Came across this link on digg for a 30 minute video demonstration of the upcoming game “Spore”.
Wow!
I gather the game is the brainchild of Will Wright (of “The Sims” fame). The demo blew me away - it is sooooo open-ended. I won’t try to do it justice here - for one thing the scope seems huge, and for another, this was just a demo, so the finished product could be wildly different. In short though, you guide a species’ evolution to a certain stage, then switch to a kind of SimCity/RTS type game to build up their civilisation, then switch to a kind of “God” mode where you can fly to other planets and do it all again.
Reading over that last paragraph, it doesn’t really do justice to what the demo showed. For instance, you seem to have complete flexibility in designing your creatures - the computer figures out how they move/eat/etc based on their body architecture. And the creations of different players are made available (asynchronously) to your own universe - while exploring the universe, you might encounter a planet that has been copied from some other player.
I really recommend setting aside the time to watch the video. Its been over 2 years since I bought a computer game, but I can’t wait for this thing to be released.!
(btw - there’s a good article on the Wikipedia on “Spore” which goes into a little more detail, for those that are interested)