Computer Fun For Kids – Spore Creature Creator
Guest blogger, Jason Pomerantz, of Fiddle and Burn, writes about technology for kids.
Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims, is one of the most successful contemporary game designers. His key insight has been that it’s more fun to build than to destroy. A new project of his, The Spore Creature Creator, captures that spirit wonderfully, and even very young children can enjoy experimenting with it.
The best technology for children is the kind that lets them create things themselves. Everyone loves playing games, but it’s even more fun to build your own imaginary worlds. That’s why many popular games these days include level editors and object creators – tools that let the players themselves alter the structure and experience of the games. Such features encourage users to be active participants in building universes.
Sim City and The Sims did perhaps more than any other games to promote player participation in world building. Sim City is all about laying out your own urban metropolis and The Sims prominently features building design and home decor.
For the past several years, Wright has been working on an even more ambitious project called “Spore“, which is currently scheduled to be released in September of 2008. It’s still a little unclear exactly what Spore is all about, but it seems as if it will be a “life simulation game”, in which the player guides a species from its origin as a single celled organism, through its development into a high tech, interstellar civilization.
The Spore Creature Creator is one part of the game that has been released already. A free trial version can be downloaded, or a full version can be purchased for $9.95.
The Creature Creator lets users create their own animals from scratch. It begins by presenting a floating torso, which can be stretched and rotated into various shapes. Then a range of body parts can be selected, like mouths and eyes and legs, all of which can be attached to the torso wherever the user likes. These parts can also be stretched and twisted in a variety of ways. (The trial version offers a limited collection of body parts. In the full version the selection is much wider.)
Once all the parts are in place, the creature can be painted various colors and decorated with a selection of spots and stripes.
My six year old daughter Lila had a lot of fun deciding the best places for feet and a snout and picking the proper color for her new child, which she named “Seek”.
When she was done, the game let her save it and we switched to “Test Drive” mode. Here she put Seek through her paces in a large circular arena. She could click on the floor to make Seek walk to that spot. She could click icons representing various actions and emotions and Seek obediently pantomimed her selection. There’s nothing quite like watching a six year old’s bizarre creation do a Sumo pose or a Raver Punch.
In Test Drive mode you can also save pictures of your creations, which is how we got this image of Seek:
Another feature of the game is the “Sporepedia” which lets you share your creature with the world. Lila and I haven’t tested that yet, so we can’t say how it works. But it sounds like it will be fun to let others play with our creations and to experiment with theirs.
If the rest of Spore is as much fun as The Creature Creator, it looks like Wright has another hit on his hands.
