Spore is a 2008 video game created by Maxis and released by Electronic Arts for computers running Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game was designed by Will Wright and combines elements of action, real-time strategy, and role-playing games. In Spore, players guide the development of a species starting as a tiny organism, then evolving into a smart, social creature, and finally exploring space as an advanced civilization. The game is known for its large scale, open-ended gameplay, and automatically created content. At each stage of the game, players can use tools to design creatures, vehicles, and buildings. These creations are then shared online through Sporepedia, where other players can download them.

Spore was released after several delays and received mostly positive feedback. Many praised the ability to create custom creatures, vehicles, and buildings. However, some critics said the gameplay was too simple. One review noted, "Individual gameplay elements are extremely simple." The game also caused controversy because it included SecuROM, a type of software that some people believe could harm a computer's security.

Gameplay

Spore is a game where players guide a species from a tiny microbe to a space-faring civilization. The game has several stages, each with different goals and challenges. The player's choices in one stage affect how the next stage begins. Each stage is more complex than the last. Players can complete optional missions to earn rewards like new abilities or resources. If all of a player's creatures are destroyed, they can restart from their nearest colony or the beginning of the stage.

Spore has a main goal: reaching a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center to receive a "Staff of Life." However, players can continue playing even after achieving this goal. The first four stages may take 1 to 15 hours to complete, depending on how much time the player spends. There is no time limit for any stage, and players can progress to the next stage when they are ready. At the end of each stage, the player's actions determine a characteristic, or consequence trait, that affects how the next stage begins. These traits are usually based on whether the player acted aggressively or peacefully during the stage.

The game is divided into five stages: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space. Each stage offers a unique experience and set of goals. Players can choose to advance to the next stage or stay in the current one after completing a goal.

The Cell Stage is the first stage. It begins with a scene showing how the player's microbe arrived on a planet via a meteor, a concept called panspermia. Players control a single-celled organism in a 3D environment on a 2D plane, avoiding predators and eating food to grow. Before starting, players choose if their creature is a herbivore (eats plants) or a carnivore (eats meat). Players can collect "meteor bits" or defeat other cells to gain upgrades like electricity or poison. Once upgrades are collected, players can use an editor to modify their microbe's shape, abilities, and appearance using "DNA points" earned from eating.

The eating habits in the Cell Stage determine the creature's diet in the Creature Stage. Only mouths suited to the chosen diet (herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore) will be available in the Creature Stage. When the creature develops a brain, players can use an editor to add legs and evolve into a land creature. The Creature editor allows more detailed changes to the creature's body and parts in 3D space.

In the Creature Stage, players create a land creature that lives on a continent. If the creature swims to another island, it may be eaten by an unknown monster. The environment includes plants for herbivores and prey for carnivores. Players must manage their creature's hunger and health, as low hunger reduces health and can lead to death. Players have a home nest where they respawn after death and recover health. They can interact with other species, choosing to be friendly or aggressive, which affects how other creatures view their species. Social behaviors like singing or dancing can make other creatures allies, while harming them causes hostility. Epic creatures, which are large and dangerous, cannot be befriended. Rogue creatures can be attacked or befriended, and spaceships may appear to abduct creatures.

Progress in the Creature Stage depends on whether players befriend or attack other species. These choices influence abilities in later stages. Social interactions or successful hunts earn DNA Points, which can be used to add body parts. More expensive parts improve abilities like flight or speed. After editing, a new generation of creatures appears in the home nest. As the creature gains intelligence and size, it can form a tribe.

When the species evolves a brain sufficiently, it enters the Tribal Stage. The species' design becomes permanent, and players control an entire tribe instead of a single creature. The game shifts to managing a group of up to 12 creatures, with tools like weapons or musical instruments. Food replaces DNA Points as the currency, used to build structures or recruit tribe members. Tribe members can wear clothes, edited through a new interface. This stage is only accessible if players completed previous stages.

Community

Spore includes features that let players upload videos of their creatures' activities directly to YouTube from within the game. This is part of an agreement with YouTube and EA's creation of "The Spore YouTube Channel," which displays popular videos made by players. Some user-created content is also shown on the official Spore website and may earn recognition badges from Maxis. A feature called the Sporecast allows players to subscribe to an RSS feed, letting them track the creations of other players. Players can choose what types of downloadable content to allow, including options like "no user-generated content," "official Maxis-approved content," "downloadable friend content," or "all user-created content." Players can also block content in-game at any time, and Maxis monitors content for inappropriate material, enforcing rules with bans when needed.

