Spore's going to be massive.

To be honest, I hadn't really paid that much attention to Will Wright's terminally delayed simulation-of-everything over the last few years. For one, I'm not exactly into sim games, whether of the big-S or small-s variety. Another, the concept just seemed so impossible: Going from a cell to a creature to a civilization to space? Yeah, good luck finishing that.

But for me, going to Maxis a few weeks ago to see the latest version was the turn-around point. I realized something that I wasn't even considering before: Spore is very much a casual game.

As we walked into Maxis' offices in Emeryville, there were giant posters up all over the walls that iterated the designers' mission statement. They might have been placed there for the benefit of visiting journalists, but I got the feeling they were a semi-permanent installation, meant to remind team members every time they walked by that they want players to be able to get all the way to the "space" portion of the game without feeling frustrated.

This was reflected in other design choices. Rather than force the player to start at the "cell" level, you can instead select between any of the five different parts of the game right from the start. While this is certainly sure to be a controversial decision – it takes a lot away from the sense of growth and expansion that I believed the game would have if it forced you to start from the beginning – it'll let anybody jump in wherever they feel most comfortable.



This is especially important considering that Maxis sees the creature creator as a major "front door" into the Spore experience. They're going to give it away for free before Spore launches, just to get people involved and making creatures. If they're right, it'll be a huge draw and a big online community will pop up simply based on making creatures with the intuitive and very funny creator – before the game even ships.

And then, says Will Wright, when the game is available, people using the creator will be automatically notified. Slick.

Speaking to Wired.com, Wright said that he doesn't mind if, for some people, this is all they do. "I might decide I want to just buy the trading card of my creature, or other things we might attach, and never buy the PC game," he said.

"So in some sense that free creature editor might become the hub of that franchise.

The PC game is just one of the big spokes off that hub."

Imagine all the possible interactions. You might have people creating creatures just to put them into movies. And you might have hardcore gamers just playing the game and exploring space. But then they might come across those characters, who've been pollinated into their worlds automatically. And then they'll click on the creature and be able to see who made it, and bring up the Sporepedia then and there to see what else this person has done, and they'll be able to watch their machinima on YouTube, right in the game. And then they'll become best friends and get married.

Okay, okay. I know this is starting to sound a little bit like Will Wright's Pee. And the issue raised in that comic is still a valid concern. All the people who sunk their lives into The Sims will love this, but as I said above – that's not my cup of tea. I even abandoned my Nintendog. So for me, as a gamer, the crucial question is, is it a fun game? Is Spore going to be engaging and enjoyable to me to play through from a cell to the center of the galaxy, from a gameplay perspective?

That, I have absolutely no idea. But I can say now that I'm really interested in finding out.

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