Sims creator Will Wright has announced that he is working on a new game---Spore: the game of evolution.
In the game, players start off as an amoeba in a 2D world, reminiscent of some early video games.
The aim is to grow and evolve generations of creatures, with players able to choose the physical attributes of their creation.
"You get to play every generation of the creature," said Mr Wright. "I want something boys can make scary things or casual gamers can make cute things."
He said the computer would analyse a creature's design and work out how it should behave.
In the demonstration, Mr Wright created a three-legged creature and said the software would work out how it should walk.
"This is the hardest piece of technology I have ever had to solve," he said.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I enjoyed playing around with Creatures, but grew frustrated with my inability to get the little guys to eat. They would die of starvation (or illness) and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. But I loved the concept. Maybe I'll dig out my copy of Creatures 3 sometime and try again.
With the Spore game, I have to wonder: how with the Intelligent Design/Creationist folks deal with it? Will the game be banned from households because it teaches about that evilution idea? Will there be boycotts of stores that sell the game? Will its release be touted as one more example of how we have turned from God's ways, this time by trying to play God?
Or will it be championed by some as actually providing proof for an intelligent designer? If the logic of people like Michael Behe provide indication, I'll be willing to say 'yes'. After all, the game clearly requires the input of a player to determine the physical characteristics of the creature. I can see the argument now:
Q. What evidence is there for Intelligent Design?
A. Our investigations of the body, at the biochemical level, clearly show that we are composed of, literally, many tiny machines. Biologists even admit that they are machines! And have you ever seen a machine that wasn't designed by someone? No, of course not! Therefore, when we see machines such as we do in our cells, we must conclude that they had a designer.
But what's more, physicists tell us that we can view the universe as one big computer, each atom representing a bit of information. They have even estimated the computational power of the universe. But the computer game Spore, a game about evolution, requires a designer for input. So just as we need a designer to play Spore, we also need a designer to play the computer 'game' that the universe is carrying out all around us.
Actually, according to this 1UP article and this PC Games article, Spore will probably have relatively little to do with evolution as scientists know it. In any event, it looks like an interesting game.