Spore provides an API, a tool that lets developers access information about player activity, the content players create, and how players interact. The API includes web services that return data in XML format. In April 2009, the Spore API Contest concluded, with winners creating tools like interactive visualizations, games, mobile apps, and content navigation systems. The API also includes a forum for developers to use player-created content to build new applications.

Spore is described as a "massively single-player online game" that uses "asynchronous sharing," meaning players do not play together at the same time. Player-created content is automatically uploaded to a central database, where it is cataloged and rated based on how many times other players download it. This content is then shared with other players' games. The data sent is very small—only a few kilobytes per item—because the game uses procedural generation to create materials.

Through the in-game "MySpore Page," players can see statistics about how their creatures are doing in other players' games. This is called the "alternate realities of the Spore metaverse." The game also shows how many other players have interacted with the player, such as how many times other players have allied with the player's species. The personalities of user-created species depend on how the player chooses to control them.

Players can share creations, chat, and roleplay in the Sporum, an internet forum hosted by Maxis. The forum has sections for sharing game tips, creations, and roleplaying.

The Sporepedia keeps track of nearly every gameplay experience, including a creature's evolution by showing a timeline of how it changed over time. It also records a creature's achievements, both important and unusual, as a species. The Sporepedia also tracks all creatures, planets, vehicles, and other content the player encounters during the game. Players can upload their creations to Spore.com, where others can view them on the Sporepedia website. As of May 2009, the number of uploaded creations had surpassed 100 million items.

Development

Spore uses a method called procedural generation to create content that is mostly made by the developers. Wright said during an interview at E3 2006 that the game only needs a few kilobytes of information to make an entire creature. He compared it to sharing a creature's DNA blueprint. The game, like a womb, uses this blueprint to create the creature's appearance, which is called a phenotype. These appearances can be shared quickly and easily from the Sporepedia online server. This lets players upload their own creations and download others' content anytime. As more players contribute, the game becomes more interesting and enjoyable for everyone.

Reception

IGN Australia gave Spore a score of 9.2 out of 10, stating, "Spore will make you realize how far we have come and how far we still have to go. It will change the way you think about the universe we live in." PC Gamer UK gave the game a 91% score, saying, "Spore's greatest success is ironic. While it aimed to inspire wonder about creation and the universe, it instead showed how interesting it is to explore ideas through computers." GameSpy gave Spore 4.5 out of 5 stars, writing, "Spore is a technological success that introduces a new way to access endless content."

Most criticism of Spore focused on the lack of depth in the first four phases of the game. Eurogamer gave Spore a 9 out of 10 score, noting, "Although the first four phases have important goals, they do not always play well and feel too short." 1UP.com gave Spore a B+ grade, saying, "It is not a perfect game, but it is one that serious gamers should try." GameSpot gave Spore an 8.0 out of 10 score, calling it "a truly great game that will provide hours of good entertainment," but pointed out that "the individual gameplay elements are very simple." Jason Ocampo of IGN gave Spore an 8.8 out of 10 score, saying, "Maxis created an impressive product that does many amazing things," but added, "Spore is not quite an amazing game."

The New York Times review focused on the lack of depth and quality of gameplay in the later stages of the game, stating, "The basic ways to play Spore are unfortunately very simple." A review in PC Gamer US said, "It is not fair to judge Spore using the same standards as other games." Zero Punctuation criticized Spore, saying it did not live up to the legacy of The Sims, adding, "The main problem with Spore is that it tries to be five different games, each one a simple version of another game, with the Civilization Stage even named after the game Civilization it is copying."

Some criticism also came from technical issues with the game. The Daily Telegraph reported, "The launch of Spore, a highly expected game from the creators of The Sims, was troubled by technical problems." In an interview with MTV, Spore designer Will Wright explained that the game was designed for casual players, saying, "Spore has more depth than The Sims did. We looked at Metacritic scores for Sims 2 and Half-Life and decided we would rather have the sales and scores of Sims 2 than Half-Life."

In its first three weeks on sale, Spore sold 2 million copies, according to Electronic Arts. It received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), which means it sold at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

At the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences gave Spore the award for "Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering," and it was also nominated for "Computer Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming."

