The creatures you create in your copy of the There's not much violence in Wright's simulations, but there's plenty of interactivity. Moreover, the game puts a new twist on what's currently the hottest game craze - massively multiplayer fantasies like World of Warcraft, in which players use the Internet to bloody,īludgeon, and maim strangers they meet online.

Play your genetic cards right, and your civilization can take to space and colonize other planets and galaxies. Make friends, form tribes, and build complex civilizations. Whereas the Sims and its many expansion packs came with pre-made characters and drew onĮasily recognizable earthbound life, Spore gives players the tools to construct their own creatures, from single-cell organisms paddling through warm seas to sentient beings that can

Spore is easily Wright's most ambitious project yet (its original title was Sim-Everything). His biggest hit, the Sims, is the bestselling computer game of all time. Simulation entertainments has generated more than $2.5 billion in revenue. Starting in 1989 with his breakthrough computer game SimCity and following with titles that include SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and SimFarm, Wright's franchise of That's in part because of the oversized reputation of its creator, Will Wright, one of the world's most famous and successful Half-a-dozen critics' awards even before its release. Although it's not due out before midyear, Spore is already the most eagerly awaited computer game of 2008 - the recipient of more than As if in thanks, my little two-headed Cyclops launches into a sort of victory dance. It took me less than three minutes to create the beast from a palate of clay-colored parts, and only a few swishes and clicks of a mouse to rearrange its arms and heads in a moreĬonventional order. 'You attached the arms to the head,' says Theresa Duringer, one of the people helping finish Spore, the computer program that gave birth to this fully animated, if sad-looking, being. This poor creature has arms stuck around itsĮars, raised up and flapping comically in the wind, like a Hell's Angel riding a chopper with impossibly high handlebars. That was probably a howl of embarrassment. It lets out a howl and bounds off its marbleized perch into a prehistoric forest.

(Fortune Magazine) - A gray-and-red-spotted lizardlike creature with two heads peers at me from the computer screen through eyes located, Cyclops-style, in the center of eachįorehead.

Spore game eyes