Computer Graphics World

October 2008 25 Auto IV "would care about making their own little guy." His fear was unfounded, and the response was phenomenal. Many users posted their creature creations in on- line forums, seeking feedback on designs they thought were poorly animated or too cool for the room as part of a massive pub- lic beta test of sorts. He couldn't believe the community of creativity that had sprung forth from the Creature Creator. "Some of them are cute, and some are mean," Hecker reports. "It kind of drills home the idea that everybody has this cre- ative aspect inside them, but it's just kind of repressed. When you're an adult, you're not supposed to draw creatures because then you look like a child. But unleashing that spirit in a structured environment makes it safe for people to explore their creativity, which I think is beautiful." Hecker is sanguine about how Spore will be received based on how the public has re- acted to Creature Creator, a marketing vehicle that helped prime the pump on all the cre- ative possibilities of the creature database. Al- lowing the public a taste of Spore also enabled designers to fi x a few confi guration bugs in the animation system, sound card, and other areas of the game. Perhaps most important was that it won over skeptics who expressed during forum posts how they had absolutely no interest in playing Spore—that is, until fi d- dling around with Creature Creator. "We discovered a whole bunch of cool things about what you can do with the crea- ture editor that we weren't telling anybody," Hecker explains, "and it was like the Internet passed us by in two days in terms of coolness and craziness. It's fun for players to discover this stuff for themselves. So, things that took us a long time to discover from when we started using the editors only took a couple days for players at large to fi gure out." For instance, a random tester noticed to- ward the end of last year that one creature could be mounted on top of another—a ca- pability that took the design team two years to determine. But users were even more sav- vy: Creatures were seen riding on one another the very fi rst day Creature Creator came out. " ey just completely blew us away, which is awesome," says Hecker, noting how the magical part from both a motivation and development standpoint was that people not only had a good time, but also surprised Spore's design team of seasoned professionals. "I can't wait until the game ships because the building and vehicle editors are so diff erent," he adds. " ey allow a diff erent kind of cre- ativity, and it will be interesting to see where people take that as well." Sturgeon's Law In the months preceding Spore's release, Hecker was so impressed by the quality of creations showing up in the so-called Sporepedia that he thought they represented a splendid challenge to the so-called Sturgeon's Law, named after science-fi ction writer eo- dore Sturgeon, who argued that 90 percent of everything is rubbish. e Sporepedia tracks nearly every game- play experience by graphically displaying a timeline showing how creatures, planets, ve- hicles, creature achievements, and other en- countered content evolved (in keeping with the game's creature-evolution theme). e knowledge base dedicated to Spore, known as SporeWiki, describes it as "essentially a heads-up display, cataloging all stars/solar systems, planets, and creatures (and, pre- sumably, buildings, vehicles, and fl ora) that players have discovered. Players can book- mark or blacklist the competition "in order to prioritize or ban content from that par- ticular creator," according to the Web site. "Look at that front page, and you'll see that the creatures non-techies have created are awesome," Hecker gushes. " ey look like professional-quality models, and it is sat- isfying to see normal people who are capable of making this stuff and don't end up being frustrated because it's so hard. I know how to use Maya, but it's still frustrating for me to get what I want out of it, whereas with the creature editor, I can make something that is pretty cool in fi ve seconds." ■ Bruce Shutan is a freelance writer based in the Los Angeles area. He can be reached at bshutan@ sbcglobal.net. Users choose from 230 fl exible body parts to build their unique characters. Sturgeon's Law In the months preceding Spore's release, Hecker was so impressed by the quality of creations showing up in the so-called Sporepedia that

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