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Spore is a multi-platform god game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multicellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. The game has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

The game is due to be released on September 5 2008 in Europe, and September 7 2008 in North America and other territories.

Development

Spore was originally a working title, suggested by developer Ocean Quigley, for the game which was first referred to by the general public as Sim Everything. Even though Sim Everything was a first choice name for Wright, the title Spore stuck. Wright added it also freed him from the preconceptions another Sim title would have brought, saying "...Not putting 'Sim' in front of it was very refreshing to me. It feels like it wants to be breaking out into a completely different thing than what Sim was."

Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson joined EA Maxis on April 2, 2007 to work on Spore.

Platforms

Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions of the full Spore game have been confirmed as being in active development. Other platforms have been discussed, but have not been confirmed.

Gameplay

At first glance, Spore is a teleological evolution game, or a god game. The player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex animal. Eventually, the species becomes sapient. The player then begins molding and guiding this species' society, developing it into a space-faring civilization, at which point they can explore the galaxy in a space ship. Spore's main innovation is the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness.

It will consist of several long phases, each with its own style of play, with a range of gameplay styles, including elements of life simulation and real-time strategy. Wright also mentioned that he wanted players to be able to spend as much time as they prefer in each stage, without being forced to move to the following stage. In a February 12, 2008 Newsweek interview with N'Gai Croal, Wright mentioned that they added a difficulty selector to each stage, allowing players to choose the difficulty for each part of the game.

The games and films with which Wright associated the various phases are:

1. Pac-Man for the tide pool phase
2. Diablo for the creature phase
3. Populous for the tribal phase
4. SimCity, Risk, and Civilization for the civilization phase
5. SimEarth, Destroy All Humans!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey for the space phase, with elements of sandbox gameplay. DICE 2007 referred to it as similar to Master of Orion.

Each phase of the game determines the starting point of the next phase. In the Game Developers Conference presentation, the creature that Will Wright was "guiding" through the creature phase was based on his earlier cell creature. It had three legs, a tail, eyes and a mouth in roughly the same position. He had evolved this creature through gameplay of the prior phases.

He mentioned that the creatures' personality, whether it be logical or emotional, peaceful or violent, etc, is also affected by this gameplay.

During the 2007 TED conference seminar, Wright revealed that all phases could be accelerated, even having eons pass by in moments during the experimentation of a planet's biosphere. Furthermore, during the aforementioned Newsweek interview, it was revealed that players will be able to jump to any stage of the game, using pre-generated creatures if needed.

Start of life

The game opens - and the dawn of life - with a comet plummeting onto a chosen planet, which hints at the concept of panspermia. The comet ostensibly supplies the complex molecules (ie. proteins) from which life will develop.

Tide pool phase

The first phase of existence, the tide pool phase is sometimes referred to as the cellular phase or microbial phase. The player guides simple protean microbes around in a 2D environment where the microbes must deal with fluid dynamics, being eaten, and weaker microbes. There are many different types of cells, many of which can damage and/or eat the player's microbe. Once the player's microbe has eaten several cells, it forms an egg which, when clicked, opens the Creature editor which allows the player to modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe. The player can then add various offensive, defensive, and/or mobility abilities, spending "DNA points".

As the microbe gets larger, objects that are in the background move to the foreground, which can result in one's microbe being eaten by a much more massive microbe that had previously been swimming in the background. The surface land becomes more and more prominent, and the option to move to land eventually appears, allowing the creature to crawl onto land to begin the creature phase. Legs are not a prerequisite to moving to land; if the creature lacks legs, it will move slug-like on the land, which implies there will be a direct correlation between the cellular and creature phases. The microbe resembles a strange insect with cartoonish, human-like eyes, which were used "to make it cute," according to Wright during the 2007 TED seminar.

The main units of "currency" are DNA points.

Creature phase

While the tide pool phase introduces the player to the game and its editor, the creature phase plays a big part in terms of what the player's creatures will look like in the later phases. It is similar to the tide pool phase, but there are several important differences. The most obvious one is that it is a 3D environment. There will be other creatures inhabiting the world and most, if not all, of them will have been created by other players. If there is a lack of predators in the ecosystem and weak herbivores are everywhere, the game will automatically download a new species of predators that another player has created and load them into the current player's world to balance the ecosystem. The game will also download creatures in relation to how strong the player's creature is. If the player creates a bigger, tougher creature, the predators that are downloaded will likewise be stronger than average predators. Creatures' characteristics are categorized with a 5 star rating system in six areas: Speed, Stealth, Defense, Social, Cuteness, and Attack. The creature also gains the ability to perform actions, such as "Call" and "Jump".

In the IGN "Evolution" video, the creatures had names such as "Oddy", "Mephistopheles" and so forth. This seems to indicate that individual creatures are nameable.

