The latest brainchild of game legend Will Wright, maker of the world’s top-selling computer game “The Sims", “Spore” is being released in Europe and Asia today ahead of its September 7 debut in the United States.<\/p>\n
“We are hoping to build a community as big as that of the Sims,” Wright said during a Paris stopover this week ahead of the launch of the game by Electronic Arts.<\/p>\n
“You are given this God-like power,” Wright told AFP in a recent interview in California. “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 civilisations and rocket into space.<\/p>\n
“It is still probably the most interesting question for scientists and five-year-olds: What is life?” Wright said.<\/p>\n
“It starts out as single-cell organisms and then you are eventually flying around the galaxy exploring new worlds, meeting other creatures and creating federations."<\/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 creatures can pass on virtual genes to their progeny and build civilisations with cities, governments and economies.<\/p>\n
And in a computer game first, “Spore” worlds will be inhabited by aliens made by players instead of professional video game programmers.<\/p>\n
In June, ahead of the launch, Wright’s Electronic Arts-owned Maxis Studio released “creature creator” software to allow aspiring “Spore” players to bring a population to life in time for the game’s premiere.<\/p>\n
The response astounded even Wright, with by July the number of creatures in the “Spore” database exceeding 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 US presentation.<\/p>\n
Determined players can go from being an amoeba to exploring space in about six hours, according to Wright. The self-described science fiction fan wove cliches from the genre’s popular films and stories into the game.<\/p>\n
Players can add their creations to an online “Sporepedia” to share with others and record videos of their aliens in action and upload them to YouTube.<\/p>\n
With the release of the original “Sims” title in early 2000, Wright lured women and other “casual gamers” into a video game market long considered a bastion of “hardcore gamers", mainly young men.<\/p>\n
Electronic Arts announced in April it had sold more than 100 million copies of “The Sims", the world’s best selling computer game.<\/p>\n
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