Leave it to video game designer Will Wright, whose previous efforts have tackled voyeurism, civic society, god complexes, and human nature itself, to strike right at the heart of our contemporary culture wars. His highly anticipated new game Spore, based on the evolutionary process, probably won’t be on display at the Creation Museum anytime soon, but it will finally become available in stores this Sunday, more than three long years after it was first announced at E3 in 2005. Evolutionary biologists have praised Spore for providing a nuanced take on natural selection by asking players to construct creatures that thrive in a digital environment. The program runs through five separate phases—”Cell,” “Creature,” “Tribal,” “Civilization,” and “Space”—with each offering a unique  form of play, but all featuring ambient music by Brian Eno. Wright has acknowledged that each of the first four phases is heavily indebted to a different groundbreaking predecessor from Pac-Man to Populous, meaning that Spore isn’t just a lesson in the history of humankind, but in the history of video games too.

Image courtesy of EA Games

KEYWORDS: Electronic Arts, video games