Spore

Spore is a simulation computer game designed by Will Wright that is currently in development by Maxis to be published by EA Games. It is scheduled to be released around April/May of 2007. Wright has a history of designing innovative, successful games like The Sims and SimCity, and Spore appears likely to continue that trend. It is remarkable both for the innovative technology of the game design, as well as the expansive range of sci-fi game play.


 * Release Date estimated April/May 2007
 * Spore is a single player game, NOT multiplayer.
 * ESRB Rating Pending (RP)
 * Platforms: PC (A Mac version will likely follow later). The Maxis Senior Designer for Spore has stated that no console releases are planned, although a portable version has been mentioned. Will Wright also mentioned the possibility of Spore on cell phones.

Spore is, at first glance, an evolution game: the player molds and guides a single-celled species across many generations, until it becomes intelligent, at which point, the scope of the game expands to encompass a somewhat roleplaying-esque element, This is achieved by giving the player control over a lone creature (designed by the player him/herself) until he begins a tribe of his own, at which point real-time strategy through war with other tribes of his kind becomes part of the game. The player then begins molding and guiding their creature's society into a spacefaring civilization, and thus the player and his creatures begin to colonise other planets. Later comes the ability to control a galactic empire.

Spore's main innovation, the basis of its scope and customizability, is that Wright has returned to procedural generation of content.

At E3 2005, the game won the following Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game. Answering a question about gameplay, Wright said that "there are games that let their players feel like Luke Skywalker. I want players to feel like George Lucas."

Maxis currently has approximately 70 developers working on Spore, most earning six-figure salaries. It will take an estimated US$30 million to develop the game.

What exactly is Spore?

 * Spore is the next game from Will Wright/Maxis, probably best known for being the makers of Sim City and The Sims. Spore takes elements from many of Maxis' previous games such as Sim Earth, Sim Life and Sim City and blends them into a simulation that allows the player to influence the development of a life form from a single-cellular phase, through multi-cellular life in the oceans and on land, to the development of sapiency, tool-use, and eventually interplanetary and interstellar flight. You can find the many sources of spore information that we have accumulated in our sources section. More information and pictures can be found at the official site (which includes links to various gaming sites) and also via GamingSteve's podcasts.

When will Spore be released?

 * Spore is currently said to release sometime April or early May 2007 but this is subject to change. Check Current events for most up-to-date news.

Is Spore the final name?

 * The official site is currently called Spore and a picture of Will has been seen with a poster behind him that has Spore on it. There is speculation though that it may become known as SimSpore.
 * There has been a Spore logo available for some time on GamingSteve.com. It is very likely that it is not the final logo.
 * Also of note is the logo from the flash introduction to the Spore site.

Do you require an Internet connection to play?

 * No, as the game will come with tens of thousands of creations included on the CD. Having an Internet connection will give you access to all the custom content created by other players and therefore would most likely greatly increase the longevity and enjoyment of the game. However, again, having Internet access is not neccessary, as each individual creature file is very small, taking up only a few kilobytes. This means that tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, of premade creatures can be shipped on the CD, meaning there will be more than enough variety for a player's game to sustain itself. In addition, the player's own creatures are added to a repository, meaning that every time one plays they are contributing to that diversity. In addition there are plans to be able to swap creations with other players via other media.

How exactly does the multiplayer aspect of the game work?

 * The game has been described as a "MSOG" - Massively Single-player Online Game. There is a central database which collects creatures/buildings/objects that are custom created by players, stores them, and then distributes them to other players. The creatures are compressed in size to about 3k from as big as 5Mb; using methods inspired by the "Demo Scene" to compress complex graphical information into very small sizes. How this actually affects your game is that while creations are coming in from other players and your world is being populated with them, you are still playing alone - as soon as the creatures are downloaded and populated, the computer takes over control based upon the "personality sliders" of how that creature evolved and how the player who created it played.

How will the nature of the content that is added to your world be decided?

 * In the demo Will Wright said the computer would pick and choose what to add based on the computer's categorization of the content it receives, and based on the created content in your own world. How exactly this works is unknown though it is transparent to game play, ie it happens in the background; you don't have to go and search for content to download. You can also track your creations to see where they are being used via the central database. In addition there are plans to allow manual swapping of data for non-Internet users. It's not yet known if you can pick content manually to be downloaded from the central database. However, unless it is a balance issue, you probably will be able to. Will has also demonstrated that some content will be tagged with the content creator's name, and you can bookmark that name so that other content from that person will be given priority in the future.