Every few years a video game or video game console is introduced and broadens our comprehension of the industry’s entertainment proposition. These introductions are welcome adaptations – as the new titles and hardware delight wider populations on broad scales and bring forward ingenuities that allow for further creative expression and expansion.
For example, while some criticized the violence in Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto, the game’s infrastructure liberated players from the linear plane and allowed gamers to explore a virtual environment in an exhilaratingly random manner. This liberation paid off quite well for Take-Two Interactive – according to the company’s April 2008 figures, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has sold over 70 million copies worldwide since its inception in 1997.
Liberation of another sort was welcomed with the emergence of Nintendo’s Wii in 2006. As the fifth home video console released by Nintendo, the Wii allowed gamers to participate in three dimensions. The wireless dynamic that the console introduced provided a more interactive platform – and Nintendo’s family-friendly titles encouraged a broader incorporation of the system among households worldwide.
Electronic Arts is expecting similar success with the highly anticipated release of its latest title, Spore.
Seeking to disengage from its legacy of sequels (Medal of Honor, The Sims, Madden Football), the company is supporting Spore’s release with a large-scale media blitz that includes program integration on Discovery Channel, a robust advertising campaign, and viral elements with creature showcases across the internet.
Spore is nothing less than an exploration of evolutionary biology – and the experience is inherently experimental and progressive, with all proper nods to Charles Darwin. Spore’s developers have put the development in the hands of the gamers themselves, challenging players to design creatures first as single-celled primordial soup swimmers and to march them (albeit in adherence to the commonly misinterpreted evolutionary perspective on linear incarnation) through a “lesser to greater” differentiation.
The creations encounter other creations, evolve legs and become land dwellers. The land dwellers create tribes which morph into civilizations, competing with other tribes and civilizations (the Spore team also brought us The Sims series) – and eventually gamers are given the task of managing planets and galaxies.
Such macrocosmic themes have not been explored before – and with Spore’s notable exclusion of the usual anthropocentric influences found across the gaming spectrum, the uptake or lack thereof should stand as a curious reflection of the broader mainstream culture’s appetite.
For the more scientifically inclined among us, Spore may be the kind of animated champion that speaks well to the important themes of species interrelatedness over long periods of time. For the rest of us, it is a frontier in gaming technology that allows us all to evolve a bit more.
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