"In the space game, you can take your spaceship and land on planets in a much more intimate level," said Bradshaw. "You can accept missions from other alien races and beam down to planets with allies and take on adventures that will earn you points and reputation in the space system."

Gamers will be able to explore these new worlds from new perspectives, thanks to new items like hover boots and jump jets that take the action airborne. Players will even be able to shoot lasers from mid-air. "If you played Tribes you probably did a lot of running across the planets," said Roarty. "With the jump jet, you can get off the ground and the planets are really beautiful and this offers new views of the scenery."


Roarty said the team has done a tremendous amount of innovation with the original Spore PC game and with Spore Galactic Adventures they're moving in a direction that they've been steered by the players. "It's fun to be operating in this space with a system that we've built," said Roarty. "When it comes to user-generated content, I think you're going to see more products like Galactic Adventures, which is a direct reaction to the way people are making and using stuff in this world."

EA Maxis discovered that there were a lot of younger PC gamers who enjoyed just creating creatures. As a result, they've crafted Spore Creature Keeper, which won't require the original Spore to play. "This game is designed for kids and it brings the fun of creature creation and adds a dynamic of nurturing these creatures and the ability to play with them," said Bradshaw. "There's a playroom for kids to bring their creatures to socialize with other creatures online. You can buy them objects and develop their personalities. You can invite your friends' creatures over in online play and have little social experiences in the activity space of the game."


Rounding out the new Spore offerings for this year is a new Nintendo Wii game called Spore Hero and a second Nintendo DS game, Spore Hero Arena. Like Spore Creature Keeper, these games are aimed at the growing mainstream audience, and skew a little younger. Both of these titles focus more on adventuring across new worlds, while retaining the creativity of the Spore PC game and making use of Nintendo's unique controllers for Wii and Nintendo DS.

Regardless of the platform, the core game design remains the same across all platforms. Will Wright's vision remains intact, as Spore's key tenants are about play, create and share. EA Maxis is just offering a lot more ways to achieve these three objectives this year.