Game Maker Puts Hopes on 'Spore'

Jennifer Tan - International Herald Tribune

Jet-powered cars, aliens, moon colonies and robots. To many, this is the stuff of science fiction. But for the creative guru behind Electronic Arts, Will Wright, they are the seeds of inspiration for his hotly anticipated video game, Spore.

Spore, to be introduced Sept. 7, allows players to create empires and civilizations across galaxies, populated by creatures, buildings and spaceships.

Wright, a bespectacled, mop-haired American who builds robots for research purposes, said that Spore was inspired by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI.

"I believe there are other intelligences out there, and the closest is several galaxies away," said Wright, 48, who grew up building model cars and dreaming of space travel.

Spore comes at a critical time for Electronic Arts, which is battling Activision Blizzard for preeminence in the fast-growing, $28 billion market for video games.

Evan Wilson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, described 2009 as a "do-or-die year" for EA. And although the consequences of Spore's failure for the company are uppermost in analysts' minds, Wright is widely seen as being up to the task.

Observers tend to reach for superlatives when they assess his importance to the company.

"Will is the Albert Einstein of the gaming business - no one else is pushing boundaries like he is," said Geoff Keighley, the host of GameTrailers TV, a Web site that reviews video games.

Wright developed his blockbuster game The Sims while at Maxis, the company he co-founded and sold to EA in 1997. The game, in which players create home environments where characters do mundane tasks like cooking and moving furniture, far surpassed expectations and went on to sell more than 100 million copies.

Version 3 of the game is in the pipeline and it, along with Spore, is one of several new games seen as critical to EA's future as it struggles with tepid sales and flagging interest from gamers.

There are no guarantees, as Wright knows well. His most striking flop was The Sims Online, a multiplayer version of The Sims that never caught on and was shut down this month.

"He clearly didn't understand what makes those kinds of games work well, so The Sims Online was a pretty serious failure," said Timothy Burke, a cultural historian at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Spore itself has not been without its share of challenges. First announced in 2005, it was originally scheduled to hit the market in 2007. But Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in San Francisco, said Spore's strong pedigree boded well for sales, though he acknowledged it was not yet clear if Spore would have as much success as The Sims.

"It's too early to say if Wright is a one-hit wonder," he added.

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