Even as I type, teams of misshapen, feather-crested spidergoats are ferrying the Gold disc over to the DVD factory with a note from Will Wright and a calender with a big red ring around September 7th.

The 'proper' versions of Spore for the PC & Mac will be accompanied by Spore Creatures for the Nintendo DS. iPhone owners will get their callused multi-touching fingers on Spore Origins on September 4th.

Spore Goes Gold, Definitely Arriving September 7 [Shacknews]

If you didn't get to pick up MySims for the Wii your in luck because it is coming to the PC. In the game you will get to create original characters, build towns, and grow a community. Expect it to hit stores in October.

Oh, and as an added bonus the trailer features the same creepy children from the SimCity Creator trailer we posted last week.

In a new interview with Level Up, Wright explains why letting users create their own Spore creatures was so key to the experience:

You never really hear game players telling each other about the cool cut-scene they saw in the games they are playing but they’re always talking about the cool unique things they discovered to do on their own. By focusing on giving the players narrative freedom the game becomes more immersive and they show a much higher degree of ownership and authorship over the experience.

Wright said there've been 500,000 user-generated creatures made using Spore's creature creator. No small sum. In fact, guess how long it would have taken Maxis to make that many all by themselves?

Using traditional tools like most game developers (Maya, 3d Max) it would typically take a professional artist a couple of days to make a Spore-like creature. A large art team might have as many as 50 artists working on a project so to create 500K creatures that team would have taken about 55 years.

Welcoming Our New Sweatshop Overlords, Part I: Will Wright On Outsourcing Content Production To the Players of Spore [Level Up, and pic credit]

It's a "programmable cellular automata simulator" which EA says lets players make grid simulations à la SimCity. Fancy words in the announcement like "chemical stoichiometry" means Biome simulates changes that take place in cells when they're exposed to new variables, similar to the way some chemicals change their state when exposed to other chemicals.

EA says Maxis built prototypes like these initially to explore design directions for the game, and is now letting gamers mess with the machinery to check out some of these early ideas. More are set to be released in the coming weeks.

Full announcement after the jump.

EA News Alert

To whet Spore fans’ appetites as the September 7th launch date draws near, the Maxis team has released BIOME, the latest in a series of early, concept defining Spore prototypes that are available for free play.

BIOME, which can be downloaded at http://community.spore.beta.online.ea.com/comm/prototypes, is a programmable cellular automata simulator that allows players to develop simple "SimCity-like" grid simulations. Inspired by John Conway's "Game of Life" program, BIOME uses a language based on chemical stoichiometry and simulates how cells change their state the same way that chemicals change when exposed to other chemicals. BIOME supports both rectangular and spiral cellular automata configurations.

Throughout the planning and development of Spore, Maxis explored countless design directions in gameplay, simulation and user interface. One of the ways in which they explored possible design directions was by building simple, playable prototypes that were used to get a sense for a particular system. Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but Maxis decided to give gamers a “golden ticket” to get an inside look at their creative process. Make sure to check back for more Spore prototypes in the coming weeks!

Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers.

Still The Sims, now with a shiny 3 after it. If you're interested in all things Simlish then you probably want to take a gander at the offical E3 Sims 3 trailer, sent over to our tower fresh this morning. What does this have, Sim faithful, that would make me want to drop whatever other Sims game I happen to be currently playing?

The full Spore, as we've talked about in detail before, is broken down into five phases which allow you to take a single-cell organism and run it all the way up the evolutionary ladder to a space-exploring civilization.

My concern, after watching the Spore demonstration in Leipzig last year, was that the game wouldn't live up to the spectacular creation tools that are so integral to Spore. I worried that it may be more of a series of toys strung together than a full-blown game.

My time with the game managed to ease some of those concerns.

I decided to start Spore as you should, at the cellular level, controlling an organism floating aimlessly in a sea of life.

This stage of the game, which took me about 20 minutes to play through, felt an awful lot like flow. In it I moved my organism around avoiding larger critters and eating smaller ones. I also tried to find bits of meteorites to gobble up which would give me evolutionary abilities.

