Play God With “Spore”
Starting September, you will have the option to play God with Will Wright’s latest brainchild Spore, where players start as microscopic life forms competing for survival in primordial ooze and work their way onto land, where they evolve into creatures that build civilizations and rocket into space, mimicking pretty much the way our own civilization has evolved.
Players also get to dictate how their animated characters evolve - for instance, creatures can have scales, fins, wings, claws, extra appendages, additional eyes, or body parts in unexpected places.
The online game’s programming also gives characters artificial intelligence and figures out how they should walk, laugh, dance, fight or do other things based on what they look like - for example, a creature given fangs will be more hostile than one with teeth for grazing. Creatures pass on virtual genes to their progeny and build civilizations with cities, governments and economies. Pretty much the entire game is user created, much like The Sims, the earlier game by Will Wright, and which, according to Electronic Arts has recently sold more it 100 millionth copy.
“It is more of a social experiment,” Wright said. “Science, economics, sociology, things like that are very fun to simulate in the computer.”
The game culminates with what Wright describes as a “toy galaxy” for players to explore. [Via]
Do I hear a number of researchers waiting with bated breath for its release?
View a talk by Will Wright at TED Talks here.
Filed under: Emerging Tech, Ideas & Innovations, News