Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 4, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Today, game developer Electronic Arts (EA) will release “Spore,” already eagerly anticipated by the gaming community, on the German market. The title, conceived by The Sims creator Will Wright, has been in development since 2005. During the long wait, Spore received countless advance accolades. Industry experts described it as “the next computer-game masterpiece,” and the game had already received two Game Critics Awards at the world’s most important video-game trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). At this year’s Games Convention in Leipzig, Spore also won the awards for “best PC game” and “best game of the show.” “The community’s expectations are admittedly very high. However, we are confident that the experienced team around Will Wright has used the time well to create a very special game,” Spore PR Manager Daniel Feld told pressetext.de.
“Spore is a small universe in a box,” Feld says, explaining the distinguishing feature of the presumed masterpiece. Players actively accompany a cartoon-like species of their own creation through its evolutionary development. Every stage of evolution is represented, from the first movements in the primordial soup and the first step onto land as a creature, to civilized cities and the colonization of space. The game offers a previously unknown abundance of creative possibilities. “Spore turns players into game designers. They can not only reshape evolution according to their tastes, but can also use the central Spore server to populate the planets of other Spore players around the world with the creatures, buildings, and spacecraft they have individually created,” Feld says. Other strengths include the game’s appeal across age groups, its thematic ambition, and its lovingly realized visuals.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Spore’s success is an important pillar of EA’s future revenue growth. Given the enormous hype surrounding the game, anything short of “blockbuster success”—generally defined for PC games as sales of one million copies—would be a serious blow to EA. When asked about this, the game publisher remained relaxed. “We are optimistic that Spore will excite many players,” Feld replied briefly. According to the report, the title also has major significance in another respect: Spore gives EA a strong opportunity to demonstrate to the gaming community that it is an “innovation powerhouse.”
Not only the game itself but also Spore’s marketing has been particularly well conceived. To shorten the wait for the title’s completion, EA released the accompanying creature editor in June. This “Spore Creature Creator,” intended to give users an advance look at the title’s creative possibilities, was received extremely well by the user community. More than 2.5 million different virtual creatures have reportedly already been created. “If you like, the release of the Spore Creature Creator was the actual birth of Spore. From that moment, players began designing creatures and using them to populate other planets,” Feld concludes.