After enough attacks or gathering enough bits of rock I earned the DNA I needed to add on new bits to me creature. Initially I gave him a set of pincers for attacking, later I added a bulb that produced poison when he was attacked and extra limbs for faster swimming.

The game, like flow, took place among layers of a 2D environment in an almost through-the-microscope point of view. As I grew I floated up the layers towards the surface of the pool. Eventually, I was able to evolve and make it to land.

This initially cell level, while short, was quite fun to play.

Once I made it to land, I was asked to modify my creature with a set of legs. Oblivious to the placement of his mouth, which pointed straight down, and his eyes, which pointed straight out, I accidentally misplaced my unfortunate creature's legs. When he took to land, I saw that his mouth jutted out straight down from his rounded torso. Imagine my surprise when my little mistake attacked his first creature with a series of short, angry squats... That's right, my new lifeform had to teabag people to kill them. Oh the humanity.

After getting over the initial shock of what I had just created, I spent an inordinate amount of time running around teabagging other unsuspecting creatures to death. You'd be surprised just how much time you can burn playing a game that allows you to kill things in that particular manner. I tried my best to get Wright's attention, to show him my creature, but I suspect he wanted nothing to do with it.

In this second phase you spend most of you time hunting for smaller creatures to complete quests of a sort and earn DNA and body parts. Again, fun to play, though a bit short lived.

The next stage, which I didn't test out, is the Tribe stage which has you controlling an entire tribe of your creatures, issuing commands to them and evolving their technology. It's in this stage that you can create some pretty amazing buildings. I saw a collection of them and was blown away with what you can do. For instance, a factory made to look like a turn-of-the-century detective in an alley with trashcans nearby, the building's smoke coming out of the detective's pipe. Or a city building made to look like a young couple sitting on a park bench. It was pretty spectacular stuff.

The game's final phase is space exploration, which I managed to tinker with for a few minutes. Long enough, at least, to see that space ships can also take any form, like a jumping Mario.

My time with the game was painfully shorty, enough to tantalize and perhaps put some fears to rest. Is it worth the price, likely, will it be the next Sims? Too early to tell.

Earlier in the day Wright told us that Spore was a way for him to "convey interesting concepts in fun ways" a game of an entire universe, something that makes a game editor a toy and becomes a "creativity amplifier."

With more than 1 million creatures already created with Spore's Creature Creator, and Wright expecting the number of creatures to exceed the population of Earth by launch time, I think it's fair to say Wright nailed what he was going for.

That Spore poster had better have a large image of Will Wright sporting his best denim on at least one side and have a scratch 'n' sniff patch that reeks of Wright's brand of cigarettes. We appreciate the finer things in life, too, you know.

Spore Galactic Edition [GameStop]

[Sporepedia]

BUSTED! "Boobalicious" Banned! [GamesRadar]

I've managed to avoid the Creature Creator for the most part myself, but this launch trailer sucked me in as soon as I heard the bizarre little critters making cute squeaking noises. I am a complete sucker for cute squeaking noises, as my dating history is sure to prove.

SPORE CREATURE CREATOR AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE TODAY

Spore Creature Creator Kicks off the Countdown to the Release of Spore this September

Redwood City, CA – June 17, 2008 – Prepare to test the limits of your imagination! Maxis, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio, today released the Spore™ Creature Creator, an introduction to the highly-anticipated and groundbreaking video game, Spore™ which will ship worldwide this September.

Available today for both PC and Mac, the Spore Creature Creator is a stand-alone product and creativity toy box where players create their own unique creatures, bring them to life with entertaining animations, and share them online with friends around the world. The full version of the Spore Creature Creator will be available for $9.99 at retail stores or by visiting www.spore.com. A free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator is also available today at www.spore.com. The trial version features 25% of the creature-making parts from Spore and lets players shape, paint and play with their custom-created creatures. Creatures made in the Spore Creature Creator can also be imported into the full Spore game, allowing players to populate their own galaxies when the game ships worldwide later this year.

