giving the players narrative freedom the game becomes more immersive and they show a much higher degree of ownership and authorship over the experience.

Wright said there've been 500,000 user-generated creatures made using Spore's creature creator. No small sum. In fact, guess how long it would have taken Maxis to make that many all by themselves?

Using traditional tools like most game developers (Maya, 3d Max) it would typically take a professional artist a couple of days to make a Spore-like creature. A large art team might have as many as 50 artists working on a project so to create 500K creatures that team would have taken about 55 years.

Welcoming Our New Sweatshop Overlords, Part I: Will Wright On Outsourcing Content Production To the Players of Spore [Level Up, and pic credit]

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.

Will's discussing the power of the printed book, bringing knowledge, religion and fiction to the masses, before sprinting into a discussion about Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone and immediately thereafter into the informative power of the television. On the topic of the computer, Will talks about how it has adapted to meet the user's needs, ultimately resulting in something the creator likely didn't expect — namely, the shooting of Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D.

The internet, he says, developed by DARPA, probably wasn't originally intended to catalog one's Pokemon card collection or download internet porn.

Will's talking about archetypes in popular culture, citing Gilligan's Island, whose seven inhabitants represent the seven deadly sins. Say, that's news to me! Thanks, Will. He makes a Neil Gaiman's Sandman joke that flies over my head and emits a boom of laughter from the crowd. Comic-Con loves it some Will Wright!

He's moving on to video game settings, archetypes and gameplay types. "Storytelling," he says "is something you kind of have to be taught." But "play" is separate.

"I wonder," he says "who would win in a fight with a Cylon cruiser, an Imperial Star Destroyer or a Borg cube." The stuff of internet debates is something we can resolve in a video game simulation.

You should see this man's PowerPoint presentation, not only is he blistering through his speech, he's throwing slides at the crowd at a lightning pace. He's talking about the deconstruction of story, bouncing from subjects like Thunderbirds, pulp comics and Stanley Kubrick. Slow down, Will!!

Will's talking about the Powers of Ten movie that helps to explain some of the zoomed out evolution from single-cell organism to the formations of galaxies, essentially the core mechanic behind Spore. If you haven't seen Powers of Ten, I suggest you watch it (after the liveblog).

Will is talking about creativity, how kindergarten age children are confident in their abilities to draw, dance, sing, but that the same question asked of University students results in fewer raised hands. Wright says that the educational system essentially teaches students that they're not good at anything. That confidence in creativity, he notes, comes through in games like The Sims and Spore.

He talks about the reaction to the Spore Creature Creator, saying that the team expected to fill the creature database with 100,000 creations within a few months. They reached 1 million in 22 hours. He touches on the "Spore fans = 38% God" statistic, noting that the 2 million creatures currently in the database have outpaced God's creation of the world in seven days.

Wright is cycling through some of the more interesting creations users have made, from robots to near-humans to inanimate objects like chairs and Portal's Companion Cube.

"One of our aspirations with Spore" he says, "was to make players feel more like George Lucas or JRR Tolkein" and not so much like Luke Skywalker or Gandalf.

Spore, he says, is loaded with pop culture references, saying that it will be fun to watch players discover allusions to science fiction and fantasy.

Will's firing up a working copy of Spore right now, showing us the later, Galaxy-view stages of the game.

We're looking at the Civilization Stage right now, a simplified combination of SimCity and Civilization. We're zooming in and out of cities, the camera orbiting around the planet. This planet's natural resource, known as "spice" (Dune loving crowd laughs), is spewing forth from a geyser.

Will cuts to this game's History view, showing the evolution from simple low level creature to civilization level. This timeline emits a "Whoa...." from the crowd, as it shows dozens and dozens of milestones, from what his little slugman ate at genesis to what alliances he's formed with other alien civilizations.

This particular civilization is a religious one. Will flies a blaring airship over one religious institution, converting its denizens to materialism, wowing them with bright lights and the promise of mass consumption. Awesome. Just like real life!

We're now browsing through a library of "religious vehicles." Some look like tanks, some like simple non-war machines.

