We have already mentioned that Will Wright will be making his first appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con next week to promote their upcoming evolution sim Spore. Now it looks like he will be doing more than just showing off the long anticipated game. He will also be demoing a new Spore related application that actually does related to comic books.According to a just updated listing on the official Comic-Con web site. Wright will not only demo Spore but also show off the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator. This newly revealed application will allow people to make a comic book story starring your custom Spore creature. There's no word yet on if this will be a separate application or one that will be included with the game....

It looks like Electronic Arts wants everyone to have access to some Spore. . . the game that is. Today the company announced a deal with AT&T that will give its AT&T High-Speed Internet customers access to not only the free demo version of Spore Creature Creature but will give new customers access to the full paid version of the editor.AT&T mobile customers can now get Spore Origins, the mobile phone game, exclusively on their phones until September 4. This follows earlier reports that revealed EA is trying to make deals with PC makers to get the Spore Creature Creator installed in new PCs. The actual full game is, of course, still scheduled for release on September 7.[Via press release]...

So you have likely been playing with the Spore Creature Creator for a few weeks now, either in its free version or the full $9.99 version. But how, you may ask, is the actual Spore game actually looking. Quite well, thank you. In fact it's a lot deeper experience than we first imagined.At Electronic Arts' E3 meeting room we got to play with just one aspect of the full game of Spore, namely the beginning of the game where you evolve as a microscopic organism. As it turns out the game is more than just a series of mini-games linked by editors. It really looks and feels like you are controlling the evolution of one small creature into a massive space-faring civilization....

At yesterday's Electronic Arts pre-E3 press conference, Will Wright took the stage to discuss a variety of Spore-related topics. Wright touched on issues such as the evolution simulator's unique blend of science and creativity, the fan-made byproducts of his Spore Creature Creator, and a comparison between Spore players and God....

God created earth in seven days. Now, if you assume that a biblical day was measured in 24 hours just as it is in our present year of 2008 A.D., that's pretty impressive. Filling the earth was species was a time consuming process as well, but one that was also completed within that expedient span of time. According to Will Wright, we mere mortals are looking to overtake the big guy's admirable record. Since the release of the Spore Creature Creator last month, Wright notes that 1,756,869 species have been entered in the Sporepedia. The end result: the amount of species created in the time since the Creature Creator's release equates to humans "operating at 38 percent of God's capacity, or .38G," notes sister site Joystiq. "The blaspheme-o-rama continued as Wright said he suspected that by Spore's official launch users will be at 1,589,000 species a week or 1G," Joystiq continues. "Which left us wondering ... just how long would it have taken God to make Spore?"...

Big Download again thanks everyone for participating in the Spore Creature Creator Contest. Our judges picked their Top 10, all of whom with a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator. The readers have spoken, and there was a very close race for third place that came down to just one vote. Without further ado, we're proud to announce the three grand prize winners of the Big Download Spore Creature Creator Contest! Grand Prize - Spiral Kyle from Minneapolis, MN wins the Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet! Second Prize – Xythos Roman from Mattawan, MI wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card! Third Prize – Aqua Vache Ian from Silver Spring, MD wins an EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card!Congratulations to all the winners, and please be on the lookout for future contests hosted by Big Download.Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo for WindowsDownload the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac Check out all the Top 10 Winners ...

Electronic Arts' EA press conference is long over with but we do have a ton of new screenshots for a number of games that the publisher released today. Naturally all of the shots are for titles that will be released for the PC. Unfortunately there's no Dragon Age Origins shots today but we hope to get the first ones later this week...

Remember how it was said that the shareware version of Doom was installed in more PCs than Windows 3.1? (this was before Windows 95 of course)? Well Electronic Arts wants to make a deal that will apparently make the recent Spore Creature Creature editor demo available on a lot of new PCsThis revelation came in the middle of a New York Times story on E3 2008 where EA Games president Frank Gibeau mentioned their talks with several PC companies in an interview. Specific PC makers were not make but the article said that Dell, Apple and HP are likely targets...

