Word: spore
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Spore has an educational side as well. Indeed, it is a biology lesson in disguise. After viewing the launch video at www.spore.com, Professor of Biological Anthropology Richard W. Wrangham said, “It looks like a wonderful way to view evolutionary theory through fun, and it might make people realize that human beings are just another species.” Given the time, Wrangham said he too would play the game...
...Spore has evolutionary professors, Harvard students, and many more intrigued—and for good reasons. If you thought Harvard students were a weird species, check out the free Creature Creator on Spore’s Web site. God doesn’t play dice with the universe, but would...
...turn the entire history of life into a video game without wrestling with some heavy philosophical questions, but Wright seems to have steered a middle course that avoids both religious and evolutionary blasphemy. You could read Spore equally easily as a model of evolution or of intelligent design, with you in the role of Intelligent Designer. (O.K., it's a bit blasphemous.) "A game like this can actually generate interesting, meaningful conversations between people," Wright says. "I think that's the best thing...
They'll talk about it, but will people actually want to play Spore? In June, Wright released the game's creature-design module as a free download. He thought he might see a million designs by the end of the year. Instead, he got a million in the first week. "Eighteen days after we released it, we'd exceeded the number of known species on Earth," he says. "I thought that was a nice metric." Wright also discovered that he'd inadvertently created a new art form: Spore-nography. People were using Spore to create creatures that looked like, well...
...Sims, people told stories about their private lives. Spore should lend itself to very different kinds of narratives. "I think Spore is going to be closer to Tolkien or Lucas or Kubrick," Wright says, "in terms of these very epic stories about the meaning of life and its destination." What's interesting about Wright is that he doesn't have to be Tolkien or Lucas or Kubrick. He wants you to be. "I'm a little different from a lot of other game designers in that I'm never interested in trying to tell a story," he explains...