He shows off Spore's procedural music generator, designed by Brian Eno, giving his city a randomly generated theme song. The crowd likes this. They also like the holographic religious figureheads that try to convince the populace to convert (or stick to) their religion of choice.

Now on to the Space Stage of Spore.

The crimson lifeforms of this particular planet discover the ability to launch a rocket into orbit, moving them to the next level of civilization. Will's building a spaceship via the game's vehicle editor, adding "blinky things", showcasing the depth of the editors parts, decals and warping tools. Will makes one that looks a heck of a lot like an Enterprise-style ship (the most recent, Scott Bakula captained ship, that is). It's skin is based on one of the pre-built template styles, making the creation of a unique ship even faster.

As we move around the galaxy, Will zooms in and out smoothly, heading toward distant stars — "This one's a T-1" — and beginning the terraforming process on one of the star's planets. He establishes a colony, adding to their happiness with a newly built Happiness Booster. It's one of those long rubber tube-men that whips about outside car dealerships thanks to a jet of air. Again, crowd laughs.

A spacefarer passing by initiates a trade discussion with Will's race. Wright drops diplomacy in favor of blowing the living bejeezus out of their home planet with a massive bomb. The bomb was so intense, it even blew up the moon orbiting it. Will is mean!

"One of the things I wanted to accomplish in Spore, was to give players a sense of what a galaxy is like, what a galaxy is really made of," Wright says. That's why the team used real world types of heavenly bodies — stars, black holes, wormholes. We're now traveling through a wormhole, taking Will's alien species across the galaxy, hundreds of lightyears from their home planet.

Back to planet colonization, Will says players will have to be concerned with not just terraforming the planet's surface, but with managing a planet's atmosphere. He creates a volcano, one that "thickens" the atmosphere and warms the air. "It's very easy to overshoot on these things," he warns. Pushing things over the edge on the atmosphere side can lead to in-game global warming.

Obviously, Will overdoes it, turning the planet into "a living hell." This planet is about to go magma, becoming a nasty sulfur spewing rock, filled with spires and volcanoes. Oh, and the surface is pure lava. Lovely!

Will's about to wrap up. He asks the audience if they want a Q&A or a Russian Space Minute. Cowering in fear of Will's intellect, the crowd opts for the Russian Space Minute.

Wright pulls a bait and switch, renaming it the German Space Minute. One of Wright's other otaku obsession, he admits, is space travel history. He's talking about Germany space rocket prototypes developed in 1941 and the Nazi's space experiments, focusing on Wernher von Braun a German rocket physicist. One slave factory, named Mittelbau, produced some 3000 V-2 bombers, resulting in 7,250 dead targets. Some 20,000 factory workers, however, died during manufacturing.

Some of the former Nazi scientists later went to work for the U.S. government, working on rocket science programs in Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun, Will says, later met Walt Disney and became the face of the space program. You know, we'd much rather refer you to his Wikipedia entry than try to capture Will's retelling of history.

Von Braun later met John F. Kennedy, another influence on the sceientist's life. Will talks about the A12 multistage rocket, designed with the intention to bomb New York, ultimately became the basis for the Saturn 5 rocket. And that's my horrible recreation of Will Wright's German Space Minute. Visit your local library to learn more.

Will wraps it up and the Comic-Con masses swarm. Off to the Activision panel. See you next panel!

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!

Planetwide Media Announces MashON Spore E-Card Creator

Unique Online Application Allows Players to Create and Send Their Own Spore Universe to Friends Around the World

ALISO VIEJO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Planetwide Media today announced the launch of the MashON™ Spore™ E-Card Creator, (http://www.MashON.com/SPORE/), an online application that allows players to create and send personalized E-cards featuring their customized content from the Spore Creature Creator and the highly-anticipated game Spore, shipping this September from Maxis, an Electronic Arts (NASDAQ) studio.

By registering for the free MashON Spore E-Card Creator at MashON.com, fans can bring Spore creatures to life by combining Spore backgrounds, clip art and word bubbles using unique digital assets. Creators can also add their own personalized speech bubbles and share their Spore E-Card creation with their friends by posting to their favorite social networking site or emailing directly to friends.

