Life begins in the primordial soup of Will Wright’s mind. Or in a conference with his game development team, depending on your point of view.
Wright, creator of computer games including “SimCity” and “The Sims,” has released a game reminiscent of his past work this time with evolutionary simulation, “Spore.”
What has been described as a “God Game” by its creators, Spore provides the chance to raise a species from infancy into a fully grown space-spelunker, or whatever else you might choose.
What was originally called a “massively single-player game” is now a hybrid between single player and multiplayer, according to a recent interview with Daniel Terdiman, author of online blog “Gaming and Culture.”
“With multiplayer games, there are tremendous design limitations: Nobody can peak, nobody can pause time, no one player can be super powerful,” said Wright. The team wanted to keep the control of a single player game but also wanted it to be interactive with other players.
Interactivity comes with what the game designers call “sporepedia.” You have an online account to which your creature’s development is automatically uploaded. Your creation is then uploaded onto other player’s planets. With this done thousands of times, it gives each gamer an environment with much greater contact.
From its prokaryotic beginnings, you determine everything about your creation: from the kind of mouth, flagella, shape and color, you name it. Each part has a specific effect on the abilities of your new creation. If the mouth is too small, it is difficult to eat; if it’s too slow, it gets eaten. Lesson learned.
When you die, you don’t lose progress as you do in other games; instead you are simply born as a new member of the species. Earning DNA points by socializing or completing mini-missions is the only way to evolve. Additionally, the game’s artificial intelligence can pick up on what it thinks your creature’s goals are, after evaluating your style of play.
The game is designed so that anyone can pick it up and play, which makes real depth hard to attain. Despite the interactivity of the game, it quickly becomes repetitive. There are only so many times you can kill, befriend or mate — and yes, even mating gets old — with someone or something before it gets boring. Through the first few stages, the only real motivation to continue playing is to see if you can outsmart the game and other people’s creations by constructing your creature with everything that gives it an advantage.
The game gets interesting during the final and largest stage, space, which offers hundreds of planets and galaxies to travel to. You can create a galactic alliance (thank you “Star Wars”), or suck out a planet’s atmosphere (thank you “Space Balls”), if it pleases you. The graphics are also at a premium during this stage; I even caught myself marveling.
While you can absorb yourself for a long time in the joy ride of space, there is an actual “win the game” point to reach, unlike other Sim style games. And even beyond the point of “winning,” the game can still be played but with little purpose.
If you are into science fiction, or want a little strategic challenge, Spore is a decent way to spend some time. But occasionally it’s good to get out in the world and evolve youself as well.
3 stars out of 5
