Live Demo at Comic-con

Here’s an interest article on the live Spore demo presented at this year’s comic-con. Read it here. The following is a short snippet:

Since he’s shown off the creature phase of the game at various events before, Wright was keen to jump right into the civilization phase. Here, his creatures had already developed intelligence and built a civilization — he was now competing with other civilizations in order to dominate and unify the planet. Wright loaded up a saved game where he was already very advanced.

Wright described the civilization phase as “an interesting blend of a very simple SimCity and a very simple Civilization.” You could build and rearrange individual buildings in your cities (as with everything else in Spore, you can design or download your own buildings). Or you could focus on assaulting other cities spanning the globe.

Videos, Interviews and Previews

• Spore @ Forbes
• Will Wright interview @ Comic-Con
• Will Wright and Emotional Investment @ Kotaku
• Will Wright @ Gamespy
• Gameplay Videos @ Gamespot
• Presentation Videos @ Gamereactor TV
• IGN, VE3D and Gamespot Screenshots

Spore Wins at Gamespy

Spore has won both of Gamespy’s PC Game of Show and Overall Game of Show awards at ths year’s E3! Congratulations to Spore and the Spore team!

Spore Wins IGN’s Overall Best of E3 Award!

As if anyone here had any doubts about Spore taking home IGN’s award?

In any other year, Empire: Total War or Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II would have easily taken this award. Both are examples of two of the genre’s finest developers at the top of their game. However, 2008 is the year of Spore, the long-awaited next game from Will Wright, and the game that fascinates us in so many ways. And it’s not just because we’re all waiting to see if the game can achieve the same kind of wild success as The Sims, but because of how different it is from any other title out there.
Spore blends so many different forms of gameplay, from arcade games to real-time strategy, action games, and even city-building. Then there’s the incredible amount of user-generated content and the way it is seamlessly shared between everyone who plays the game. In an industry that’s built around cloning hits, it’s safe to say that there hasn’t been anything remotely like Spore before, and that’s just one of the many reasons it intrigues us so.

Official Spore E3 Video

The official Spore E3 video is available on gamespot. Check it out here!

Returning Soon

As you may have noticed, for roughly the last 3 weeks I haven’t updated Sporenormous. There is a very good reason for this: I’m not home! I’m actually traveling through Europe right now and I have very limited access to the internet. I’m returning home Sunday morning so by Monday everything will be back to normal here at Sporenormous. Sorry for the inconvenience

Adios.

Celebrity Creature Vote!

It’s time to vote! The Spore celebrity competition is in full swing and you can now vote for your favorite creature/celebrity on Spore Vote. The winner will win a $15,000 donation to his/her favorite charity. Here’s a list of a few of the more interesting celebs participating in the competition (note: not all the celebs have uploaded their creature yet):

• Hiro from Heroes
• Mandy Moore - Singer/Actress
• Sharon Osbourne - Wife of Ozzy
• Phil Defranco, the funny youtube guy
• Benjamin Mackenzie from the OC (not that I ever watched that show..)
• Curt Schilling of the Boston Red Sox
• MC Hammer - yes, he’s back!
• Mario Lopez from Saved by the Bell and so you think you can dance
• Patrick Harris from How I met your mother
• Flight of the Conchords
• Brooke Hogan, the daughter of Hulk Hogan
• Will Wright - I think he has an unfair advantage in this competition..
• Mark Cuban, the megalomaniac owner of the Dallas Mavericks (I’m just joking, he’s actually seems pretty cool)
• Christopher Titus - I remember him from his funny but short lived comedy show ‘Titus’.
• Margaret Cho - a comedian

Creature Videos

Here’s a list of today’s interesting creature videos:

• (Picture) Xbox Controller - Yeah, you heard me!
• Fake Sailer - The most creative creature I’ve seen so far - very neat!
• Pikachu - Great render of Pokemon’s most famous creature
• Charizard - Another great Pokemon render
• Deep crow - a very detailed, high quality creature. Probably my favorite so far.
• Human-like creature - it’s hard to do and this is one of the best attempts at creating a humanoid creature. That said, it really walks funny.
• Minotaur - very well done beast of a creature
• Bizarre Creature - don’t even ask me what this is suppose to be…

Sporepedia hits 330,000+

It’s truly a testament to the popularity of the Spore Creature Creator, with its release but a few days ago the database has already surpassed 330,000 creatures. By the time you will have read this, thousands more will have been added. If don’t peruse it already, I highly suggest you do - you would think with so many creatures, a lot of them would appear very similar.. but they don’t, it’s actually quite amazing. Check out the Sporepedia here.

Spore from Around the Web

Here’s some Spore news from around the web!

• Official Video Tutorial - How to make a praying mantis in the creature creator!
• EA Spore Dance Contest - Win a trip to Washington, DC! Winner is selected by vote.
• EA Cracks Down on Genitalia - It looks like EA wants private parts to remain private. Genitalia-based creatures are being actively removed from Sporepedia
• Penny Arcade Spore Comic - Well, it’s about God. It’s also about a video game.  It’s about making stuff. It must be about Spore!
• IGN Creature Creator Review - Includes a hands-on and numerous videos