Newswise — This September, a hotly anticipated computer game called Spore is poised to redefine the frontiers of gaming. Rather than focusing on winning or losing, Spore is about creating life itself: it starts with voracious little organisms that evolve into a civilization that eventually sets out to conquer outer space. What makes Spore utterly unique is the unprecedented amount of control given to players. Players, not programmers, design virtually all the characters and the environments they inhabit within the game. For each wacky five-legged, nine-eyed creature that a player dreams up, the game's software calculates traits to match that type of body, such as its gait, the sounds it makes, and the way it hunts and dances.
But before the game of Spore could come to life, it had to be engineered. David Kushner explains in IEEE Spectrum magazine how Spore's designers tackled a game with virtually nothing set in stone.
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