Spore

I finally met someone from Maxis. I wanted to punch him in the face for making The Sims, but he seemed like a really nice guy. (He was just bigger than me in fact.)

They're ugly, but they'll build a space ship eventually.

Will Spore top The Sims?

In all seriousness though, Will Wright is once again poised to conquer the PC market with his latest wacky creation. Bear in mind that for this presentation, EA mostly showed the stuff that was already available at the E3, so I'll just try to focus on some of the parts that I found fascinating.

As you may or may not know, Spore is a management/creation game (I guess you could call it that) which will allow you to create your very-own genetically-modified and slightly confused in that sense civilization - crawling out from the sea as a slug and then building your race all the way up to the age of space ships and space exploration. In fact, the land game and the building phase that sees you growing your civilization from scratch is essentially a tutorial for the later space stage, which is where the game really takes off.

For the presentation, the senior designer from Maxis had a bunch of races already prepared. A lot of these creations will actually be from other players... and in your game. Essentially, Spore will have its own online database of creations, so that instead of having the AI create generic creations that would surely get boring eventually, the player will have his very own single player world populated with creations from other players. You will build your civilization in the single-player while the rest of the AI is essentially created by other gamers.

The idea is simple yet brilliant, as it ensures that the game stays fresh for those who want to waste weeks and months on it.

Spore has no multiplayer, and it has no story per se. The design logic that was used for the Sims is taken to the next level by giving player a robust editor that allows something like 500 different body parts for a creature and seven different variations of each of these body parts.

As ever, the interface remains extremely intuitive, allowing for a simple drag and drop creation process. For our demo, the Maxis guy created a race that literally spoke out of its ass - it had a beak on its butt, and one eye on the front, like a Cyclops.

Naturally, when I was watching the presentation, I couldn't help but think that a multiplayer mode would've made a lot of sense. But in this way, Will Wright is once again targeting the very same gamer demographic that loved the Sims. People who like to play games at their own pace and not have to worry about other people making grander structures or getting too far ahead because they play more.

Getting passed the initial stage of growing your creature, then growing its civilization and finally, grooming the entire damn planet, the players will take off into space with their little space ship. Spore is vast in that sense. It literally has hundreds of stars and different planets on them, and if you take into account the fact that each planet might have creatures created by some highly creative guy somewhere at the other end of the world (planet Earth mind you), it's easy to figure out why Maxis is calling Spore their "massively single-player game."

Again, Spore is as much about creature creation as it is about the management part. Should players choose to do so, they'll be able to fry other civilizations with lasers from their space ships and even drop nuclear bombs on their savage planets.

While the graphics look very scaled down to allow for a wide variety of rigs, the effects of the nuclear explosion looked very nice. The creatures on the other hand look too damn colorful and cheerful for my taste, but with the wide variety of body parts, and later, player-modified skins and such, I'm sure you'll be able to create Ridley Scott-like Aliens in the long run. Granted, EA is likely to send the FBI to your door, but if you are willing to chance it...

There is a lot more to be said about Spore - how the DNA influences creature development and such, but I guess certain things are better left to the player to figure out. The general impression is that once again Maxis is creating a highly accessible and catchy game with a brilliant concept that might not be something that I'd enjoy spending time on, but God knows there are enough Sims crazies out there to make Will Wright's next creation a huge success.

-- Uros '2Lions' Jojic