MTV Multiplayer reports that Will Wright, possibly the most famous game developer of all time, has left EA as of today. Wright, creator of Sim City, The Sims, and more recently Spore, will be focusing instead on his project the ‘Stupid Fun Club’, a company that is owned by himself, EA, and another mystery shareholder. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities”, Wright said, adding that the company will “create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms.” Despite leaving the company, EA gets first dibs on Wright’s new gaming projects.

EDGE reports the impossible today: EA taking DRM out of a game. The Sims 3 will reportedly ship with just a serial code and no online activation needed, and no restrictive and unnecessary DRM. The head of the Sims 3 studio, Rod Humble, described DRM as “overly invasive”, and added that serial-based verification is “a good, time-proven solution” to basic piracy.

Obviously, the Sims 3 will be pirated, there’s no doubt about that- but in light of the Spore controversy, people are less likely to be downloading it simply to say “fuck you” to EA this time. In a way, I’m glad that Spore was pirated so much; it seems to have shown EA that DRM just makes things worse for everyone.

Game auteur Will Wright attended the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards ceremony in New York, and Jim Reilly of Kotaku was there to ask him what he thought about the controversy surrounding his game.

“It was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore. They had a plan and the parameters, but now we’re allowing more authentications and working with players to de-authenticate which makes it more in line like an iTunes.

I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. For most players it’s not an issue, it’s a pretty small percentage, but some people do like wiping their hard disk and installing it 20 times or they want to play it 10 years later.”

Spore and distributor Electronic Arts came under fire for the perceived draconian tactics employed by the software’s DRM. SecuROM software essentially limiting Spore to one install.

Incensed gamers rallied around Spore, citing SecuROM as little better than malware which led to a grassroots boycott of the game.

Source: kotaku.com

A press release received today from EA announces that Spore has sold 1 million copies and the amount of creatures uploaded has hit 25 million. Those are pretty impressive numbers considering the game shipped just three weeks ago on September 7th.

I have yet to play the game and would be interested in hearing the thoughts of our readers. If you have played the full version of the game, please let me know what you think of it in the comment section below.

Full press release available after the jump.

SPORE BEGINS WITH A BIG BANG!

ONE MILLION GAMES SOLD AND 25 MILLION CREATIONS UPLOADED

Emeryville, CA – September 24, 2008 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that Spore™ has sold through more than one million copies at retail worldwide on the PC, Mac® and Nintendo DS™, since shipping worldwide on September 7th. Spore, developed by EA’s Maxis™ Studio, is also available on mobile phones including the iPhone™. To date, gamers have used the creativity tools in Spore to populate the universe with more than 25 million creatures, vehicles and buildings available to view in the Sporepedia™ at www.spore.com/sporepedia.

Spore has been well received by game critics – with a Metacritic index of: 85.

“Spore is a hit,” said Frank Gibeau, president of the EA Games Label. “Will Wright’s latest delivers an incredibly diverse game that appeals to casual gamers and the core alike. We’re off to a great start moving into the holiday season and believe Spore will deliver a platform of creativity for gamers of all stripes for years to come.”

“We’re humbled by how quickly the community has taken to the creativity tools in Spore,” said Lucy Bradshaw, vice president of Maxis and Spore’s executive producer. “It’s amazing to see the sheer imagination represented in the hundreds of thousands of creatures, vehicles and buildings that have been uploaded around the clock since launch.”

Spore – rated E10+ — gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even spaceships.

To download a free trial of the Spore™ Creature Creator, please visit www.spore.com. For screen shots or more information about Spore, please visit our press web site at http://info.ea.com

From the mind of Will Wright comes the hype juggernaut Spore. We’ve been watching and waiting for this game for long enough to watch actual evolution take place, but was it worth the wait?

First off, I’m not taking any of the crazy DRM issues into account here, as this is a game review and not a review on EA’s licensing practices, so be sure to read the many other articles on the issue on this site here, here, here, and here. I’m going to focus on the game itself. With that little disclaimer aside, let’s discuss the game itself.

Spore tasks players with evolving a single-celled organism of pure cuteness on up through several stages until they become a galactic superpower of cuteness. From the mind of Will Wright, you can see the cartooniness that made him ass-tons of money from Sims expansion packs — it’s prevalent in this game while the seriousness of the game that made him famous (SimCity) has gone the way of the dodo.