Spore uses a modified version of the controversial digital rights management (DRM) software SecuROM for copy protection. This system requires users to authenticate the game during installation and when using online features. This system was chosen after the original plan, which required authentication every ten days, faced public opposition. EA also set a policy that limited the number of computers a single copy of the game could be activated on to three. However, some users found this limit too strict because even small hardware changes were considered a new computer. EA later increased the limit to five computers. If users exceed this limit, EA Customer Service may consider additional activations on a case-by-case basis. A survey by EA found that only 14% of users activated the game on more than one computer, and less than 1% tried to activate it on more than three computers.

By September 14, 2008, ten days after Spore's release in Australia, 2,016 out of 2,216 ratings on Amazon gave the game one out of five stars, with most users blaming EA's DRM system for the low ratings. EA defended SecuROM as a "standard for the industry" and compared it to Apple's iPod song DRM policy. A former Maxis developer, Chris Harris, called the DRM system a "screw up" and a "totally avoidable disaster."

The SecuROM software was not listed on the game's box, manual, or software license agreement. An EA spokesperson said, "We do not specifically mention which copy protection or digital rights management system we use because EA typically uses one license agreement for all of its downloadable games, and different EA downloadable games may use different copy protection and digital rights management systems." A cracked version of the game without DRM was released two days before Spore's Australian launch, making it the most downloaded game on BitTorrent in 2008.

On September 22, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed against EA regarding the DRM in Spore, complaining that EA did not disclose the use of SecuROM and that SecuROM acted like a rootkit, remaining on the hard drive even after the game was uninstalled. On October 14, 2008, a similar class action lawsuit was filed against EA for including DRM software in the free demo version of the Creature Creator.

The DRM system was also a major reason Spore remains one of the most pirated games. Within the first week of its release, over 500,000 people downloaded it illegally from sites like The Pirate Bay.

EA began selling Spore without SecuROM through Steam on December 22, 2008. EA Games president Frank Gibeau announced that the maximum number of installations allowed would increase from three to five, and that users could de-authorize and move installations to new machines. EA explained, "By using the de-authorization tool, a machine 'slot' will be freed up on the online Product Authorization server and can be used by another machine. You can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize. If you have not reached the machine limit, the game will authorize and the machine will be re-authorized using up one of the five available machines." However, the de-authorization tool was not available for the Mac platform. In 2016, a DRM-free version of Spore was released on GOG.com.

Some educators have shown interest in using Spore to teach students about evolution and biology. However, the game's player-driven evolution system differs from the scientific theory of evolution in key ways:

• In Spore, each species has different ancestors, not shared ones, and the player's creature's "evolutionary" path is linear instead of branched. One species can only evolve into one other species, not into many related species.
• In Spore, the player's creature evolves toward intelligence, not in

Expansions

The Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack is an expansion pack released in late 2008. It adds new parts and color options for creating creatures. New features include extra mouths, eyes, and "insect legs." The pack also includes new test-drive animations and background designs.

Spore Galactic Adventures was released on June 23, 2009. It allows players to teleport their creature to planets instead of using a hologram. The pack introduces an "Adventure Creator" tool, which lets players design missions and goals to share with others. Players can add new abilities, such as weapons, tanks, and crew members. A section of the Adventure Creator also lets players edit planets and use 60 new plant parts.

The Spore Bot Parts Pack was part of a promotion with Dr Pepper in early 2010. It included 14 new robotic parts for Spore creatures, available through a patch (1.06.0000) on the Dr. Pepper website. Codes on some Dr Pepper bottles allowed players to download the parts, but only for the United States, excluding Maine. The pack was later made available to Canadian residents. The promotion ended in late 2011. The Spore Bot Parts Pack caused controversy because of issues with the download process and its limited availability.

Spinoffs

Spore Creature Creator was a preview version of the game Spore, released before the full game was available. It served as a demonstration of the game's features.

Two versions of the game were released for the Nintendo DS, named Spore Creatures and Spore Hero Arena. Both focused on the Creature phase of the game. Spore Creatures is a 2.5D story-based role-playing game where the player controls a creature captured by a UFO and must survive in an unfamiliar world, with elements similar to Nintendogs. Spore Hero Arena is a 3D role-playing game that emphasizes fighting mechanics. A Wii version of the game, later called Spore Hero, was mentioned by Will Wright during an interview in 2007. Buechner confirmed that a Wii version was being planned and would be designed specifically for the Wii Remote. The game would not be a copy of the original but would use the Wii's technology. Eventually, a game titled "Spore Hero" was announced as an adventure game created from the start for the Wii, with a focus on evolution.

