Will Wright’s Vision for Spore
I’ve linked some friends to this video of Will Wright discussing his upcoming game Spore, and I also linked to it in the comments to this post about the IDers trying to claim it for their own. (Which is completely asinine, as Tyler explains.)
The reason I like it is that it shows what the game is all about, which is translating a passion for real, actual science (which ID, I need not tell the folks who read this blog, is emphatically not) into the idiom Wright is familiar with, namely video games. It’s not meant to be a perfect representation of biological evolution, because of course such a representation would have no room for a player in it. It’d be a fish tank simulation, which would no doubt be kind of fun to watch, but has less impact than a more interactive experience would provide.
For that matter, Wright seems far less interested in biological evolution per se than in the behaviour that emerges from biological novelties. Spore, then, is less a game about how three-legged creatures evolve from single-celled life than a game about how three-legged creatures (who happened to evolve from single-celled life) learn to dance. Which is pretty cool.