The Spore Creature Creator is available now and is a stand-alone creativity toy box where players create their own unique creatures, bring them to life with entertaining animations, and share them online with friends around the world. The full version of the Spore Creature Creator is available now for $9.99 at retail stores or by visiting www.spore.com. A free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator is also available at www.spore.com.

Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

Visit http://www.MashON.com/SPORE/ to register and for more information.

About MashON

MashON develops and publishes interactive software for the MashUP generation. MashON produces web-enabled tools & widgets, and software applications that provide personal interactivity in the creation, connection and easy syndication of user generated content online across the Internet. The company's signature product MashON Comic Book Creator™ embraces user-generated content ("UGC") enabling its users to blend their own unique creations into their social networks, blogs, and Internet brand spaces. MashON has licensed its interactive platform to world class lifestyle brands and advertisers in entertainment, online portals, video games, motion picture, television, music, sports, fashion, art, and travel.

About Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the Company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, cellular handsets and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTSTM, EATM, EA SPORTS FreestyleTM and POGOTM. In fiscal 2008, EA posted GAAP net revenue of $3.67 billion and had 27 titles that sold more than one million copies. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.

EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS Freestyle, POGO and SPORE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

For more information please visit: http://www.MashON.com/SPORE/.

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.

Who: Industry Icon Will Wright, the Chief Designer from Maxis, an EA studio. Wright’s games are some of the most popular and acclaimed titles of all time, including SimCity and the mega-hit The Sims, which recently celebrated 100 million units sold.

What: Wright will provide a public demo of his latest project, the hotly anticipated game Spore. One of the most ambitious games ever made, Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

Where: The Apple Store
One Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-392-0202

If you're hankering for some Spore fruit fucker action right now, you can always grab the demo, which leaked early. It contains 1/4 the content, but that's 1/4 more than you're getting right now.

Reader Bahamut sends the above Easter Egg, which is Spore creator Will Wright's head floating over the galaxy in the main menu screen. How'd he do it? By tinkering around. "Before I quit out of the entire game I try just randomly clicking around the main menu ..." Bahamut explains. Methinks he would have been among the first fishies crawling out of the ocean to breathe gas and not water. ("Before spawning and dying, I decided to randomly swim up this rock to see how far it was to the water's surface ...")

Bahamut shows how he did it after the jump. Since this precedes the official demo release, can we call this a zero-day Easter Egg?

Okay, so I was screwing around with the (leaked) Spore Creature Creator demo late this evening, and right before I quit out of the entire game I try just randomly clicking around the main menu (the galaxy). If you click the center of the galaxy, the menu buttons for "Load Creature", etc. disappear, which allows you to view the galaxy unhindered. While in this view, if you hold down the left mouse button move left or right you can give the galaxy a "spin". If you spin the galaxy fast enough, this pops up in the center of your screen.

Alright everybody, go give it a try!

We're just a week away from the Spore Creature Creator going public, meaning it wouldn't hurt to brush up on the SimEverything bestiary before you get your mouse pointer on it.

Sporepedia [Spore.com]

Gamasutra covered the event, during which Wright added, "but if it's to progress the story, then 'God told me to do it.'"

He covered a broad range of subjects during the talk, including whether games are perceived as an art form ("When comic book people are looking down on you as cultural refuse, you know you're at the bottom of the barrel,") and his vision of games as a "co-collaboration between player and designer."

Still, he thinks we have further to go:

We have yet to prove we can do meaningful things with this form of expression, but I believe we are at the cusp of a Cambrian explosion of possibilities [referencing the geological era in which complex life flourished]. We are a couple years away from being respected as a form of expression, but it's not a battle we need to fight. We'll win anyway."

Will Wright - Video Games Close To 'Cambrian Explosion' Of Possibilities [Gamasutra]

"What I want to do is craft this landscape of experiences where the player has a huge degree of control over what they encounter," he says. "I think that's what games have as an advantage over any other form of media; that the player is half the author of the experience if the game is done well - or even more so. I think this is the first form of medium which has really achieved that and it allows us access to emotional regions that are inaccessible to linear narrative."