There are five stages of the game, each a separate evolutionary stage that plays slightly different than the last. The cell stage is by far the shortest and plays quite similar to a little game called flOw. It could very easily be a flash game for free on some website somewhere. The main goal here is to eat and survive.

It’s here that what you eat for the rest of the game is determined, and it’s the only time in the game where you’ll be able to change from a herbivore mouth to a carnivore mouth, thus changing what you can eat. You can even put both on your cell and eat EVERYTHING. What you eat is tracked on a history graph, and at the end of the cell stage, wherever you are on the graph determines what your creature will eat for the rest of the game. Once you’ve eaten all you can, it’s time to grow some legs and crawl up to dry land.

Once on land, the game transforms into a watered-down third-person adventure game where you can either attack other creatures or make friends with them. Your main task is to get DNA and parts to evolve into a more efficient killing or dancing machine. You’ll also now have to contend with hunger, and your diet choices from the cell stage come into play here, determining what you’ll be able to eat.

Herbivores will eat fruit from trees while carnivores will be forced to either scavenge for dead bodies or make some creatures dead to eat some meat. Omnivores, of course, can eat whatever they want. The nice part is that this has no bearing on your attitude towards other creatures at all. You want to be a meat eater and still make friends? No problem there. I mean, you’ll obviously not be able to make friends with everyone, as you’ll starve to death, but there is nothing stopping you from being a very social meat eater.

It all comes down to the parts that you put on your creature. Certain parts give certain stats that directly determine what your creature will be good at. There are trade-offs, of course, so you can’t be great at everything, but mix and match enough, and you can probably tackle whatever comes your way.

One evolutionary step after another and you’ll gain the ability to bring along friends in your flock. This is a great way for socially focused creatures to survive — make friends with brutal slayers of animal kind to protect your goofy dancing ass and you’re set.

Once you’ve accumulated enough DNA, you’ll evolve to the tribal stage. The sad part of this is that it’s the end of customizing your creature. The most you can do in the tribal stage is play a little dress-up. It’s neat and all, but depending on what your creature looks like at this point, the dressing up may be a pain. It’s sort of hard to put a head on something that is covered with horns and eyeballs.

The game itself transforms into a very generic real-time strategy game, where food becomes the most important thing in the world to your race. Other tribes will pop up and you’ll have the choice to either make war with them or play sweet music for them till they fall in love with you and start sending you food. Once you either befriend or destroy the other tribes, it’s time to form a civilization.

Now that you’re civilized, you once again can custom build some stuff, namely your planes, tanks, and boats. The creation tools are again the highlight of the stage, though economic and religious vehicles tend to be a little too… goofy for my tastes. It’s hard to take a tank seriously when the weapon of choice is a giant pipe organ and some horns.

The actual gameplay here isn’t that different than the tribal stage — instead of ordering your creatures around, you’ll be building vehicles and sending the vehicles around… though you’ll still be doing basically the same as before. You won’t be able to win by allying with the other cities, though. You pretty much have to take them over, but how you go about it can be a little different.

You’ll start off either religious, economic, or militaristic. Again, this is determined by your actions in the previous stage. You can’t actually change your style, but if you take over a city with another focus, you can choose to keep the focus of that city. This can be a bit of a burden if you’re looking to change your overall focus from what you started with to something else.

Religious and military takeovers are basically the same, though religious takeovers don’t seem to actually cause a war. Either way, you still drive up to a city and try to take it over. Economic takeovers, however, require you to be friends with the other city, and then set up a trade route. Trade routes make you extra money, and once they get to a certain point, you can buy out the other nation’s city.

Once you get all the other cities flying the flag of your nation, your race builds a spaceship and you can take to the stars.

The space stage is sort of a strategy game, though it’s a pain in the ass to manage your empire as you are just a ship flying around doing stuff (more on that in a bit). The goal of the space stage is to expand your empire, with a little caveat that you should focus on getting to the center of the galaxy. This is the one overarching mission, and it can be completely ignored if you so choose. The space stage is really where the “simy” sandbox style play that made Will Wright famous finally comes through.

The problem with the space stage is that you go from a relatively simple game with a moderately… moderate difficulty to a freakish beast of complexity. Not that it’s overly complicated really, but for only having one ship to control, it’s insanely complex. Imagine trying to control a game of Civilization, only instead of the omniscient control, it’s feels like a third person shooter.