In this stage, the basic goal is the same: hunt food to earn DNA points, reproduce, and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction in the tide pool phase, the player must now locate a mate. Once the player's creature has laid an egg, it does not hatch right away; scavengers will attempt to steal the eggs and the player must defend them. (Conversely, the player may steal and eat other creatures' eggs as well, if they can get past the hostile parents.) Before the egg hatches, the player will have the opportunity to 'evolve' their creature further into the next generation, which can be done by spending DNA points to buy body parts. When the egg hatches, the player becomes a baby version of the creature that spawned it. Aesthetically, this version of the creature will be smaller, with certain features exaggerated such as the head, and have a higher pitched voice. This stage will have a profound effect on the creature's social skill evolution, as the baby will be making friends and forming its own herd (for herbivores) or pack (for carnivores). Will Wright referred to this as a simplified version of the friend-making mini-game in The Sims. The ultimate goal of the creature phase is to increase the creature's brain capabilities slowly using DNA points. Once they have increased sufficiently, the player's creature becomes sapient and the player progresses to the tribal phase.

It is currently unknown whether the game will feature swimming creatures. Strong evidence of flying creatures, unseen since the original presentation of Spore, has been seen in recent hands-on previews.

The main units of currency are, as with the cellular phase, DNA points.

Tribal phase

After the player's species evolves its brain capacity far enough, it enters the tribal phase. At this stage physical development ceases (as does the player's direct control over an individual creature), but the player is given a hut and several of the creatures designed in earlier phases. The player also gains a mini-map of the world for the first time.

At this point the game is similar to a real-time strategy game in that the player can order the tribe members to move, attack, etc. The player may give these creatures tools such as weapons, musical instruments, and campfires, purchased with food that the tribe has gathered (replacing DNA points as the game's currency). The creatures' behaviors and personalities are affected by what tools the player decides to give them. Creatures also gain the option to wear clothes that demarcate their professions; for example, recruiters wear recruiting clothes while farmers wear farming clothes. At this point, tribe-to-tribe contact can take place, should the player choose to (whether that contact be diplomatic or violent - the July 10, 2007 IGN "Evolution" video featured a battle between two tribes of the same species, but with variations in their skin colourations.) The player may also "tame" other non-intelligent creatures, and even use them as livestock. Domesticated creatures seem to undergo neoteny in contrasting photos of the same species, but it is unknown whether it is automatic or if the player was permitted to edit tamed creatures in the editor.

Once the tribe reaches 15 members, the player can choose to progress to the civilization phase.

The main unit of currency is Food.

Civilization phase

Originally, the city phase was to follow the tribal phase, but it was merged into the civilization phase as "a simplified version of SimCity." The player's tribal camp has grown to a city, which must be cared for. Players can use a building editor to change the appearance of the buildings in their city or create new buildings. As in the tribal phase, the game will attempt to detect what style of content the player prefers, download similar content created by other players and add it to the buy menu. Players will also be able to make relations between their civilization and other civilizations on their home planet, whether peaceful or war-torn.

Once players reach this point they are allowed to zoom out further for the first time, and view the entire planet from space. Once the player zooms out past a certain point, the realistically detailed features of the planet become more stylized. For example, the cities of the planet change from a properly-scaled view with all individual buildings visible to a more stylized cartoon-like depiction for clarity. As in the tribal stage, players can meet other creatures of the rival species in other cities to attempt either diplomacy, for opening trade routes and eventually forming an alliance, or for the purpose of attacking them. At this point, a vehicle editor is opened, allowing the player to construct a large variety of land vehicles, aircrafts,ships and submersibles.

The goal in this phase is to gain control of the entire planet, and it is left for the player to decide whether to conquer by warfare or diplomatic means. Once players have gained enough credits in this phase, they unlock the UFO and the UFO editor. Before they may proceed into the space phase, they must paint their planet purple with the UFO; the contextual purpose of this is currently speculative.

The main unit of currency is Spice.

Space phase

After the civilization phase, the space phase begins. The player may terraform and colonize uninhabitable planets with special tools that are purchased with credits (water tool, volcano tool, etc.) The ultimate power in that area would be a technology which Wright dubbed the Genesis device, named after the device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, both of which have the same purpose: transform a dead world into a planet capable of sustaining life in a matter of minutes. During the 2007 TED conference, Wright showed off the planetary effects the UFO can have, such as pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to increase the amount of greenhouse gases, which over time caused the oceans initially to rise and flood coastal cities, then eventually evaporate and transform the world into an arid desert planet, followed by a molten rock in space. Wright semi-jokingly called it "a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth." The player may cause icy comets to crash into a planet to create water, or force volcanoes to erupt to increase atmosphere. Players may also colonize hostile worlds or deep under the ocean once they gain the ability to create bubbled cities, similar in function to self-sustaining arcologies. Once the world around them becomes habitable, the city loses the bubble.

