pseudorandom

At last year's Game Developers Conference, Will Wright presented Spore, his latest creation. I finally got around to watching the video a few days ago, and it's simply amazing.

I've done a few stints as a game designer during my career, and for the most part, I'm proud to say that the designs I worked on broke new ground in some way. Tom Clancy SSN (I was the original designer) was a straightforward submarine combat title, but the innovation was in using visualization to give the player a view of the world around him -- a view specifically derived from the sensor and chart data he would have available to him as captain. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (I was one of the original co-designers) was a straightforward first-person shooter title, but the innovation was in using realistic tactics and effects -- "one shot kills" was a mantra of ours. But Spore is at least an order of magnitude more innovative than anything I've worked on -- it defies existing categories and creates an entirely new game genre.

In Spore, the player progresses from guiding cellular evolution...

...to working with creatures...

...then tribes...

...then cities...

...and finally civilizations.

What might not be obvious from the screenshots, but is the focus of the video, is that Spore is astonishingly flexible and open-ended. No two players' creatures or civilizations need look alike -- in fact, I would guess that no two will ever look alike. I imagine that Will and his team are incredibly anxious to release their game into the world and see what people create. My hunch is that he wants to create a massively multiplayer world where players can go exploring to look at and interact with each others' creations.

As it turns out, Will is giving another keynote -- undoubtedly a Spore update -- at this year's Game Developers Conference, which I'll be attending in a week's time. I can't wait to see what he has to show... and hopefully we'll all be playing Spore this year.

(Spore coverage from Wired, GameSpot, and GameSpy.)