The Spore Creature Creator lets players create their own creatures, take them on a test drive, snap pictures, and make movies of them. Sharing pictures or videos with friends is as easy as the click of a button. Players can also share their creations with others by uploading to the Sporepedia™ at www.Spore.com. The Sporepedia is an extraordinarily vast online destination where people worldwide can search for and share Spore creations, comment on other player’s designs, check out celebrity creature creations and much more.

“Today is the day we begin to see Spore come to life,” said Executive Producer and General Manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw. “We’re excited to see what players will do with the powerful and intuitive creativity tools we’ve put into the Spore Creature Creator. Our team will be excitedly keeping an eye on the Sporepedia to check out creations made by players from around the world.”

The ability to upload players’ creations to YouTube™ has also been integrated into the Spore Creature Creator. Players can import and upload video of their creatures' moves directly to YouTube with only two clicks within the game. Spore will have its own YouTube Channel where all videos of users' creations uploaded from the game will be showcased for the YouTube community to watch, share, rate and comment on. Check it out at http://youtube.com/spore.

Love your creature so much you want the entire world to see? Post it to your blog for people to check out, even create an avatar for your favorite social networking site. And if you want to see your creature come to life in the real world – now you can! Visit www.zazzle.com/sporestore to upload your creature and turn it into a custom coffee mug, t-shirt, magnet, stickers and more! Zazzle allows you to instantly create cool products for your creature so you can take your creature on the go, wherever you go!

Spore, the highly-anticipated game from the creators of The Sims™, gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

The Spore Creature Creator is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB. The downloadable demo version is free. The complete version has an MSRP of $9.99 in North America. Spore ships for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS™ and mobile phones on September 5, 2008 in Europe and September 7, 2008 in North America and Asia. Visit www.Spore.com to download a free version of the Spore Creature Creator, sign up for the Spore newsletter or check out all-new screenshots and videos from the game.

Windows XP
2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
512 MB RAM
A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
At least 6 GB of hard drive space

Windows Vista
2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
768 MB RAM
A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
At least 6 GB of hard drive space

Mac OS X
Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
Intel Core Duo Processor
1024 MB RAM
ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
At least 4.7GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for creations.

The official site warns that the Mac disk space requirements for Spore are subject to change. It also has a fairly exhaustive list of supported video cards for both camps. You good to go? I am!

Spore Specs [Official Site]

We're just a week away from the Spore Creature Creator going public, meaning it wouldn't hurt to brush up on the SimEverything bestiary before you get your mouse pointer on it.

Sporepedia [Spore.com]

Indulge your Sims with an office that is sure to promote order and productivity with its elegant Vika Hyttan desk, inspiring Kila desk lamp, bold Helmer drawer unit, and Lack zigzag wallshelf.

The software itself will allow you to create unlimited models, share these models and export wallpapers and videos of said models. Creature animations can also be tested in a dull, lifeless environment. It's a neat idea from Maxis, but just give the full version away free with pre-orders or something. The more I hear about this tiny piece of Spore, the more I see it getting set up to disappoint people who pay for it.

More Spore Creature Creator Details [IGN via Joystiq]

Looks like we may get our first real look at chapter three in the amazing Sims saga as early as March 19, just two weeks from today. That's according to EA's teaser site, which provides all the information you've seen in this very post, but it appears that Sim jewel icon rendering is going to be just stunning!

The Sims 3 Coming Soon! [EA]

It was as always, a treat to watch. It was also, as always, something that leaves you perhaps with less of an idea of what he's on about than before he started talking.

Check out the clip which shows the talk in all of it's more than 30-minutes glory and stay, at least, until you get to his now infamous Russian Space Minute.

The preview also shows off Spore's content browser, a web app that lays out user and Maxis generated content. Highlighted here are a few interesting, holiday themed items like a building shaped like a Christmas tree and a UFO built in the shape of... well, I won't spoil it. Just watch.

The largest factor, though, was dealing with the millions of regular gamers out there who might not have the gaming know-how to actually play a game like Spore should it arrive with an inaccessible interface. Wright tells Croal that "probably the biggest design challenge was keeping it very accessible to players so that every bit of the game was intuitive, easy and approachable."