The Space phase will also feature the game's main villian, the Grobb (Borg spoken backwards), an evil robotic species which serves as the ultimate challenge for the player in which they must fight off an invasion of their home planet.

The player may travel between star systems and make contact with other civilizations on distant worlds, most of which are created by other players. The player finds other sapient species by running the mouse over other star systems and their individual planets to try to pick up radio static or noise that can indicate intelligent life. When the UFO visits that world, they may impress the beings with fireworks, attack them with weapons, or try to establish a language with the civilization via a Close Encounters of the Third Kind-styled musical mini-game. These civilizations may react violently to the player or worship them, depending on that civilization's behavior and the race's personality. User-created races uploaded to the player's machine will behave as that user played them; that is, if a user played a race pacifistically, that user's race would behave in the same manner to the player. Conversely, if the user played that race as a malevolent species, it would be very difficult for the player to negotiate with that species. On a grander scale, the player could try to conquer the galaxy by different means, such as beginning an interstellar war, diplomatically creating an interstellar union and so forth. As a show of great force, the player may even use a weapon to completely destroy a planet (similar to the capabilities of the Death Star from the Star Wars saga), which will sometimes bring retribution from that species and its allies.

During exploration of other worlds, the player may scan content and add the information to a database designed like a trading card series called the Sporepedia. The player may also abduct creatures (familiar or unfamiliar, sapient or animal) and transport them to other planets. Players can do this to test a planet's inhabitants to see if they are friendly or not, or to merely test a planet's habitability. Conversely, the player may beam down his/her creature to interact directly with an alien species instead of through the UFO. The player may interbreed different species genetically, or place a monolith (in the style of 2001: A Space Odyssey) on a planet, triggering evolution of intelligent life, then come back later to see what has evolved. On lifeless worlds, the player may also find strange "artifacts" with unknown purposes to be used later on, possibly adding tools for the UFO.

In the E3 2006 demo, Will Wright explained that there would be over half a million different stars, each one having its own planets, more than anyone could visit in a lifetime. As is traditional with most of Will Wright's games, the game never presents the player with an absolute ending and the Space Phase continues for as long as the player wishes. The exploration remains fresh from uploaded content and on-the-fly procedural generation by the software. During the 2007 TED Conference seminar, Wright used accelerated time dilation during the Milky Way view to show the dynamics of the entire galaxy, as supernovae exploded in brilliant points of light, and the galactic arms slowly turned. He pointed out the nebulae, which the game features in real-life separate categories of planetary nebulae and reflection nebulae, each of which perform their actual functions in space. He also brought the UFO close to a black hole, keeping a cautionary distance from the structure.

The main unit of currency is, as with the civilization phase, Spice.

"Sandbox" mode

The Space Phase is sometimes referred to as a sandbox mode, because the player has near-complete control of everything. Rather than presenting the player with a finite goal, as earlier phases do, the Space Phase gives the freedom to accomplish any variety of tasks they wish to perform. It has been mentioned that the Space Phase works on two axes: a horizontal axis (the ability to interact with many planets in a variety of different ways) and a vertical axis (the ability to revisit different phases of gameplay).

Elements of gameplay

Editors

Spore's major concept is that nearly everything is created by the players. Will Wright has stated that in addition to being simple, all the editors will be as similar as possible to each other so that content creation skills are easily transferable from one editor to the next. There are several different editors, each one dealing with a different type of content.

In concept, the editors start simply in the cellular phase and move to higher levels of complexity acting as tutorials for progressive levels of gameplay. For example; the tide pool editor as demonstrated so far has a small set of choices (three sensory, three movement, and three attack options) and a two-dimensional structure compared to the E3 2006 creature editor demo which, for sensory alone, had nine options of four tiers each for a total of 36 options as well as three-dimensional structure. Editors move from a spine or body model in the early editors to presumably more free-form editors for the civilization phase. Planet-molding is perhaps the most ambitious, free-form and least detailed editing option; whether or not it will involve a true editor or an array of tools available to the "UFO" is unknown.