To tell your city to build a wall, you’ll have to run Link or Marcus or Snake or WHOMEVER over to the city and then say, “Hey, build a wall.” Meanwhile, some town four hundred miles away calls and says, “Yo! We’re being attacked over here!” Being that you are the sole military unit in this freaky game of civilization, you have to run the whole way back to that city to protect it. It has potential, but the size of the galaxy in Spore works against it here.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. You do get tools eventually that allow you to place better turrets and such things to reduce your need to go to these planets for every emergency, but you’ll still end up going there, as the only way to make money in the space game is to sell spice. The only way to get spice is to fly to one of your planets that is gathering the spice and pick it up, and then fly around finding people willing to pay top dollar to buy it. There is no automated way to just bring in money in the game.

It wouldn’t be too bad, I suppose, but the buyers of the spice have random prices for the stuff, so it’s not like you can just, say, pick up all your pink spice and take it to planet X to make a shit-ton of money. Just because planet X paid a hundred-thousand space bucks ten minutes ago doesn’t mean anything now.

It makes the whole thing a giant time sink that just feels like busy work. People who’ve played any number of MMO’s will feel at home with the system, as it feels like they’re just trying to keep you busy doing mundane work so you’ll keep giving them your money.

It’s sad that the space game has the most problems and it seems to be where the focus of the game is. You could very easily start up a cell and run to the space stage in less than an hour if you really wanted to, while the space stage potentially has no end. With a purported half a million stars and who knows how many planets, taking over the entire galaxy would be quite time consuming to say the least.

Overall, the game is fun, if a little bit of a pain. Each stage is basically a very generic version of other genres of games and this keeps things pretty fresh, but they are VERY generic. If you’re a hardcore gamer then it might be kind of a let down, but for the casual crowd it’ll probably be a learning experience.

My wife is a causal gamer, and it was amazing seeing her struggle with some of the stuff in the game. Like a lot of The Sims players, she’s never had even a slight interest in RTS games, so things that came second nature to me, or seemed overly simplified, were confusing and difficult for her.

The thing that both my wife and I gathered from the whole experience, though, was that the game is incredibly fun, even though most of the fun simply derives from the fact that you made these things. There is something that is just awesome about flying to some other planet and seeing something new or something that you’ve made yourself in another game.

The pollination system, or whatever they call it, keeps the game fresh and interesting no matter what, and I have yet to see any giant penises… though I did find an entire planet of walking Sylvester Stallone heads. There is also something frightening about the idea that someone right now could be playing the game and coming across some of my crappy creations.

All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty good game. Making creatures and vehicles is by far the most fun, but the fun carries over to the rest of the game simply when you use those creatures you’ve created to do other things. The learning curve is a little steep at times, and that’s further complicated by the fact that each stage plays like a completely different game than the last, making it more of a learning wave. The space stage is definitely flawed, but is still a lot of fun.

I’d say the biggest problem with the game is that it falls in some kind of neutral zone of gaming. Fans of The Sims (who this games seems to be marketed for) will find it a bit difficult, and the AI can be absolutely brutal at times, whereas fans of SimCity will find the game simply too simple. The potential is there, but it falls a bit short. Even so, the entire idea of the sharing of creatures, buildings, and vehicles keeps the space game fresh and new for a lot longer than you would think.

It’s nothing to do with penis monsters. No, today’s scapegoat is evolution. One militant creationist – who describes herself only as a “good Christian woman” – has set up a blog to campaign against Spore. Did we also mention that Will Wright is evil and that she’s killing EA on the stock market? I’m not joking.

The site, Anti Spore, only appeared in the world on 8 September, after its creator’s son asked for a copy of the game. She regales:

It looked innocent enough at first and has “E for Everyone” ESRB rating.  But don’t be mislead, apparently ‘everyone’ means everyone they want to teach evolution to.

This entire game is propaganda aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism.

I created this blog to find support for and follow my progress in letting Electronic Arts know that their biggest attack on Christian values to date will not be tolerated.

We can not allow the gaming industry to invade our homes and poison the minds of our children.

After all, their billions in revenue and all the advertising in the world are no match for the power of God.

Ironically, Anti Spore is very much moving into realms of propaganda itself. Remember that Will Wright chap? GCW does. She used to like him. Now he’s evil.

He created Sim City, a fantastic game that celebrated the earth that God created for us and allowed you to use all your God given abilities to make an ideal society. But if you ever felt like you had too much power, God would come in with a tornado or an earthquake and put you back in place.

You would think that as a member of the Episcopal Church, a smart man like Will Wright would not be capable of creating Spore. However, we must be reminded that the Episcopal Church is the only church in America that ordains homosexuals on a regular basis.

