We had our fun with lewd and lascivious Spore creatures when the Creature Creator first hit, and then we were done, but some people just can’t let go and move on. The plague of Spornography has become so widespread that even the folks at CNN can no longer turn a blind eye. At least they keep things classy.
But scrolling through the database — past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig — revealed something many users didn’t expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a “giant breast monster” and a four-legged, “phallic fornication machine”, for starters.
You can almost hear the concerned-sounding voice of your nightly news anchor during a commercial teasing a full investigative report on how Spore is raping our children’s minds.
The CNN report covers all of the angles. First the get the word from the Spore development team.
Last month Electronic Arts contacted me to see if I would be willing to create a Spore creature for charity. The idea was that 70 handpicked “celebrities” from the Internets and meatspace would create a creature and send them to EA, which would in turn allow the public to vote on the best creation.
The winner of this little Sporelebrity contest would have $US 15,000 donated to the charity of his or her choice. Going up against such truly famous people as Carlos Santana, Emeril Lagasse, Richard Branson and Stan Lee, I know I don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning. But if by some bizarre twist of fate people selected my TickleMeKotaku creature (which has a prehensile Tickleme Elmo tail) then $US 10,000 would be donated to Child’s Play and the remaining $US 5,000 would be donated to Jennifer Ann’s Group.
Since most of my competitors are absolutely crushing me I have no problem urging you to vote and vote often, really often, for TMK. They announce the winner on July 18, I’m told.
Late last month I got a chance to sit down with Will Wright and a few other game writers to check out the full Spore. Having spent a week or so creating meatspace Fruit Fuckers, Spiders and a TickleMeKotaku, I was already pretty versed on the game’s Creature Creator.
The full Spore, as we’ve talked about in detail before, is broken down into five phases which allow you to take a single-cell organism and run it all the way up the evolutionary ladder to a space-exploring civilisation.
My concern, after watching the Spore demonstration in Leipzig last year, was that the game wouldn’t live up to the spectacular creation tools that are so integral to Spore. I worried that it may be more of a series of toys strung together than a full-blown game.
My time with the game managed to ease some of those concerns.
I know Spore’s Creature Creator has been making the rounds for months now, but yesterday was my first chance to get my hands on the thing and go to town on some critters of my own creation.
The stand-alone creator is a pretty straight-forward game. Launching it up brings you to a screen that lets you either create or load your own critters.
Once you drop into the creation mode you’re presented with a floating blob of flesh, elongated at either end with stumpy tail-like or neck-like appendages. When you hover your cursor over the blob it becomes slightly transparent, exposing the vertebrae buried inside. An arrow appears over either stump as well. To shape your creature’s body you tug on the arrows to stretch out the skin along an ever-extending backbone. You can also tug at the vertebrae to try and curve the spine and shape of the body.
Electronic Arts recently asked me to participate in a bit of Sporelebrity.
The publisher handed out 50 or so copies of the Spore Creature Creator to a bunch of celebrities (and me) and asked them to create a single, marvellous creature. This eclectic selection of creatures will then be posted on an Electronic Arts site for people to vote on next week. The winner gets $US 15,000 donated to the charity of his or her choice.
I’ve been able to cobble together a short list of some of the folks I’m competing against:
Stan Lee Richard Branson David Lynch Ellijah Wood Kevin Rose Mark Cuban Curt Schilling Kent Nichols Robert Scoble Veronica Belmont Carlos Santana Bijou Phillips Flight of the Conchords
Good thing none of these people are rich, powerful or creative… man I’m screwed. Maybe I should take the low road and create a giant penis creature? Neah, it’s too much fun making abominations to God.
