'Spore' is Will Wright's latest game-changer

Kristin Kalning Games editor • E-mail

“Spore,” the latest creation from legendary game designer Will Wright, is massive.

First, let’s talk about scope. “Spore” takes on nothing less than the evolution of a species, asking players to shepherd a single-celled organism through five life phases culminating, eventually, with an attempt at global domination.

Making a game of this size is no small undertaking. Wright says the idea came to him about seven years ago, and it took another five years, and a team of 120, to make it real.  Electronic Arts  — which owns Maxis, the studio responsible for “Spore” — could have made two-and-a-half “Godfather” games in that time period.

But Wright’s games are — if you'll pardon the pun — game changers. “SimCity,” his first big-selling game, tasked players with — of all things — civic planning. Keep in mind that this was 1989, an era where video games were about diminutive plumbers named Mario, not mass transit systems for virtual constituents. The success of “SimCity” proved that teenage boys weren’t the only audience for video games, and it paved the way for Wright’s biggest game to date, “The Sims.” 

That’s the other reason “Spore” is so huge: It’s the Next Big Thing from the guy who made the best-selling PC game in history — a “virtual dollhouse” in which players piloted little digital humans through ordinary digital lives. “The Sims,” which spawned many expansions and a massive fan base, helped to usher non-gamers into gaming.

“I like to get people to think about the world around them, and have these little toy worlds in which they can run experiments,” he  said during a recent interview. “I think of (games) almost like a modern chemistry set. “

Wright spoke to me via telephone from Florida, as a tropical storm blew overhead and made soggy work of his late-summer family vacation. During that conversation, the edited version of which follows below, Wright talked about “The Sims” — its astonishing lifespan and the importance of community participation to its longevity.  We also talked about “Spore,” and the creativity he’s already seeing from players that downloaded the “Creature Creator” tool released earlier this summer. 

How does it feel to finally get “Spore” out there?

It feels nice. It’s really interesting to see what the fans are going to do with it. We released the “Creature Creator” about a month and a half ago and so we’re already starting to see the weird creativity that comes into something like this.

Every level in “Spore” is so unique. The game goes from a microscopic Pac-Man level up to a level where you’re in space. How would you characterize — or categorize — a game that itself encompasses so many genres?

A basic rule of thumb is that you don’t want to be mixing genres, but another rule is that if you’re going to break a rule, you might as well thoroughly break it. Also, it seemed to fit, not only with the themes of each level, but there seemed to be something nice about leaving those themes and genres in the historical order of when they appeared in the game industry.

What was your reason for doing that?

It kind of fit, because the levels increase in complexity. And when you look back at the history of the game industry, games were increasing in complexity too. So, you have a 2-D scroller for Cell, a third-person action game for Creature, a real-time-strategy (phase) for Tribe and a more elaborate strategy for the Civilization level, and the space game is probably closer to a massively multiplayer online game, which is pretty much the historical order (that) they appeared in the game industry.

The technology driving “Spore” is pretty sophisticated stuff — user-generated content, procedurally generated content, social networking tie-ins. What technology are you most proud of in the game?

I’m not sure if you’d call it technology, but basically all the magic that brings to life the stuff the players make. That’s probably the very first thing that people hit and are really excited about. This has to do with the underlying procedural animation and procedural texturing … which is pretty interesting because we basically had to teach the computer to replicate a lot of what our artists do.

There’s quite a bit of artificial intelligence in the (creature) editor that makes it easy to use. Most people don’t realize that, they just think: “Oh, it’s easy to use.” But the computer is always kind of analyzing what it thinks you intend to do.

Do you think the technical accomplishments of this game are being overlooked? And is that by design?

At the end of the day, what you really want to deliver is an emotional entertainment experience to the player. And if the technology helps you accomplish that, great. But if it doesn’t, no amount of technology in the world is going to necessarily provide that. I think the technology is definitely in service of this other goal state. And whether or not the players know about that or appreciate it is really kind of irrelevant as long as we achieve that goal state.

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