It goes on. GCW feels sick that none of the 8,500 EA employees had “enough Jesus” to make a stand against Spore, despite the rather obvious fact that most of them will have had nothing to do with it. But perhaps the biggest point of misguidedness came in a post on 9 September, when she noted that EA’s stock dropped.

“Today EA’s stock is down almost a dollar. I hope that the information about Spore I am making available helped in some small way.”

Pity she hasn’t been looking beyond her remit to notice that the knock-on from EA’s SecuROM DRM in Spore and Red Alert 3.

We may have no idea what real aliens might look like, but some of us have a better idea than others. In a planetarium presentation that touched on Yoda, Alf, E.T. and xenomorphs, Spore creator Will Wright and extraterrestrial expert Frank Drake discussed their backgrounds, both personal and professional, and why Spore is the game that will inspire a generation of space cadets.

At the soon-to-be-opened California Academy of Sciences, set in the center of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, EA held a black tie and feathers/spikes/wings soiree to celebrate the launch of Spore.

Will Wright’s speech, for the most part, focused on his own background and inspiration for making Spore, which is a story we’ve heard a bit about already (see David Jaffe’s recent video blog about how good intentions don’t guarantee a good game). Frank Drake’s talk was more impressive, if only because he doesn’t seem to care much about videogames, but was somehow convinced to whip up his own creature in Spore.

Drake’s creation, based on what he considers to be the most successful aspects of homo sapien combined with a few of his own ideas, is a tall, green, two mouthed, three eyed, four armed monster called “super sapien”. Like us, it can stand on two feet, keeping its head up high and away from danger. Unlike us, it has chlorophyll in its skin, a third eye in the back of its head, some extra limbs (for bringing in the groceries), and a second mouth directly over the stomach to avoid death by choking.

Drake’s a brilliant astronomer and theoretician who came up with the famous Drake Equation, and watching him play with Spore’s creature creator was amusing. He seemed genuinely convinced that Spore will influence a generation of kids to the wonders of science, but part of his argument was that modern science fiction doesn’t inspire kids, and that videogames that are not scientifically-based are not helping kids to become more creative.

While games like Spore, The Sims, and Sim City should be lauded for touching on aspects of science, sociology, and urban planning, other games offer academic value as well. I’ve learned a lot about tactics from playing Starcraft, history from Civilization, and the importance of the second amendment from Resident Evil 4. A lot of games have some scientific or historical basis, and even those that don’t (the dumb, fun, summer blockbusters of games) at least encourage creativity in the forms of art design, writing, and direction.

After the talk, we had a preview of the Academy’s stunning planetarium, which was hypnotic. Our “tour” of the universe included the solar system, Milky Way galaxy, and our nearby cluster of galaxies, all the way out to the Cosmic Background Radiation, or as it’s known in the scientific community, “God’s stinky fart”.

Spore, the next step in mankind’s quest for knowledge, comes out on Sunday.

Miscellaneous observations:

Private aside to the person with the digital camera and bright red flashbulb: When we’re all trying to enjoy the planetarium, STOP TAKING FLASH PHOTOGRAPHS EVERY TEN SECONDS, you inconsiderate asshat.

Also, some attendees were fascinated by the food, which is actually the exact wrong thing to focus on when you’re supposed to be evaluating videogames.

But hey, look, miniburgers! That was a cow once, right? Cows are animals, we eat them, it’s part of the great circle of life. It all ties together. Delicious food. Buy Spore.

You might have thought Will Wright might have pulled a facepalm when people started creating genitalia based creatures. Not so – he thinks they’re ace.

“When you give players creative control, you have to expect they’re going to do the unexpected,”

says Wright, though I would argue that creating a walking phallus is far from surprising.

“It’s amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren’t messing up the experience for others.”

Wright also revealed that possible console versions wouldn’t be direct ports, but would be tied to each platform’s strengths – arguing that the difference between a keyboard, controller, and Wii remote was case enough. He also mused on the possibility of a sequel, even though the full game hasn’t been released yet.

“I don’t think we could design a sequel to Spore until the fans showed us what they like,” he says. “I think there’s going to be a fair amount of learning over the next few months. What’s important for me is what sort of stories the players are using the game to tell. Games that have the longest legs are the ones with the most narrative density.”

Best hope the players can get past this particular brand of storytelling.

