Spore
Through the eyes of right-hand lady, Lucy Bradshaw.
Spore is either accompanied by sweeping statements proclaiming its genius or by confused faces wondering what all the fuss is about. It's certainly ambitious. And early last week - Tuesday for those who like specifics - we were treated to the first stage of its launch: the Spore Creature Creator.
The entire game hinges around making your own beasties, so getting you familiar with the controls and watching the community start to grow and share its creations is a canny idea. Or is it? Is there a chance we may have had our fill by the time the full game launches in September? Might we be a bit bored?
Eager to hear more, we tracked down Spore executive producer Lucy Bradshaw for an email interview (so, questionnaire) to talk about playing god and just how much of an impact this potentially revolutionary game expects to have. Hear what she has to say today and then check back tomorrow for our considered verdict on the Creature Creator itself.
We made a decision early on to launch the Spore Creature Creator ahead of the core SKU because we knew it was a great way to introduce people to the idea of Spore as a whole. Also, by starting with this fun little bite we are getting head start at building the Spore community as players share their creations and interact with each other at Spore.com. The Spore Creature Creator is quite literally the beginning of the launch of Spore and introduces the brand in a really fun and easily accessible way. We can't wait to see what people will create starting this week!
User-created content is certainly a hot trend for many companies right now, but Will Wright and my team has understood the creative power of our fans for years through working on The Sims and SimCity games. Players have this great desire to take these games and really make them their own, tell their own stories and that is a very compelling place to be.
People are going to be astounded at what they can create with the Spore Creature Creator - they're far more creative than they may think! I've personally put the Creature Creator in the hands of a 5 year-old child, as well as in the hands of my 70 year-old mother. They both had so much fun seeing their creativity come to life, I'm certain people will be pleasantly surprised once they get their hands on the Spore Creature Creator.
In Spore your creature's parts actually impact gameplay. So while creatures that look interesting can get a lot of laughs, what the creature can actually do in the game is very important.
The Creators in Spore, including the Creature Creator, are probably the single most iterated part of the game. We spent a great deal of time prototyping and then testing prototypes and iterating on these until we had successful use by people outside the team. We were doing usability testing of the creators when Will first announced Spore, which was three years ago. I believe the team did a great job of making the interface intuitive and I think people will be surprised at how easily they create Creatures and ultimately Buildings, Vehicles, Spaceships and more that they are really happy with.