But the most gee-whiz stuff, the kind of additions that make such a long development understandable come in Wright's descriptions of Spore's "pollinated content." He explains, "I can make a buddy list, and it will try to put my buddy's content in my universe at a higher priority. I can subscribe to Sporecasts, which are aggregations of content that players have decided to basically organize themselves. Also, when I get a card for a piece of content—whether it be mine or somebody else's—at any time I can open that card and leave a comment on the card, and the person who made that content will get the comment."

In other, Wright-fanboy words—awesome.

Level Up's Q&A with Wright, split into two parts, is just packed with interesting reading. Reading his thoughts and getting an insight into Spore's lengthy development seems almost as much fun as playing it. Guess we'll know in September.

Exclusive: Will Wright Gives Level Up the Scoop On Why Spore Is Taking So Long to Get Right—And Why It Will Be Worth the Wait, Part I and Part II [Level Up]

But what not many people know about Spore is that the experience lasts just five hours before you are done with a majority of the game's features. Yeah, from all of that cute character creation to the large scale city dynamics, it's over pretty quick.

"I waited in line, where's the ride?"
"The line is the ride."

So where is the ride in Spore? Four of the five stages, which Crecente recently detailed more than I will here, are done shortly after they begin. As soon as you get used to walking, you are founding a society. And as soon as you get used to conquering other societies, you get the fuck off the planet.

The effect is like watching highlights from the history of Maxis, a sort of Will Wright Cliffsnotes™ version—everything you may have missed from Sim Earth, Sim City and The Sims in an afternoon. But simultaneously, it seems like Maxis has cut out the very heart of what makes these games "Sim" titles: the actual time spent...Simming.

On-planet RTS elements like vehicle battles and defense towers are simplified to what looks like a casual RTS—if such a genre exists—resembling less the metaphorical game of paper, scissors rock while leaning toward the more literal interpretation.

The payoff, therefore, needs to be the fifth level of Spore: space. It's here where players will spend hours 6-infinity conquering civilizations on a planetary scale, with each planet comprised of single player campaigns from players around the globe.

While we know that in space there will be missions to complete, I don't think that Maxis is showing anything about it at GC '07 other than a few scraps of video.

So there are two ways Spore could fold out.

1. We've all been duped. The first four levels are but an homage to what's been done, with the fifth level starting the real game, William Wright's unsung opus to be revealed in full in the coming months...the real Spore.

or

2. Spore kinda blows.

We'll still be waiting for Spore's late 2008 release that could easily spill over to 2009. Oh, I meant to say you'll still be waiting for Spore's late 2008 release. We'll be playing it in Leipzig. (And telling you all about it and feeling guilty because you aren't there and calling you late and bringing back a snow globe or something in repentance and XOXOXO.)

Spore playable at Leipzig [gamespot]

I don't know who has read the internet, yesterday. In a [unintelligible] panel I said a bunch of things. I was trying to be thought provoking and entertaining and fun and a lot of the stuff went too far over the top—on the entertaining and fun side, so that it was no longer thought provoking, just inflammatory. And in the process I hurt a bunch of people I care about. And so, I want to apologize now.

When I'm on stage, I'm me. I'm talking talk from me. From me. I'm not representing EA or Maxis.

I want to make two things perfectly clear.

I do not think the Wii is a piece of shit. Nintendo needs to be applauded for trying to interface on the controller front, the user interface front, on making games accessible, on making a console that you don't need to mortgage your house to afford.

Secondly, it's totally obvious—and I'm sorry that I implied otherwise—that everyone at Nintendo is passionate at making great games. Some of the games give me hope that we will be seen as an art form on par with movies and books.

Whether or not he was made to apologize by his bosses isn't clear, but it's a good gesture nonetheless. Jason Chen

Spore man and media darling Will Wright will be one of the speakers at next week's DICE Summit in Henderson, Nevada. Will's speech will focus on the staffing of the Spore development and is appropriately titled "I am not alone in this universe: Will Wright speaks on building the SPORE team" and goes down on Thursday, February 8 at 2:45 PM.

