Electronic Arts-owned Maxis Studio released "creature creator" software last month in the hope that aspiring "Spore" players would bring a population of aliens to life in time for the game’s premier.<\/p>\n
The response astounded even Wright, maker of the world’s top-selling computer game "The Sims."<\/p>\n
"I was really hoping we’d get 100,000 creatures by September and a million by the end of the year," Wright said Monday while demonstrating "Spore" on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo video game trade show in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
"We hit 100K in 22 hours and a million by the end of the first week. The numbers are just blowing us away."<\/p>\n
A week ago, the number of creatures in the "Spore" database exceeded the number of known species on Earth.<\/p>\n
"It took them 18 days to reach the number of creatures on Earth and, by some accounts, it took God six days," Wright joked during a presentation onstage at the vintage Orpheum Theater.<\/p>\n
"Spore" lets people dictate the genetic development of animated characters in a mock universe.<\/p>\n
"You are given this God-like power," Wright told AFP in a recent interview at his Maxis office in Emeryville, California.<\/p>\n
"You can create ecosystems, biospheres … We try to make it real science."<\/p>\n
Players start as microscopic life forms competing for survival in primordial ooze and work their way onto land, where they evolve into creatures that build civilizations and rocket into space.<\/p>\n
Creatures can be made to have scales, fins, wings, claws, extra appendages, additional eyes, or body parts in unexpected places.<\/p>\n
The online game’s programming gives characters artificial intelligence and figures out how they should walk, laugh, dance, fight or do other things based on what they look like.<\/p>\n
Creatures pass on virtual genes to their progeny and build civilizations with cities, governments and economies.<\/p>\n
In a computer game first, "Spore" worlds will be inhabited by aliens made by players instead of professional video game programmers.<\/p>\n