“I’m always looking for unique worlds to go to in animation,” said the director, Chris Wedge. “From every perspective – visually, thematically and comedically – the world of ‘Spore’ provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen.”

Variety says Patrick O’Brien, of Electronic Arts’ EA Entertainment division, will executive produce the picture with Lucy Bradshaw, the vice president of Spore developer Maxis.

Spore joins a number of other EA titles that have reached deals with Hollwood, including The Sims (Fox); and Army of Two (Universal). Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space and Mass Effect also have been set up for production.

EA sets up ‘Spore’ at Fox [Variety]

If not, he’s probably best known—in addition to his contributions to Spore—for one of his Game Developers Conference talks, in which he described the Wii as “a piece of shit” and slammed Nintendo for its hardware design choices. He later apologized for those remarks.

By Hecker’s estimate, the cutbacks at Maxis numbered 24 (he thinks). He estimates in his personal list of contributions to Spore that some 80 people were working on the game as development wrapped up.

Hecker announced on his personal site his follow up project, an indie game called SpyParty, which he describes as “a very different multiplayer espionage game” that apparently offers a level of excitement on par with ski jumping away from massive explosions.

Elvis Has Left The Building [Chris Hecker's Website]

“Often in the video game industry, the size of a studio fluctuates in response to business conditions,” an EA spokesperson wrote in an e-mailed statement. “In this case, EA has taken action to reduce the workforce at Maxis as we focus the business and focus Maxis. EA remains fully committed to Spore and other IP within Maxis, with games planned for launch in the next few months, including Spore Hero, coming to the Wii for the first time, and Spore Hero Arena on the DS. All eligible employees will receive severance and outplacement assistance.”

The layoffs were in the Emeryville studio, which is Maxis headquarters and the base of operations for Spore development. The Sims franchise, which was born at Maxis, is built out of EA’s Redwood Shores offices, where The Sims 3 was created by the Sims Studio team.

Layoffs at Activision’s Raven Software were also confirmed today.

We’ll have more on this story as it becomes available.

Even if you weren’t one of the chosen few, you can still get a lot from watching what went on at the panel. I pulled some quotes I thought were interesting, but really, there’s much more wisdom and points for discussion to be had from the total two hour run of the panel.

In particular, I call your attention to the Part 6 and 7 clips where the panelists talk about the importance of having gay characters in games and respond to that effed up game, Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!

VIDEO: GLAAD’s Panel on Homophobia & Virtual Communities [GLAAD Blog]

Cole used commenters’ responses to his post, The Impact of Homophobia in Virtual Communities, to drive discussion among panelists Caryl Shaw (Senior Producer at EA’s Maxis), Dan Hewitt (Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association), Stephen Toulouse (Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live), Cyn Skyberg (Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab) and Flynn DeMarco (founder of GayGamer.net). Read on to see if you made the cut.

First up was McLuvin’s comment about flaunting sexuality. Next was GameBuddy, continuing the discussion. Then came bLaZINcOdE3’s comment about the “gay mafia” forcing companies to hold “token meetings.” OrigamiNinja’s comment about how harassment makes the game less fun made it in, as did Nnooo’s about whether or not gamers can expect Mario to save a prince instead of a princess someday. User saulpimpson’s comment steered talk toward developers refusing to make games based on gay or gay bashing content. Then DanoruX’s tongue-in-cheek “this is so gay,” statement got a discussion going on “innocent” slurs. Phydeaux’s comment on “play to file” introduced the topic of abuse reporting in online communities. Lastly, ach77 made it in as part of a general statement that gay gamers just want to have fun like every other gamer – and to introduce the founder of gay-centric World of Warcraft guild, The Spreading Taint who happened to be in the audience.

Aside from being shamelessly proud of Kotaku commenters, I was interested to see how Kotaku alumnus DeMarco reacted to comments from his ex-audience. He did almost half the talking at the panel and demonstrated the most gaming expertise. Whenever an issue was raised, DeMarco could name at least two games in response whereas everyone else just fell back on their own games (like Shaw’s Spore and Skyberg’s Second Life) or defaulted to Halo.

The other big talker was Microsoft’s Toulouse, but I think he was being targeted. At the beginning of the panel, Cole presented a video that outlined the issues facing gays and lesbians in online gaming. All of their in-game examples seemed to be from Xbox Live – most specifically, Halo multiplayer. To his credit, Toulouse responded to almost every issue raised by Kotaku comments and admitted that Xbox Live hasn’t got it right quite yet – but they’re committed to making their community a safe place to game for everybody.

