When Spore was first revealed to the outside world over three years ago via a Will Wright GDC lecture, everyone was blown away. The idea of shaping the evolution of a microscopic organism all the way to a space faring civilization was something that had never really been done in games before. The added feature of an easy-to-use editor to make your creatures and other structures was just icing on the cake. Or so it seemed.

Since then Spore has gone on to massive hype, lots of E3 awards (it won for Best PC game at the E3 Game Critics awards three times and won Best of Show in 2005) and tons of anticipation. After all Wright is responsible for not one but two massive PC game franchises (Sim City and The Sims). Yet there was always this nagging feeling that Spore's press demos might mask the fact that the game couldn't live up to expectations.

Having now played Spore in all of its five stages and reading what Will Wright has to say about the game itself in recent interviews, it's now become clear what the game is really supposed to be all about and for what kind of audience it was created to serve. Spore is a true casual game, a title that was made to appeal to the biggest audience possible. That audience, according to Wright, wants fun but not too difficult gameplay. To Wright and his Spore team, the far more important part is the user creation tools; these are the many different editors that will extend the game's surface content to what will likely be massive levels.