Is Spore going to be the success many think it will be, or will it confound the average user (unlike The Sims) as Ian Bogost suspects? Or will people lose interest together before the thing is finally released? I guess we'll find out ... eventually.

Unlocking the power of parallel play [The Guardian via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Wright will be joined at the public event by a variety of scientific speakers, artists and musicians. The developers talk will focus on astrobiology, the history of the Russian space program and Spore. The game will also be on display.

Back when I was at the Palm Beach Post I was actually one of three reporters who helped cover shuttle launches. Watching a shuttle literally push itself away from the Earth and rip through gravity's pull is probably one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life.... and there was swag. No lie, NASA actually had a little kiosk set up at every launch selling shit. I think it was because all of the visiting general and dignitaries always wanted shirts and hats to give to their kids. So funny.

Yuri's Night

... The observation that surprised me the most was how people totally unfamiliar with Spore reacted to the very idea of a creature editor. From my perspective, it's a brilliantly engineered, elegantly constructed content authoring tool. But from theirs, it's an unfamiliar interface to an almost deviant act.

... Among the newbies, there was a significant amount of uncertainty and performance anxiety. People weren't sure they would be able to build something, even with encouragement and example. One even said, over my shoulder, "I'm not sure I'm creative in that way." I found this reaction fascinating.

Is Spore 'For Everyone'? [GameSetWatch]

KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art will be on show at the the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 17 through Sept. 7 and will feature original sketches, notes, concept drawings, animation cells, 3D models, published work and last, but certainly not least, a "sneak preview" of Spore.

The show will travel to New York next year.

KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art [Canadian Architect, via GSW]

Probably my utter fascination with Care Bears. I could tell you more than you want to know about Care Bears. Oh, you want to know about Care Bears? ...Yeah, 'cause they live in Care-a-Lot, which is above the Forest of Feelings where the Care Bear Cousins live, which is above Earth... But the Care Bear Cousins aren't even Bears. They're like lions and monkeys and things, but they call them Care Bear Cousins. Yeah... They have these particle beam weapons in their stomachs, and when they get really upset, they fire this Star Wars thing. Yeah, they're cool.

It was as always, a treat to watch. It was also, as always, something that leaves you perhaps with less of an idea of what he's on about than before he started talking.

Check out the clip which shows the talk in all of it's more than 30-minutes glory and stay, at least, until you get to his now infamous Russian Space Minute.

The preview also shows off Spore's content browser, a web app that lays out user and Maxis generated content. Highlighted here are a few interesting, holiday themed items like a building shaped like a Christmas tree and a UFO built in the shape of... well, I won't spoil it. Just watch.

The largest factor, though, was dealing with the millions of regular gamers out there who might not have the gaming know-how to actually play a game like Spore should it arrive with an inaccessible interface. Wright tells Croal that "probably the biggest design challenge was keeping it very accessible to players so that every bit of the game was intuitive, easy and approachable."

But the most gee-whiz stuff, the kind of additions that make such a long development understandable come in Wright's descriptions of Spore's "pollinated content." He explains, "I can make a buddy list, and it will try to put my buddy's content in my universe at a higher priority. I can subscribe to Sporecasts, which are aggregations of content that players have decided to basically organize themselves. Also, when I get a card for a piece of content—whether it be mine or somebody else's—at any time I can open that card and leave a comment on the card, and the person who made that content will get the comment."

In other, Wright-fanboy words—awesome.

Level Up's Q&A with Wright, split into two parts, is just packed with interesting reading. Reading his thoughts and getting an insight into Spore's lengthy development seems almost as much fun as playing it. Guess we'll know in September.

Exclusive: Will Wright Gives Level Up the Scoop On Why Spore Is Taking So Long to Get Right—And Why It Will Be Worth the Wait, Part I and Part II [Level Up]

While we finish up the game over the next few months, we'll be sharing more information with you and other fans. As a newsletter subscriber, you'll be among the first to get new Spore information, screenshots, videos and other cool features from the Spore team. Check out our launch date teaser, and of course you can visit Spore.com for updates anytime.

The Spore Launch Date Annoucement Trailer [Spore.Com - Thanks Deadeyereborn!]