Celebrities Compete in the name of Maxis

According to Kotaku, It looks like 50 or so celebrities have received early copies of the Creature Creator and they are competing against each other in hope of finding out who can create the most fantastic creature. The winner will win a $15,000 donation to their favorite charity, courtesy of EA. Everyone will have a chance to vote for the winner on Spore website sometime next week. Here’s a short list of celebs known to be involved in the competition:

Stan Lee
Richard Branson
David Lynch
Ellijah Wood
Kevin Rose
Mark Cuban
Curt Schilling
Kent Nichols
Robert Scoble
Veronica Belmont
Carlos Santana
Bijou Phillips
Flight of the Conchords

My bet is that Stan Lee wins, Curt Schilling creates a creature to his own image and Mark Cuban tries to package his creature and Jason Kidd in a trade with the Nets, to get his old team back.

Spored: Links from around the web

If you are bored of waiting for release of the Creature Creator, here are Spore links to keep you occupied and satisfy at least some of your thirst for Spore.

• Gamasutra - The Evolution of Spore
• VideoGamer - Pre-Order Spore in the UK, get the full creature creator for free
• MacWorld - Spore, from a Mac perspective

Kotaku Likes the Creature Creator

It looks like the folks over at Kotaku are having a lot of fun playing with their early copy of the Creature Creator. They have written a short overview of their experience with the editor and they try to answer one of the question that is probably bugging many people:

Is it worth $10? Maybe, it is tons of fun to play around with, but I’m not sure if I’d want to shell out cash to get early hands-on time with something that will come built-in to a game I’m planning on buying. Then again it’s only $10 and it’s TONS of fun. Actually a little addictive.

Interview with Lucy Bradshaw

Spore producer Lucy Bradshaw was interviewed by VentureBeat - it’s an interesting interview spanning a whole slew of topics, from selling their original idea to Spore’s upcoming launch. Read the interview here. The following is a short snippet:

VB: Did Will have any trouble selling you on the idea?

LB: I thought it was an amazing idea. I thought it was important to put top people like Ocean Quigley, Andrew Willmott, Chris Hecker and others [on the project] so that we could make a believer out of Will himself. He was never quite sure he could pull this off. When I started on the project, I thought we would have much simpler games around each one of the stages. To realize the depth of creativity, we had to go deeper. We got in there and realized we had to go deeper than we originally thought.

UK’s Creature Creator: Available on the 16th

The European release dates for Spore’s Creature Creator continue to come in. According to an email sent by EA’s UK Store, It looks like residents of the United Kingdom will be able to purchase and download their copy of the editor on the 16th. (Thanks Anariston)

Will Wright does the Krazy Dance

Gamasutra has a neat article up about Will Wright, Spore and art - it was taken from Will Wright’s speech at Vancouver’s Krazy exhibition. You can read it here. Here’s a short snippet:

For his part, Wright is more optimistic. “I do believe that games can be a form of artistic expression,” he said, “a co-collaboration between player and designer. We have yet to prove we can do meaningful things with this form of expression, but I believe we are at the cusp of a Cambrian explosion of possibilities [referencing the geological era in which complex life flourished]. We are a couple years away from being respected as a form of expression, but it’s not a battle we need to fight. We’ll win anyway.”

One Week From Today

We have finally entered the home stretch, we are exactly one week away from the Creature Creator’s release! Or is it in 6 days or 8 days? It seems like different countries are receiving different release dates from EA. According to emails sent out by EA, the Dutch can expect to have the Creature Creator on the 16th while Germans won’t receive theirs until the 19th.  (Thanks Gamingsteve)

Will Wright’s a nice guy

There’s an interesting article over at Arstechnica (I think it is about Will Wright’s speech at Krazy, in Vancouver) and it just so happens to prove what many of us already suspected: Will Wright is a nice guy. Read it here.

Official Spore Site Updated & System Specs

It looks like Maxis is preparing for the creature creator’s release! They have updated the Spore website with a new layout and if there was any controversy regarding the creature creator’s release date I think we can say that it is officially settled: the 17th is the day we have been waiting for. More importantly, the system requirements (for the full game, not the creature creator) are out. Also, it looks like Sporepedia will be opening its doors on the 17th - you can check out the current set of creature’s within the Maxis database right here.(Thanks Riftoftime)

News from around the web

With a slow Spore weekend, I thought I would list a few Spore related articles that have come up. The most interesting is actually regarding the creature creator release date, we have always heard the 17th as being the big day but there appears to be some confusion. Certain locations (ie. Wal-mart) are listing its release as the 19th. Head over to SpaceOddity for more details.

• FacePunch - Son of Jonathan Ross (British TV presenter) talking about Spore, looks legit
• Inside Mac Games - Confirmation that the Mac version of the Creature Creator will be released at the same time as the PC version
• PC Gamer Blog - Blog entry with a picture of the author’s creature (it isn’t pretty)
• Washington Post - Short blog entry regarding Spore and its soon to be released Creature Creator (no new information)