Spring Break
Playing God while playing 'Spore'
by Wei Huan Chen
Staff Writer
Arts | 10/7/08
Posted online at 9:56 PM EST on 10/6/08
/ Last updated at 3:19 AM EST on 10/6/08
Spore for Windows and Mac is a game in which the player creates a single-celled organism and proceeds to guide the creature to sentience, civilization and eventually galactic domination. It was developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright, the renowned brainpower behind The Sims and SimCity.
When the highly anticipated life-simulation game was first announced, there was already controversy concerning Spore's treatment of intelligent design versus evolution. Now that this multi-genre game has been on the market for a month, people are taking more pronounced sides in the debate.
The concept of the game revolves around both the creation and evolution of life. At the start of each stage, the player is prompted to create his creature. He can manipulate the creature's size, bone structure and features: arms, legs, mouths, eyes and natural weapons. User-created content, or the element of the game that consists of "playing God," is central to Spore; the role of the player is, essentially, to be an intelligent designer, and this is why Christianpost.com stated in a September article that the game "helps players understand intelligent design" and that the "intelligent design community… says [the game] supports their cause."
But the creature's evolution also plays a vital part in the game. In fact, the only way to progress in Spore is through the creature's development. The player discovers new body parts that either give new abilities or enhance old ones, and sooner or later the creature's brain size increases, and your creation becomes capable of making tools and socializing.
The game-makers were not oblivious to this argument of intelligent design and evolution. In their official TV ad, the voice-over casually remarks, "Do you believe in Creatiolutionism?" addressing the presence of both creation and evolution in the game. Will Wright, a "strong evolutionist-basically atheist," as stated in an interview with Paste Magazine, remarks in the same interview that Spore started off as a prototype "where creatures were evolving out of your control and you were picking from a selected set of mutations of your creature." The designer also told USA Today that the world created by Spore players is "definitely not a creationist universe." However, Wright believes that "players with either evolution or creationist views would find that Spore could accommodate both," as cited by GameDaily.
When the highly anticipated life-simulation game was first announced, there was already controversy concerning Spore's treatment of intelligent design versus evolution. Now that this multi-genre game has been on the market for a month, people are taking more pronounced sides in the debate.
The concept of the game revolves around both the creation and evolution of life. At the start of each stage, the player is prompted to create his creature. He can manipulate the creature's size, bone structure and features: arms, legs, mouths, eyes and natural weapons. User-created content, or the element of the game that consists of "playing God," is central to Spore; the role of the player is, essentially, to be an intelligent designer, and this is why Christianpost.com stated in a September article that the game "helps players understand intelligent design" and that the "intelligent design community… says [the game] supports their cause."
But the creature's evolution also plays a vital part in the game. In fact, the only way to progress in Spore is through the creature's development. The player discovers new body parts that either give new abilities or enhance old ones, and sooner or later the creature's brain size increases, and your creation becomes capable of making tools and socializing.
The game-makers were not oblivious to this argument of intelligent design and evolution. In their official TV ad, the voice-over casually remarks, "Do you believe in Creatiolutionism?" addressing the presence of both creation and evolution in the game. Will Wright, a "strong evolutionist-basically atheist," as stated in an interview with Paste Magazine, remarks in the same interview that Spore started off as a prototype "where creatures were evolving out of your control and you were picking from a selected set of mutations of your creature." The designer also told USA Today that the world created by Spore players is "definitely not a creationist universe." However, Wright believes that "players with either evolution or creationist views would find that Spore could accommodate both," as cited by GameDaily.
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