Less than a year after release, Spore’s creative community has crafted and uploaded 100 million pieces of content for the virtual evolution simulator. To put that gargantuan figure in perspective, EA claims that Spore fans are uploading “an average of more than 307,000 daily” including more than 31 million creatures, or, as EA puts it, “more than 19 times the number of known species on Earth.”
We're totally psyched about SPORE, the long-awaited video game released this week. SPORE is a simulation game created by Will Wright (The SIMs) and EA that
allows players to control various life forms from the cellular to the
galactic level. It's an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.
It
has been an age and a day waiting for Spore to finally be released, and
delay after delay has frustrated fans of would be game before it even
hit the shelves. But finally, the games creator and designer, Will
Wright, announced Tuesday that Spore will be hitting those same shelves
September 7, worldwide!
Do you savor that moment when you load up a game and hit "start", knowing you're about to chill with some electronic entertainment and leave the world behind? Enjoy it while you can, because in the future the computer might decide to play itself instead. A group of Hungarian researchers at Eotvos University have trained an artificial intelligence to play Ms. Pac-man, and are celebrating this advance in artificial system education - perhaps unaware that they've just made humans redundant even in the field of slacking off.
In a groundbreaking new way to conduct scientific researcher, gamers are allowing their PS3s to hone in on molecule simulations rather than aliens. In fact, anyone who owns a Sony PlayStation3 can assist biomedical researchers by donating their system’s downtime to help compute enzymatic reactions and ion conductivity. The project is known simply as the PS3GRID.
As games and licenses get bigger and better, we're treating to ever increasing levels of spectacle and wonder: vast virtual environments that make the Sistine chapel roof look like ten minutes with a spraycan, colossal set pieces that make the Pyramids look small-minded, and Normandy beach landings reminiscent of, well, the goddamn Normandy beach landings.
The only price we have to pay for these wonders is the death of creativity and originality. A game that costs a bajillion dollars and four years to develop (the PS3 cell processor requires a team of ten MIT doctorates simply to turn on for development), nobody will risk that investment on anything but the most guaranteed return. Think of the last five major releases you played - were there any that didn't have numbers in the title, sequel number substitutes like "Galaxy" or "Corruption", or that veered from the formula of "Tough guy shoots beautifully rendered things"?
Some call it a breakthrough in medical teaching methods; others call it a step in the right direction, a bound toward an educational focus in gaming. But most of us will probably just settle with, "A video game about the immune system? What?!"
Strangely enough, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), in cooperation with Brown University and USC, has finalized their development a new medical video game – the first of its class – Immune Attack. The game is designed to help students who otherwise wouldn't exactly find polyphosphates or genomes particularly stimulating.
The game's protagonist, a teenage boy, is diagnosed with a medical immunodeficiency disease and must figure out what's wrong inside his body before he meets an untimely demise (in other words, don't screw up, or little Freddy will be a 'little dead-y').
You would have thought that online gaming couldn’t have gotten any weirder. Gold selling, virtual sex acted out through second life, and a whole host of fetishes await the avid gamer at the touch of a button. But now, in a continuing trend of in-game advertising, you are being recruited for spy work.
The year is 1960: imagine you're flying on a commercial airliner just minding your own business; counting the number of peanuts in the bag they give you, looking at the people to your right and left, wondering why they're on the plane, and what they might have going on in their life. BAM! Out of nowhere, you're spiraling down into a watery grave. But you're lucky. You survive.
"Play Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' Façade, and at some point, you realize, with all the certainty in the world, that someday videogames will have the power to move you emotionally." - Games For Windows magazine, May 2007
Less than a year after release, Spore’s creative community has crafted and uploaded 100 million pieces of content for the virtual evolution simulator. To put that gargantuan figure in perspective, EA claims that Spore fans are uploading “an average of more than 307,000 daily” including more than 31 million creatures, or, as EA puts it, “more than 19 times the number of known species on Earth.”
We're totally psyched about SPORE, the long-awaited video game released this week. SPORE is a simulation game created by Will Wright (The SIMs) and EA that
allows players to control various life forms from the cellular to the
galactic level. It's an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.
It
has been an age and a day waiting for Spore to finally be released, and
delay after delay has frustrated fans of would be game before it even
hit the shelves. But finally, the games creator and designer, Will
Wright, announced Tuesday that Spore will be hitting those same shelves
September 7, worldwide!
Do you savor that moment when you load up a game and hit "start", knowing you're about to chill with some electronic entertainment and leave the world behind? Enjoy it while you can, because in the future the computer might decide to play itself instead. A group of Hungarian researchers at Eotvos University have trained an artificial intelligence to play Ms. Pac-man, and are celebrating this advance in artificial system education - perhaps unaware that they've just made humans redundant even in the field of slacking off.
In a groundbreaking new way to conduct scientific researcher, gamers are allowing their PS3s to hone in on molecule simulations rather than aliens. In fact, anyone who owns a Sony PlayStation3 can assist biomedical researchers by donating their system’s downtime to help compute enzymatic reactions and ion conductivity. The project is known simply as the PS3GRID.
As games and licenses get bigger and better, we're treating to ever increasing levels of spectacle and wonder: vast virtual environments that make the Sistine chapel roof look like ten minutes with a spraycan, colossal set pieces that make the Pyramids look small-minded, and Normandy beach landings reminiscent of, well, the goddamn Normandy beach landings.
The only price we have to pay for these wonders is the death of creativity and originality. A game that costs a bajillion dollars and four years to develop (the PS3 cell processor requires a team of ten MIT doctorates simply to turn on for development), nobody will risk that investment on anything but the most guaranteed return. Think of the last five major releases you played - were there any that didn't have numbers in the title, sequel number substitutes like "Galaxy" or "Corruption", or that veered from the formula of "Tough guy shoots beautifully rendered things"?
Some call it a breakthrough in medical teaching methods; others call it a step in the right direction, a bound toward an educational focus in gaming. But most of us will probably just settle with, "A video game about the immune system? What?!"
Strangely enough, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), in cooperation with Brown University and USC, has finalized their development a new medical video game – the first of its class – Immune Attack. The game is designed to help students who otherwise wouldn't exactly find polyphosphates or genomes particularly stimulating.
The game's protagonist, a teenage boy, is diagnosed with a medical immunodeficiency disease and must figure out what's wrong inside his body before he meets an untimely demise (in other words, don't screw up, or little Freddy will be a 'little dead-y').
You would have thought that online gaming couldn’t have gotten any weirder. Gold selling, virtual sex acted out through second life, and a whole host of fetishes await the avid gamer at the touch of a button. But now, in a continuing trend of in-game advertising, you are being recruited for spy work.
The year is 1960: imagine you're flying on a commercial airliner just minding your own business; counting the number of peanuts in the bag they give you, looking at the people to your right and left, wondering why they're on the plane, and what they might have going on in their life. BAM! Out of nowhere, you're spiraling down into a watery grave. But you're lucky. You survive.
"Play Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' Façade, and at some point, you realize, with all the certainty in the world, that someday videogames will have the power to move you emotionally." - Games For Windows magazine, May 2007
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