Also wowing the DICE crowd one day later with his insight into the game development process is iNiS co-founder Keiichi Yano. His company is responsible for the awesome music games Gitaroo Man and Elite Beat Agents and will speak on, you guessed it, music in games with "Yeah! The Mathematics of Music and the Emotion of Game Design." Killer.

Guess what? I'll be there, with a seat up front. Our coverage of DICE starts next Wednesday when I drive into town, ready to interview developers, executives and industry professionals who will in turn, ask me "How did you get so handsome?" I shan't give away my secrets! Michael McWhertor

WILL WRIGHT TO REVEAL INSIGHTS ON FORMING THE TEAM THAT BREATHES LIFE INTO SPORE AT D.I.C.E. SUMMIT 2007

CALABASAS, Calif. - January 31, 2007 - Creating a game about creation takes more than just the hands of a legend, the world renowned Will Wright called upon a team of developers to bring the highly anticipated, SPORE to life. Wright shares his philosophy on forming this development team at the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit 2007. Wright's presentation, "I am not alone in this universe: Will Wright speaks on building the SPORE team," will take place on Tuesday, February 8 at 2:45 p.m.

Will Wright is Maxis' chief designer and co-founder. Wright's SimCity—The City Simulator garnered 24 domestic and international awards. Wright followed up this blockbuster with SimEarth—The Living Planet, SimAnt—The Electronic Ant Colony, SimCity 2000, SimCopterare, SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4. Wright's groundbreaking game The Sims became a cultural phenomenon. In September 2004, The Sims 2 sold more than 1 million copies in the first 10 days worldwide - becoming the fastest selling PC game ever.

Wright, an inductee of the AIAS Hall of Fame, will join a line up of high-profile speakers, including Doug Lowenstein of the ESA, Phil Harrison of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games. The D.I.C.E. Summit will be held at the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas, Feb. 7 - 9, 2007.

GameBrink has posted the box art and some new screens of the Japanese version of SimCity DS, which include the first look at the game's own anime tour guide, encephalitic Will Wright. His head is so huge! If the game ever gets released stateside there'd better be a bobble head preorder promotion.

As we've said before, the game is based off of the PC version of SimCity 3000, and includes new multiplayer functions to spice up the mix. While it was exciting enough to have the power to cultivate and then ultimately destroy a major metropolitan area in the palm of your hand, the prospect of having a tiny Will Wright in your pocket definitely seals the deal.

Sadly there is still no word on a US release of SimCity DS, but with the game set to release in Japan in late February you still have two months to bone up on your Nihongo. Catch the box art, after the jump!

Can't get any more to the point than that, can you? Michael Fahey

Sim City DS Box & Screens [GameBrink]

Some lucky bastard over at Next-Gen.biz actually got their monkey hands on the playable bits of Spore, and lived to breathlessly relate the experience.

Early indications suggest that Spore's gameplay should live up to the hype - with the super-friendly yet powerful editors and the space phase offering particularly rich rewards.

The author had access to all the currently functional aspects of the game, such as the creature editor and life simulator, and the spacetravel endgame. He was not able to play the microorganism stage or the tribal stage, unfortunately.

Another interesting little tidbit:

It may not be there in the same form in the final game, but you could also hit a menu item and send your creature to Maxis' 3D printer, which automatically creates a model of it. It is likely that a model-making service (which will probably require payment) will be available when the game appears.

The information on this feature is limited to these few sentences, with no word on how big the models could be, or how detailed, or if color would be possible. But this sounds like the perfect geek addiction: verbatim models of your own in-game creations.

One thing that's been bugging me about all the screenshots I see is the ugly, chunky style of the creatures. I hope this is a user thing and not a gamewide, enforced aesthetic. Eliza gauger

Spore: Hands-On [NextGen, via Digg]

Man, those EA Maxis folks must really love VG Cats. The latest VG Cats comic is about Spore and how fucked up it would be to live in a world created by ass-obsessed 12-year-olds. Funny stuff and filled with tons of cartoons of ass-festooned creatures.

EA Maxis loved it so much they decided to replace the illustrations with identical in-game art of creatures made inside the game itself. In other words, Spore has an Ass-For-Eyes option. Sweet! Brian Crecente

Wight to Life [VG Cats]