The quietest panelist was Second Life’s Skyberg. It takes all types to make a virtual world like Second Life and I know they’ve had issues that prompted developer Linden Lab to create an adults-only space. Skyberg did pipe up at one or two times to talk about anonymity making it easy for people to use gay slurs in online communities – and made an excellent point that as people invest in their online identities more, this anonymity goes away.

The only dull part of the panel was the Q&A. I’m not sure if it’s because the two hour time limit was almost up and everybody wanted lunch, or because the audience was the choir being preached to – but nobody asked anything that hadn’t been addressed. One lady asked if the “dehumanising” aspect of violent games like Halo brought about gay bashing and DeMarco responded that the problem wasn’t that the game that engendered homophobia, it was that the audience that the game tended to attract was immature and ignorant of gay issues.

In sum, this is what I took away from the panel: Don’t hate the game, hate the player. Or better yet, don’t hate anybody.

EA only has a week and a half left to convince you that the Spore Galactic Adventures add-on is worth your time and money. Let’s see if this trailer helps!

I can’t help but think Ratchet and Clank as I watch this trailer for Mothership Down, one of the Maxis-created adventures included with Spore Galactic Adventures, which will be available on June 23rd in the states. The weapons can’t possibly be as cool and inventive, and there is no way the humor will even come close, but there’s just something about the look of what I’ve seen so far that has me thinking of Insomniac’s dynamic duo.

So, show of hands – who is picking this up?

Witness the Robot Chicken creative team using the Spore Galactic Adventures editor to create their own fanciful tales of poo-flinging.

Hot on the heels of this morning’s announcement that the Robot Chicken team was providing downloadable adventures for Spore’s Galactic Adventure’s expansion comes this video, proving the fact. It features one hell of a Spore rendition of the titular chicken, along with a bonus appearance by Breckin “Garfield’s Jon Arbuckle” Meyer. It doesn’t get much better than this.

EA has dropped a new trailer, new screens, and new information on the Spore universe’s expansion onto Nintendo systems, Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena.

Rather than allow us to play music on a plastic facsimile of a Spore creature as I had hoped, both Spore Hero for the Nintendo Wii and Spore Hero Arena for the DS focus on the creature stage of Spore, allowing players to create their own creature, collect new parts, and take them on a fantastic adventure that spans many different worlds. On the Wii, Spore Hero is an action adventure title with combat and puzzle elements. On the DS, Spore Hero Arena is also an adventure game with a strong emphasis on gladiatorial combat.

“When Maxis first considered bringing Spore to console players, the Nintendo platforms jumped out as a perfect fit. Whether it is the stylus-driven action of the Nintendo DS or playful controllers of the Wii, the massive Nintendo audience is the ideal home for Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena,” said Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis. “Nintendo fans will love the humour, ability to create their own Hero, fun game play and immersive storylines we’re creating for these two games.”

I don’t know; it sounds a lot like they are giving Nintendo fans a more simplistic experience, much like they did previously with the MySims line. At least we still get to create critters, which was 75% of Spore’s fun anyway.

Both Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena are due out this fall spring.

Using Maxis’ “in-house exporter”, which is able to export all the “skinned, rigged meshes along with all of the textures (normal maps, specular, diffuse, gloss, etc)” of a Spore creature, toy designer Hellopike whipped up these renders of a “Cthulhoid”.

They’re just renders. Not pics of a real toy. But wouldn’t it be great if, some day, your little bundles of alien joy could look – whether in-game or just as a figure – this damn pretty?

UPDATE: Broken image removed.

Cthulhoid Spore Creature Render A Go Go [GameSetWatch]

EA Maxis and the creators of Robot Chicken are teasing a new joint venture in this clip, showing that the comedy boys are using Spore to design… something.

It was all looking very mysterious, with a mysterious website and a mysterious Spore-branded teaser (Find out what happens…May 19th), until Reuters went and blew the project’s cover.

And that project is “Titan Maximum”, a piss-take on 80’s giant robot cartoons like Voltron that’s due to begin airing in September. Robot Chicken producer/writer Tom Root explains:

There were always teams of extraordinary young people with the fate of the universe in their hands. In reality, that would end terribly. The last thing you want when giant monsters attack is a bunch of teenagers in charge of defending you. ‘Titan Maximum’ is about what would really happen if a team of idiot kids was in charge of a six-story-tall robot.

Watch the clip and you’ll see that Spore is being used extensively, at least in the design process, for the show’s various alien and robotic characters.

Whether it’ll be used in the actual show – Spore replacing Robot Chicken’s clay in the actual animation – I guess we’ll find out on May 19.

“Robot Chicken” crew constructs new series [Reuters]