Posted By: Kaiser
Guardian Unlimited is the latest to pop up an interview with Spore developer, Will Wright. They start off describing the game's various stages, then move on to what Will refers to as "content pollination", data sharing between players. In Will's words: "Your world never runs out, you have continual expansion packs coming from other players." Here's another quote regarding Spore's vast scope.
Technology Guardian: You are working on undoubtedly your most ambitious project - the PC game Spore, which you describe as "Sim Everything".
Will Wright: Yes, Spore has five distinct stages, and mixes games genres. In the first - which is essentially a tutorial - players must design a single-cell organism which is able to survive in the wild and evolve. In the second, players design a creature which must establish itself in the game world, and evolve until it achieves sentience. The next phase is a tribal one, in which your creatures struggle to establish a city, and in which the tools you give them and the architecture you design for them define their personality. The next stage documents their increasing sophistication, and involves creating vehicles. Until, finally, they achieve the ability to travel through space and colonise or interact with other planets.
Apart from mixing action-adventure, real-time strategy and space-simulation gameplay, Spore innovates in two areas. Its central database will suck up creatures, buildings, vehicles and planets created by players and redistribute them to other players, introducing the concept of user-generated content to the gaming mainstream. And it will be the first major game to sport a "procedural" animation engine, which ensures that the creatures you design, no matter how freaky, will move realistically.
It's a good read overall, check out the latest interview with Will Wright at Guardian Unlimited.