Spore Release Date Announced

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When I first heard of Spore, the concept intrigued me. The core idea behind this game is to create a life form and follow it's evolution from a single cell to civilization to inter galactic travel. Players are given tools to create their creature as well as virtually everything else including buildings, trees, vehicles and other objects. Players will be able to create a dynamic, evolving universe of their imaginations. This is accomplished through various intuitive editors that are simple and easy to learn but powerful enough to facilitate great creativity. This ambitious concept came from Will Wright, a legendary game designer. He first became famous when he created Sim City, a game where the player is able to start their own city and manage every single detail of its growth. He was also the designer of Sims which gave players ability to create their own person and develop all aspects of their Sim's life. When Spore, originally code named "Sim Everything", was announced it had the whole gaming community buzzing with excitement.

Originally slated to be released in April of 2007, Spore was plagued by delays and set backs. When last year it was announced that it was getting pushed back to 2008 many thought that Spore was joining the ranks of other ambitious projects that never make into reality. However Electornics Arts cleared those fears when it announced the release date for this September 7th 2008. Furthermore they are simultaneously releasing it on PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and a cell phones.

For 10 years, while designing this game, Will Wright researched things like art, biology, evolution and other deep topics that are not usually associated with games. In an interview he was quoted as saying that this was his dream project, that one game he always wanted to create. If this game is as successful as it is expected to be, it will create a new genre in games called Massively Singleplayer Online.

The reason behind that new term is that Spore is a single player game at its core. However, all of the content is created by other players and will be procedurally imported into the user's gaming universe. In Massively Multiplayer Online games such as World of Warcraft where you are directly interacting with others online. In Spore you are never directly interacting with other players, but the content of your world is populated using the things others have created. This concept has never successfully been tried before and if Will Wright gets it right with Spore, he will not only create another instant classic but also blaze a brave new path for other game designers to follow.