We all know the story of how many days it took God to make this and that, but what we don’t know is how  long EA kept Big G at bay before the process actually started. Well, the delays attached to Spore are officially a thing of the past, and the product, which at one point seemed destined to be called “Big Willy’s Penis Planet”, has finally gone gold.

Will Wright’s Spore will hit next month on multiple platforms and devices. The Apple iPhone application blazes the way on September 4th, while the Nintendo DS, PC, and Mac versions of the game will split cells on US store shelves a few days later on the 7th.

Full press release available after the jump.

EA AND MAXIS ANNOUNCE THAT SPORE HAS GONE GOLD

Long-Anticipated Game from Gaming Luminary, Will Wright, is Complete and in Production;

Hits Store Shelves September 7

Redwood City, CA – August 14, 2008 –The wait is almost over! Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and Maxis today announced that Spore™ the most anticipated video game of the year from the creator of The Sims(TM), has gone gold and will be available for the Mac and PC at retailers September 5 in Europe and September 7 in North America and Asia Pacific. Spore™ Creatures for Nintendo DS™ and Spore™ Origins for mobile phones will also be available globally September 7.

Players who preorder Spore or Spore Galactic Edition from participating retailers will receive a coupon good for $10 off their next purchase of custom merchandise at www.zazzle.com/sporestore. For the ultimate Spore fan, the limited Galactic Edition will contain the ‘Making of Spore’ DVD, ‘How to Build a Better Being’ DVD (a 50 minute National Geographic Channel documentary DVD hosted by Spore mastermind, Will Wright), ‘The Art of Spore’ hardback book, an exclusive Spore poster, and a premium 100-page Galactic Handbook.

“We are so excited to finally get Spore into the hands of fans and players,” said Lucy Bradshaw, executive producer of Spore at Maxis. “The Maxis studio has had an absolute blast creating Spore, but the fun is just beginning. The most engaging stories are truly the ones people create themselves, and we can’t wait to see how players not only craft and explore the Spore universe, but hear what stories they have to tell as a result.”

Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box, allowing fans to create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even spaceships. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world via the Sporepedia™ and explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers*.

EA has announced a partnership with Planetwide Media, allowing Spore content creators to share their creations with friends through the use of Spore E-Cards.

The service will be free, however it will require you to register. Once registered, players will be able to log in at MashON.com/SPORE, and bring their “Spore creatures to life”. Card options consist of various backgrounds, clip art, and word bubbles. When your design is complete, you can then email it to friends or share it via one of many social network options.

Spore box art announced … uhhhh what can I say … it’s very colorful, very boxy, and very artsy! Will Wright kicks ass, and I am pretty sure that Spore will too.

Spore will will be available on the PC, MAC, and Nintendo DS. Get your hands on a copy of the game September 7th.

EA and Maxis announced today that a special edition of Spore, dubbed the “Galactic Edition” will be available alongside the regular edition on September 5th in Europe and September 7th in North America and Asia. Hit the jump to find out what goodies it will contain.

Called the “ultimate backstage pass for the Spore universe,” the Spore Galactic Edition will come with the Making of Spore DVD, the How to Build a Better Being DVD from the National Geographic Channel (which airs September 9th), The Art of Spore hardback mini-book, a fold-out Spore poster, and a premium 100-page Galactic Handbook.

After being so excited about the game for so long – and even moreso after the creature creator was released – I think I owe it to myself to pick up the Galactic Edition. What do you guys think? Any Spore fanatics jumping for joy?

If you are interested in getting a public demo of Spore by Will Wright, the chief designer himself, and you just so happen to live in the San Fransisco area, head on down to The Apple Store on One Stockton Street, Saturday June 21st between 7PM and 8PM. Full press release to follow.

Legendary Game Designer Will Wright to Appear at the Apple Store in San Francisco on Saturday, June 21st For Public Demo of Hotly-Anticipated New Game SPORE

Who: Industry Icon Will Wright, the Chief Designer from Maxis, an EA studio. Wright’s games are some of the most popular and acclaimed titles of all time, including SimCity and the mega-hit The Sims, which recently celebrated 100 million units sold.

What: Wright will provide a public demo of his latest project, the hotly anticipated game Spore. One of the most ambitious games ever made, Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

Where: The Apple Store

One Stockton Street

San Francisco, CA 94108

415-392-0202

When: Saturday, June 21st

7:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Alright Spore gamers, we all did it (present company included), but it needs to stop.

