Spore Revolution

SXSW: Will Wright Keynote Video

Here's a great video of Will Wright's Keynote speech at the iSXSW.  It is a 17 minute video going through the different stages of your creature from the tidal period to the  space age.  The video is very entertaining as Mr. Wright brushes death a lot.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/zachinglis/videos/1/

I have to say its amazing how powerful this game will be.  It has a lot of Sim City in it, a lot of Sims, taken to another level.  Everyone is about custom content now, and social networks, and I think Spore will hit the nail on the head. It's definately a shame that its not an MMO for if it were I would most likely give up WoW, but perhaps thats something we can look forward to in the future! ;D

Vehicle Editor in PC Gamer

There are some great new interface pictures in this month's copy of PC Gamer, which is going to be for sale on December 12th 2006.  The article itself can be found on their website, entitled Spore Vehicle Editor Interview, and was published on November 27th 2006. 

Will Wright on the Colbert Report

Wow, Will Wright on National TV!  This was a great interview of Will Wright, interviewed by Stephen Colbert from Comedy Central on December 4th 2006.   There really isn't any new information on Spore from this interview, no game demo either.  What Mr. Wright did say was that Spore is going to be released in the 2nd half of 2007 which we already knew.  He didn't get any more specific.  A couple interesting things I noted was that I have rarely seen Stephen go so easy on someone he interviewed. Sure he mocked a little, but he didn't argue.  Oh yeah, Will Wright must've taken a speech class because I don't recall him saying any "umms"!  :D My favorite lines follow:

Mr. Colbert: Spore sounds strangely like a reproduction system. Is it a sex game? Audience laughs.
Mr. Wright: Well in its basic, yes! Audience laughs.

For those interested, there is also an article by Newsweek on-line entitled Exclusively: Behind the Scenes of Will Wright's Visit to the Colbert Report, published on December 5th 2006.

Here is a video of the the interview for you:

IGN Talks Expansion Packs

IGN released an interview with Will Wright on August 9th entitled Interview: Will Wright on Breeding Spore, by Daemon Hatfield. A lot of what has been said already is being repeated, but they have some fresh expansion pack questions that really caught my eye.

Yes-  they are planning on expansion packs. I quote Will Wright: "We've thought a little about that. When you're making a game, you start out with all these ideas. Then as the deadline draws near, you have to start cutting stuff out. And that stuff is the first content you want to get into expansions."  With the next couple questions, he continues on to say that one of the things on the cusp of being cut out right now is the ability to have underwater creatures.

Spore release date pushed some more

I just read a great Will Wright interview from GameSpot, entitled EA not Spore-ing until late '07.   The article was written by Tor Thorsen, and the interview entitled Will Wright talks Spore, Leipzig, next-gen was written by Andrew Park.  Both were published on August 9th. I pulled three important facts out of this interview.

Firstly, the release date has furthur been pushed to at least July 2007.  They are in the home-stretch because all levels are playable, but they still have a lot of fine tuning to do.

Secondly, my estimate of perhaps 6GB of hard drive space might not be so far off.  My hard drive space guestimate was countered by some because they say that creatures will be taking up as little as 3kb of space.  In this article, Will Wright says that that is the compressed file size, and that every creature will be at least 3mb. 3mb upon 3mb adds up quickly!

Last but not least, there will be a playable version of Spore at the Lepzig Game Conference in Germany!  We can look forward to great new videos then. :)

Spore Figurines for a Fee

Joystiq wow'd us with Spore figurines before, and now have done it again.  On July 30th 2006, they published an article written by Christopher Grant entitled Another Spore model; get your own "for a fee". It would appear that for a fee of possible $20 USD, you can have a 3D figurine of your creature made and mailed to you. 

This poses some interesting questions. Will Electronic Arts own the rights to your creature?  If so, this would mean that they will be allowed to re-sell your creature over and over if its a hit in the game, and you wouldn't see a dime for being the creator.  Also, if you choose to use your creature in a cartoon or whatever, and make some decent income from it, you may very well be sued by EA for incurring monetary losses due to copyright infringement.  Now I don't see why they would chase such tiny players other than to scare other people, but it is still important to read the terms of use and see how much really belongs to you.  You may have created it, and call it your creature, but it would ultimately really belong to EA. Maybe they have plans for an alien cartoon with your creature and all that you would have is the pride of knowing your creature was popular enough to be there.

I believe that this is a cry to 3D studio software companies to develop new innovative software that will rival Spore's creature creator.

Spore Tip of the Spear

There is a release press from EA which mentions spore from Mercury News.  The article entitled Tired of same old boring characters? Game maker is opting for original content, was written by Dean Takahashi and published on August 9th 2006. The quote that really caught my eye in this article is the following:

"Spore is the tip of the spear,'' Gibeau said, "There is a much better return on the investment when you own everything.''

What will happen to EA if Will Wright ever left them?

Will Wright Interviewed by Guardian Unlimited

Will Wright was interviewed by Guardian Unlimited's Stever Boxer. The article is entitled From a Germ of an Idea to a Spore of a Franchise, and was published on August 3rd 2006. From this article, I learned that they will have a flag system in place so that inappropriate creature designs don't go mainstream, such as a walking penis. Also, once you get into the space phase genetic engineering is unlocked and DNA points are not required anymore to change your creature.

Spore for All Consoles

Will Wright was interviewed my Spong.com recently, and an article entitled Exclusive: Spore Heading to Console was published Aug 2nd 2006. The article is mostly a confirmation that they will branch out to many of the current consoles, but which consoles they were going to develop spore for specifically wasn't said.  Will Wright did mention Wii, PS3, and XBox 360. He also mentions that some consoles might just have certain parts of the game.   

I think the most interesting comment from this article is how Will Wright points out that Spore is more like a franchise than a game. This would make sense since he'd not only like the game for all consoles, but there is the possibility of 3D figurines and a card game.

Only Aug 4th, a new article appeared on Spong.com entitled EA Denies Concrete Spore Plans.  I also want to mention here that in the past, Will Wright has said that Spore would probably be his last game project and now I see that there is a little tug-o-war going on there. Seems like EA has to keep covering their butts after Will Wright has been interviewed!

Discover Magazine Interview

Will Wright is featured in of the articles of the August 2006 edition of Discover Magazine which you can purchase at news stands today.  The article can also be found on-line at the Discover website, entitled The Discover Interview: Will Wright. It was written by Alan Burdick.  You will need to subscribe to the magazine in order to read the complete article. It consists of a Q&A interview with Will Wright.

Part 1

Part 2

• Through your games, you come across as a guy who's trying to decipher the natural world bit by bit, through computer simulations.
• What were you doing at age 10 that steered you toward game design?
• Spore takes its cue from astrobiology, both in its spatial sweep--from microbiology to galaxies--and in its interplanetary spread of life.  What turned you on to the subject?

Part 3

• So Spore is an existential game?
• I'm told you collect artifacts from the Russian space program.
• Would you ever go up in space?

Part 4

• Do you play computer games besides the ones you design?
• What makes a game compelling to you?
• So games are fun because they allow us to play with time?
• You've collected and analyzed thousands of hours of data gathered from people who play The Sims online.  To what extent is playing The Sims a behavioral experiment?

Part 5

• You've modeled planetary dynamics, ant colonies, even the way players play your games.  What's left?
• You're doing this for fun? That's what you do on the weekend?
• In Wikipedia, Spore is described as a "teleological evolution" game.  Do you think the game will bring natural selection to the masses?
• If you could rebuild Earth in any way--add or subtract any creature or process, for instance--what would you do?