Spore

Spore is a multi-platform god game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multicellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. The game has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of [open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

The game is due to be released on September 5 2008 in Europe and September 7 2008 in North America.

Development
Spore was originally a working title, suggested by developer Ocean Quigley, for the game which was first referred to by the general public as Sim Everything. Even though Sim Everything was a first choice name for Wright, the title Spore stuck. Wright added it also freed him from the preconceptions another Sim title would have brought, saying "...Not putting 'Sim' in front of it was very refreshing to me. It feels like it wants to be breaking out into a completely different thing than what Sim was."

Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson joined EA Maxis on April 2, 2007 to work on Spore.

Platforms
Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions of the full Spore game have been confirmed as being in active development. Other platforms have been discussed, but have not been confirmed.

Procedural generation
Spore extensively uses procedural generation, rather than individual objects. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: "think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the 'phenotypes' of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc."

Music
The music for the game is being designed by Brian Eno, an artist famous for his work with ambient music.

Awards and acknowledgments
At E3 2005, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game. At E3 2006, Spore was awarded the following Game Critics Awards: Best PC Game, Best Original Game, and Best Simulation.

On October 8, 2006 the game, its development, and its developer were featured in an article by Steven Berlin Johnson in the Sunday New York Times magazine, titled "The Long Zoom."

Spinoffs
Two spinoffs of Spore are also being released for handheld consoles, which are to be released on the same day as the main version, for the Nintendo DS and mobile phones, which includes the iPhone. Each spinoff focuses on a single phase of gameplay, and, unlike the full game, features direct online multiplayer.

Spore Creatures
The Nintendo DS spinoff is titled Spore Creatures, focusing on the Creature phase. The game will be a 2D story-based roleplaying game as the gamer plays a creature kidnapped by a UFO and forced to survive in a strange world, with elements of Nintendogs.

Spore Mobile
The mobile phone/iPhone spinoff of Spore, as with the Nintendo DS version, will focus on a single phase of gameplay; in this case, the tide pool phase. The simplified game will allow players to try to survive as a multicellular organism in a tide pool, similar to flOw. The iPhone version takes advantage of the device's touch capabilities and 3-axis accelerometer.

Unnamed Wii Spinoff
A Wii spinoff of the game has been mentioned by Will Wright several times, such as in his October 26 2007 interview with the Guardian. Buechner confirmed it, revealing that plans for a Wii spinoff were underway, and that the game would be built from the ground up and would take advantage of the Wii remote, stating, "We're not porting it over. You know, we're still so early in design and prototyping that I don't know where we're going to end up, so I don't want to lead you down one path. But suffice to say that it's being developed with the Wii controls and technology in mind."

Expanded universe
EA has plans to expand Spore's features even further. There are plans for the creation of a type of Spore collectible card game based on the creatures, buildings, vehicles, and planets that have been created by the players. There are also indications of plans for the creation of customized creature figurines; some of those who designed their own creatures at E3 2006 later received 3D printed models of the creatures they created.