The question about Spore’s true audience is something that remains unanswered by pretty much everybody–potentially even including the development team to some extent, as far as I can tell.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to it. Probably like a lot of gamers, I’ve gone through something of an Spore excitement sine curve. I recently checked some of the game out over at Will Wright’s Emeryville studio, however, and I’m now climbing back up to the apex of that curve, mainly due to an extended conversation with Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civilization IV and now on Wright’s team. Like most people, he wasn’t able to nail down who the game’s target is–more encouragingly, he indicated Wright is rarely as concerned about that than he is about simply making whatever game he wants to make, which is uncommon in the games industry and fairly ridiculous within EA, but hey, he made The Sims.
He did make me excited, though. One of Johnson’s roles on the team is to serve as something of an advocate for core gamers, to ensure Spore is an experience they can not only tolerate but enjoy. It’s a fitting role; while Spore consists of numerous gameplay phases, it is most dominantly a strategy game, and Johnson comes from one of the industry’s premier strategy developers. He even successfully lobbied the team to put in three levels of difficulty, to ensure those who want some level of challenge can get it. The thought of a game that cycles through individually-playable homages to Pac-Man, Diablo, Civilization, Populous, and more is one that the nostalgic gamer in me cannot refuse.
The full transcript of my chat with Johnson, conducted with my coworker Brandon Sheffield, will be up on Gamasutra at some point in the future, but for now you can check out the rest of my thoughts on Spore (also now up at our blog GameSetWatch), including different demographic angles and the impressive social features the team has planned.
*Correctly, “For whom is Spore?” The More You Know.