Our community, as well as the Youtube community, has fallen victim to Spore genitalia madness. In just a few short days, Spore has overtaken the DS PictoChat as the choice among gamers for the “penis creation”.

If you just go on Youtube alone and search for the words Spore & Penis you will receive over 500 and counting penises (complete with scrotums). Keep in mind the demo has only been about for a few days now, and it is just that — a DEMO!

Anyone looking to make the argument that gamers are generally immature will not have to look far for plenty of well endowed ammunition. Oh well, it’s still pretty damn funny.

EA however, does not share our sentiments when it comes to the wild world of Spore Creature Creation. A recent article posted on CVG reports that EA is prepared to ban users who use the software to create creatures they deem “violations” of the games terms of service.

With that said, I am not sure how much longer the fun will last, so I will share a few of my favorites with you while I still can.

I would rather the boogie man under my bed thank you!

I swear I’ve seen this one at a club around San Francisco

It seems as though he can’t stop touching it.

Oh so cute, he has penis kids.

Wow, those are floppy

It’s ah-so human like.

He’s proud to show off…

Should really get that growth checked out.

As you may have noticed, Day Three exploits are going up a little later than usual. Unfortunately, we had a run-in with the Blaznatz chewing up our bandwidth, so we were unable to get a good connection. Damn him and his chainsaw bayonet…

We’ve decided to combine our day three info with day four, which would officially make this Ripten’s GDC 08 Coverage: Day Seven. Read on for all the goodness.

A lot of stuff happened over the past two days. Everything will be explained in more detail by the peeps that were there, so don’t bust my balls if I don’t deliver the full monty right now.

We got a sneak peak at a bunch of upcoming Xbox Live Arcade games, courtesy of the XNA dev tool. There were a few titles that actually haven’t been announced yet, so stay tuned for that.

We also met with the Zeitguyz team for Recoil: Retrograd, and saw quite a bit of Havok stuff (which you can read about here).

Jon ran off and did a bunch of interviews while Chad and I went to the Microsoft keynote. A lot of good stuff was talked about there, including Ninja Gaiden II, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, and XNA 2 — er, just XNA. Sorry, I got on a roll there with the 2s.

We got some coverage of the IGF and Game Developer Awards, had a Q&A with Sid Meier, saw new footage of Mercenaries 2, Prototype, and The Force Unleashed, saw RealTime Worlds’ new MMO, hung out with the peeps from X-Play, and had a quiet evening with Will Wright.

Of course there are other things we did, too, like your mom. Oh, snap! Seriously, though, we attended quite a few events and will give you the complete story shortly.

In the meantime, rest easy knowing that I was only once almost run over by a speeding fucktard in a BMW, and Chad was kind enough to half almost attempt to save me. Thanks Chad!

We also had a kind soul offer to taxi us back to our hotel for just slightly more than the cost of taking an actual taxi, but this ride had the added thrill of almost getting us murdered. The dude was kind, but very strange. He called us “country bumpkins” and never really answered me when I specifically asked whether or not he was going to kill us. I take that as a definite “maybe”, but perhaps he just didn’t do it because he knew we were expecting it.

Moral of the story here, kids, is that you should never cross the street — ever, and under no circumstances should you get in someone’s car before asking if they are going to kill you. Wise words from your good pals at Ripten.

At the tail end of last year there were many voices asking if 2007 had been the best year in gaming history. Regardless of how you would respond to that question, 2007 without a doubt saw the release of a number of really fantastic titles. What any gamer should be excited to hear is that 2008 is shaping up to be at least as equally fantastic with huge releases imminent on all platforms. Word came down from on high today that there is a new name to be added to the list of things to drool over, and it’s a big one—Spore.

EA and Maxis have announced that Spore, Will Wright’s holistic mega-sim, will release for PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and mobile phones on September 7, 2008.

Now in the final stages of testing and polish, Spore will allow players to create civilizations from scratch, seemingly control every aspect of their development, share what they create and explore the creations of others.

Broad in appeal, huge in scope, drawing on the strengths of a single player format while encouraging strong community and leveraging the joy of playfulness and creativity, the promise of Spore is immense. At a time when PC gaming is supposedly struggling, Spore seems like the title that could turn that kind of statement on its head in the blink of an eye. And now it isn’t just some halcyon mascot of days past on an ever-receding horizon—the universe-in-a-box will be in eager hands in a matter of months. I for one am anxious to see if the game delivers. After all, it isn’t often Will Wright makes a new game.

Hit www.spore.com for all the latest official bits and pieces.