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Game developer Will Wright, who created classic titles like the SimCity and the Sims series, is the behind the existence simulation. Players use a creature creator to guide an organism through five stages of development, recreating evolution from single-cell organisms to modern space exploration.
The game has sold more than 1 million copies since its September release, and Sporepedia, the Spore wiki, is the host to more than 33 million user-created creatures, vehicles and buildings.
Video game reviewers gave the program generally high marks. Gamespot.com's review gave Spore a score of 8 out of 10, saying the game had an impressively broad scope and “oozes charm,” but that certain game play elements are extremely simple.
Combining game genres
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Spore begins in a Pac-man style cellular stage, where simple organisms compete to survive. |
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Spore wraps up several different game genres into one in order to simulate evolution.
Players start in a Pac-man type environment, avoiding predators and searching for food. Players can eventually upgrade their creature by eating "DNA,” earning enough points to crawl out of the primordial soup. They can then use the creature creator to physically shape their creature as it evolves in stages.
In the later stages of the game, players create complex civilizations with unique buildings and vehicles, eventually developing spacecraft that allow for travel to unexplored galaxies where other civilizations can be befriended or destroyed.
Fun biology?
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In the middle stages of the game, players can watch their creatures evolve on land and compete with other player-created beings. |
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Just as in the evolution theory, which holds that life on earth is the result of billions of years of competition and adaptation, players must compete with other organisms and adapt to changing environments.
Success depends on choosing the right combination of rear spikes for protection, a tail for propulsion or a mouth for eating new types of food.
As players evolve into larger creatures, they can transform their species with any number of limbs, wings and eyes, choosing what they think will help them compete against other player-made creatures in an online universe.
Educational value
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Spore creator Will Wright designed the game primarily for entertainment purposes. |
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Educators are mixed over whether Spore belongs in the classroom.
Professor Peter Rillero of Arizona State University wrote on his blog, which focuses on using technology to teach science, that the mechanics of the creature creation in Spore did not accurately reflect how evolution works.
“The notion of evolution as making choices, as deciding to come out of the water to be a land creature and therefore deciding what appendages to gain, and the thought that the more DNA you eat the more evolved are so wrong that I wonder why Will Wright considers this to be science inspired?” Rillero wrote.
However, University of Florida associate professor of geology Joe Meert said games like Spore “are a natural place for students to gravitate to.”
“Even the things that (Spore) gets wrong, it could be a teachable moment. Here's something the game gets wrong. Why is it wrong?” Meert told Education Week magazine.
Teaching evolution itself has been a controversial topic in some communities. Most scientists agree that evolutionary theory plays a crucial role in understanding multiple disciplines in modern science. However, some religious and conservative groups have fought to have intelligent design -- which posits that life is too complex to have developed without the influence of a "designer" -- taught alongside evolution in science classrooms.
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American schools and financial aid should be only for legal citizens of the United States. There should be no exceptions to this.
