The Bottom Line

Issue date: 4/18/07 Section: The AT Wire

With Earth Day only 4 days away, gamers are, for the most part, oblivious.  While everyone else is trying to work together to preserve our world, gamers are sitting at their PCs and in front of their consoles, rendering their own 3D landscapes, levels and maps.  Why should we care about what goes on outside of our rooms?  It isn’t as if pollution is causing Azeroth to be the victim of global warming.  On the other hand, if all life on this planet is destroyed, who will make the video games we enjoy?  More importantly, if the world is going to end, all gamers will seek out the answer to the question:  ”Are there video games in heaven?”

There haven’t been many video games with environmental messages.  There were a few Sims games that brought ecology to the foreground such as SimIsle, a game about preserving a rainforest; SimLife, a game about genetics; SimSafari, a game about creating and exploring your own safari park; SimTown, a game that combines ecology and economics; and SimEarth, a game about our planet, Earth.  Even though these games were developed by Maxis, the developer responsible for such hit titles as Sim City and The Sims, they were the bottom-rung and never received much attention (like the preservation of our planet’s environments)!

Will Wright, the man and mind behind The Sims, is developing a game for the PC called Spore.  This game, however, deals directly with evolution and allows the player to fully control an entire planet’s ecosystem!  Finally, after all these years of controversy and wishful thinking, gamers will be given a chance to “play God” in an entirely new way.

The game unfolds much the same way that evolution is said to have happened.  There are five stages within the game:  The Pool Phase, Creature Phase, Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase, and Space Phase.  First, the player begins the game as a unicellular organism floating around in a 2D environment.  The objective is gobble up as many smaller microscopic organisms you can, while avoiding the larger ones that attempt to eat you.  Then, once you managed to achieve a certain status, your creature gets bigger and begins its life in the sea.  You will swim around a 3D space, devouring smaller creatures until you reach the next stage in your evolution.  Once your creature evolves and is able to walk on land, you will begin to see other creatures around too, some of which are the same as the one you are currently controlling.  Eventually, the game leads you to creating civilizations and societies composed of the creatures that have evolved.  Last but not least, once you have created a dominant society, you will be able to leave the confines of the planet and travel to other planets.  When visiting other planets your custom evolved creatures will run across other players’ creatures in their various stages of evolution.

While Spore may not kick-up as much controversy as Grand Theft Auto IV, a game about evolution still promises to take critical hits as it nears release.  Nevertheless, the game seems to be trying to appeal to the same demographic targeted by any of the other Sims games, so the chances for brutal violence are minimal.

Even if Spore doesn’t directly help save our planet (it might cause gamers to stay inside even more instead of going out and helping preserve our environment), one thing is for certain:

It could give World of Warcraft a run for its money as the #1 Xfire game!  And, anyone who wouldn’t sacrifice our planet to dethrone World of Warcraft needs to get their priorities in order.

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