At E3 2006, Wright showcased the creature editor. It allows the player to take what looks like a lump of clay with a spine and mold it into a creature of their choosing. Once they are done molding the main form, they can then add legs, arms, feet, hands, eyes, mouths, decorative elements, and a wide array of sensory organs like antennae. Many of these parts affect the creature's final abilities (speed, strength, diet, etc.), while some parts are purely decorative. Once the creature is designed to the player's satisfaction, they can paint the creature using a large number of textures, overlays, colors, and patterns. After the player feels their creature is complete, it can be tested in a small enclosed area, showing how it would move around, fight, interact, etc. There is also the hut editor (tribal phase), the building and vehicle editor (civilization phase), the flora editor (from tribal to space phase), the UFO editor (civilization/space phase) and the terrain editor, and all work from the same basic software. In the "2012: Stories from the Near Future," the Creature Editor was shown to have been altered so that the hands and feet were already attached to the limbs. There are also some curiously bat wing-shaped appendages added to the editor. At the 2007 TED conference, Wright created a bizarre one-eyed creature with two mouths on its forelimbs and a mace-like clubbed tail.

In the IGN Evolution video, one screenshot of the Creature Editor showed the limbs and hands without claws or fingernails. In the Youtube 2007 Gadgetoff video, it was confirmed that the player can add alternate hands/feet with talons, fingernails, etc. through a separate section with a hand icon.

Demo

The Creature editor has been rated E by the ESRB, indicating that the editor will be released separately well before the game's release. Electronic Arts had told MTV Asia that "EA Screen will provide visitors a chance to interact with EA's game producers hailing from the studios, and unveil the hugely anticipated SPORE™ Creature Creator demo version to gamers for the first time in Asia." Electronic Arts VP Mark Buechner stated on the Spore Facebook page that the editor would be released in June or July 2008, saying, "We are looking at releasing it two to three months before the launch of the full game."

"Massively single-player metaverse"

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), cataloged 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 very small — only a couple of kilobytes per item transmitted, according to Wright. This was due to procedural generation of material.

During Wright's Long Now Foundation seminar with Brian Eno in June 26, 2006, he mentioned that players would receive statistics of how their creatures would be faring in other players' games, referring to this as the alternate realities of the Spore metaverse. The game would report to the player on how other players interacted with them (for example, how many times other players made alliances with their race or destroyed their planet). The personalities of user-created species are dependent on how the user played them.

Procedural generation

Spore extensively uses procedural generation, rather than individual objects. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following 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."

Music

The music for the game is being designed by Brian Eno, an artist famous for his work with ambient music.

Awards and acknowledgments

At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game. At E3 2006, Spore was awarded the following Game Critics Awards: Best PC Game, Best Original Game, and Best Simulation.

On October 8, 2006 the game, its development, and its developer were featured in an article by Steven Berlin Johnson in the Sunday New York Times magazine, titled "The Long Zoom."

Spinoffs

Two spinoffs of Spore are also being released for handheld consoles, which are to be released on the same day as the main version, for the Nintendo DS and mobile phones, which includes the iPhone. Each spinoff focuses on a single phase of gameplay, and, unlike the full game, features direct online multiplayer.

Spore Creatures

The Nintendo DS spinoff is titled Spore Creatures, focusing on the Creature phase. The game will be a 2D story-based roleplaying game as the gamer plays a creature kidnapped by a UFO and forced to survive in a strange world, with elements of Nintendogs.

Spore Mobile

The mobile phone/iPhone spinoff of Spore, as with the Nintendo DS version, will focus on a single phase of gameplay; in this case, the tide pool phase. The simplified game will allow players to try to survive as a multicellular organism in a tide pool, similar to flOw. The iPhone version takes advantage of the device's touch capabilities and 3-axis accelerometer.

Unnamed Wii Spinoff

A Wii spinoff of the game has been mentioned by Will Wright several times, such as in his October 26 2007 interview with the Guardian. Buechner confirmed it, revealing that plans for a Wii spinoff were underway, and that the game would be built from the ground up and would take advantage of the Wii Remote, stating, "We're not porting it over. You know, we're still so early in design and prototyping that I don't know where we're going to end up, so I don't want to lead you down one path. But suffice to say that it's being developed with the Wii controls and technology in mind."

Expanded universe

EA has plans to expand Spore's user community functionality even further. One such feature is an agreement with YouTube granting players the ability to upload directly from within the game a YouTube video of their creatures' activity, and EA's creation of "The Spore YouTube Channel", which will showcase the most popular videos created this way.

There are also plans for the creation of a type of Spore collectible card game based on the creatures, buildings, vehicles, and planets that have been created by the players. There are also indications of plans for the creation of customized creature figurines; some of those who designed their own creatures at E3 2006 later received 3D printed models of the creatures they created.

References

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45. "Your Own Spore Figurine, For A Fee?".

External links

• Official Spore website
• GameSpot February 13, 2007 Hands-On Preview
• Spore presentation at South by Southwest 2007 - a collection of screenshots, videos, and articles from the South by Southwest conference.
• Spore presentation at TED
• Spore presentation at The New Yorker's "2012: Stories from the Near Future" series of symposia
• Spore presentation at Long Now Foundation with Will Wright and Brian Eno, 06/26/2006

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