SPORE GAME SERVERS PC

There are points where you are directly controlling the character and times you can pull back and micromanage. IGN: Are the battles that take place mostly run by the computer or can the individual combat units be controlled by the player? Will Wright: It depends what battles you're involved in. You start out underwater, at the molecular level, so it's just a matter of whether or not you're forced out and onto land. Will Wright: That's actually one of those aspects of the game that's right on the cusp of being cutout. IGN: We've heard players might be able to create underwater creatures. IGN: Will we see micro-transactions? Maybe in the form of creature body parts, building sections, etc.? Will Wright: It's still too early to comment on that. And that stuff is the first content you want to get into expansions. Then as the deadline draws near, you have to start cutting stuff out. When you're making a game, you start out with all these ideas. IGN: Have you thought about how expansions will be handled for Spore? Will Wright: We've thought a little about that. And I think a lot of hardcore gamers will spend more time playing Spore than they did The Sims. I think a lot of Sims fans will get into the creation parts of Spore. So if you looked at the audiences as two circles, one would overlap half of the other. IGN: Are the target audiences for these two games the same? Will Wright: I think there will be about a half and half overlap. Especially the cross-platform sharing, I think that could have implications for a lot of games. So we'd like to try and implement some of these ideas into The Sims.

With Spore, we're trying to make content creation really fun and accessible. IGN: What does Spore mean for the future of The Sims? Can the franchises coexist? Will Wright: We're learning a lot from Spore about simplifying game procedures and I think they are things that would work well in other games. IGN: So, there could be cross-platform sharing? Say, between a cell phone and a PS3? Will Wright: Yes, that's the plan. So you create a creature, it's sent to the server and compressed, then when it's called up we just add water to grow the file to the size that is needed for that console. And the way the servers are set up, the content is all compressible. IGN: Will shared content be something you would want to try on a console version? Will Wright: Yeah, that's definitely one of the key points of the game. This is all happening in the background, so it's seamless. IGN: How will this content be shared between users? Will Wright: As you are creating content it's put on the servers automatically. You're building your character from parts that we've designed, but where you take your creature is entirely up to you. IGN: Is it safe to say the game will consist entirely of player-created content? Will Wright: Yeah, for the most part. Do you know if a handheld Spore would be produced internally? Will Wright: It's too early to tell who will be handling the development, but we'll definitely be highly involved in the process. IGN: Handheld ports are often outsourced. The DS is also very interesting to us, as its control scheme could be very manageable for the game. It's possible the editors might be more manageable on that system. IGN: Do you have any ideas of how the game would play on the Wii? Will Wright: We've been messing around with the Wii dev kit and we're really interested in the possibilities there. There are some things you really want to do with a mouse. The editors are a very big part of the game, but maybe it's difficult to navigate through them on a console. We might focus on certain aspects of the game for each version. There are definitely things that work better on PCs than consoles. IGN: Would the game need to be tailored for each system? Will Wright: Yeah, that's something we're looking at.

SPORE GAME SERVERS PC

Will Wright (not to scale) IGN: After the PC version is released next year, do you have any idea how long it might be until we see other versions pop up? Will Wright: Again, our team is only working on the PC version right now. But we really are interested in bringing the game to as many platforms as possible. IGN: Would that be current- and next-gen systems? Will Wright: It's too early to say right now, no development has started for any of these platforms. But we're thinking of Spore as a franchise, definitely, that will be across all platforms. IGN: Can we confirm you plan to eventually bring Spore to other consoles? Will Wright: Well, we're focusing solely on the PC version at the moment.

Spore game servers