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.