Spore Origins was a mobile phone, iPhone, and iPod version of Spore. Like the Nintendo DS version, it focused on one phase of the game: the cell phase. Players control a multicellular organism in a tide pool, similar to the game Flow. The iPhone version used the device's touch screen and 3-axis accelerometer. A sequel to Spore Origins, also named Spore Creatures, was released for mobile phones. This version recreated the Creature Stage of the original game.

At one time, versions of Spore for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were considered. Frank Gibeau, president of Electronic Arts' Games Label, stated that the company might use Spore's technology to create other games, including action, real-time strategy, and role-playing games for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Darkspore was an action role-playing game that used the same creature-editing mechanics as Spore. It was released in April 2011 for Microsoft Windows but was shut down in March 2016.

Spore Creature Keeper was a game developed by Maxis for Windows and OS X. Designed for younger players, the gameplay was similar to The Sims. Originally planned for a 2009 release, the game was later canceled.

A version of the game for Facebook, called Spore Islands, was released. The gameplay was similar to games like Dragon City, but reviews were generally negative, with a rating of 2 out of 5 stars from Gamezebo. A 2D version of the Spore Creature Creator was also released as a web-based game using Adobe Flash.

Proposed sequel

The idea for a sequel to Spore came from players who wanted a more realistic and science-based version, similar to the one shown in the GDC 2005 demo. A major difference between the demo and the final game, along with the lack of a modern sequel, is often linked to decisions made by the company EA. Jez Corden from Windows Central said, "The publisher is known for not using quality games, studios, and people well in favor of making money and following trends instead of creating new ideas." The game's early success and unique gameplay, combined with player disappointment, led to hopes for a "better" version of the game, sometimes called Spore 2.

Spore's community has tried to create a sequel themselves. One example is Thrive, a game that uses a more scientific approach to show how species evolve. It is developed by a group of volunteers and is free for others to use and improve. Thrive has been in development since 2009, and only the first of eight planned stages is playable now. Other similar games include The Sapling, The Universim, Planetary Life, and Niche: A Genetics Survival Game. Games not connected to Spore, such as No Man's Sky, Kerbal Space Program, and Stellaris, are also sometimes compared to Spore.

In 2024, the official website of Spore announced that a new team is working on the game and created an official Discord server, which gave hope for a sequel. However, the team later said no sequel is planned and no major updates are expected. They explained their focus is on working with the community. Some journalists believe a sequel is "unlikely, but not impossible."

Other media

The game includes an iTunes-style "Spore Store," where players can buy official Spore items such as t-shirts, posters, and future game expansions. Plans are also in place to create a Spore trading card game based on the creatures, buildings, vehicles, and planets designed by players in the Sporepedia. Additionally, there are plans to produce custom creature figurines. At E3 2006, some players who created their own creatures received 3D-printed models of those creatures. On December 18, 2008, it was announced that players could use Z Corporation's 3D printing technology to turn their creations into 3D sculptures.

The Spore Store on Zazzle allows users to place their creatures on items like T-shirts, mugs, and stickers. The Spore team partnered with a comic software company to create comic book versions of players' "Spore stories." Comic books featuring stylized images of creatures, some of which were shown in presentations, are displayed in the Spore team's office. This feature, called the Spore Comic Creator, was introduced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, 2008. It uses MashOn.com's e-card software.

The special edition of the game, Spore: Galactic Edition, includes a "Making of Spore" DVD, a National Geographic Channel DVD titled How to Build a Better Being, a hardback mini-book titled The Art of Spore, a fold-out poster, and a 100-page Galactic Handbook published by Prima Games.

On October 1, 2009, EA, 20th Century Fox, and AIG announced plans for a Spore film. The film would be a CGI-animated movie made by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Chris Wedge. However, the project remained stalled in development for years. After Disney acquired Fox, Blue Sky Studios announced it would close, leaving the film effectively canceled.

Cliff Martinez composed the main menu galaxy theme and related interstellar and solar music. Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers created the generative music used during planet editing in the Space Stage. Kent Jolly, using samples from Eno, composed generative music for the Cell Stage, creature editor, and other game stages. Aaron McLeran, also using samples from Eno, created generative music for the tribe editor and vehicle editors. Other composers included Jerry Martin, Saul Stokes (for Sporepedia music), and Marc Russo. The Civilization Stage user theme generation was designed by Kent Jolly, Aaron McLeran, and Cyril Saint Girons, with samples from Eno. All audio in Spore was created using a modified version of Pure Data developed by Miller Puckette.

The game has been used in academic studies to observe how people use substitutes when making choices.