As we await the release of Will Wright's (hoped for) magnum opus game Spore, the development team is doing something a tad unusual, especially for such a high profile title. They are giving the public a chance to see one of the development programs they have created to make the game.The program is called Particleman and according to a post on the Spore community web site it "simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud." You can use it to simulate such things like gravity's effect around black holes, pulsars and more. You will need to agree to EA's terms for downloading the program but it's very small; just 208 K....

Soren Johnson, designer at Will Wright's Emeryville, California-based Spore development team, recently sat down with Gamasutra to discuss a number of topics, strategy gaming chief among them, of course.In the interview, Johnson, who was the lead designer of Sid Meier's Civilization IV, discusses his strategy background which he brought to the development of Spore. "I come from a classic hardcore strategy background, yeah. I think that experience has been good for the team, in the sense that I know what the conventions are for strategy games, but we're not trying to create a typical RTS inside Spore," Johnson says.When asked if the Spore team's collective background also contains such a storied history in hardcore strategy gaming, Johnson says that it doesn't, but that's actually a good thing. "We've got plenty of gamers here, but as a practical matter, they haven't made really competitive games at Maxis, I would say. I think that really affects things. The AI in The Sims and SimCity is more like simulation AI. It's like, 'Oh, cool. I did this, and this came out,' as opposed to, 'I made this move and then the AI came behind me, and got me here.' So yeah, I think their background is a little different."Head over to Gamasutra to read the fascinating interview in its entirety....

We have previously reported on how the massive San Diego Comic Con is attracting more and more game related exhibitors. Now the pop culture convention has begun to reveal its panel programming for the event. The first official day for the convention, Thursday July 25, will have Will Wright make his first ever appearance at Comic-Con as he hosts a panel on the upcoming evolution sim game Spore. Other game related panels for Thursday will include one on Activision's upcoming Marvel Comics based games, another panel on the future of the Halo game franchise and a general one on how to break into the game industry. That panel promises to have the reveal of a new game called Blueshift. There are still one day tickets available to purchase online for Thursday at the convention's web site...

It was a dark and stormy night as the wait continued for E3 2008. The annual gathering of publishers to show of their upcoming games to the press has lost some of its importance but it's still one of the most important week in the gaming industry. Here at Big Download we have been counting down our picks for our most anticipated games that we are most looking forward to seeing (maybe) at the event. After revealing our picked for 25-21 on Monday, 20-16 on Tuesday and 15-11 on Wednesday, we are now finally entering the top 10. Today we are revealing our picks for the 10-6 positions on our list. As we mentioned in our previous articles, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision Blizzard titles on this list due to the new massive publisher bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision Blizzard on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that newly merged publisher. With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list....

The Big Download Team thanks everyone who participated in the Spore Creature Creator Giveaway Contest. We got a ton of fantastic, creative, creatures and had a tough time choosing our favorites, but we managed to pick out 10 lucky winners who will each get a free upgrade to the full version of the Spore Creature Creator.Now we turn the contest over to you, the Big Download readers. Check out the Top 10 Spore creatures and vote for your favorite by replying to this post (one vote per person, please). Grand prize winner gets a Wacom Intuos3 6x11 drawing tablet. Second Prize is a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked video card. Third prize winner will receive a EVGA NVIDIA e-GeForce 9600GT video card.So, check out the Spore Creature Creator Contest Top 10 gallery and cast your vote today! We'll tally up all the votes on July 14 and announce the grand prize winners on the 15th.Review Spore Creature Creator Contest AnnouncementReview Official Rules for giveawayDownload the Spore Creature Creator Demo for WindowsDownload the Spore Creature Creator Demo for Mac...

If you have been playing with the Spore Creature Creator (and hey, contest entries end later today) you might be wondering what the actual Spore game will be like. That's something we have been wondering about as well. Fortunately our sister site Game Daily actually got to play the actual game (if only for about 30 minutes) ahead of its September 7 launch date.Will Wright's latest sim game from Electronic Arts' Maxis studio starts you as a single cell which you evolve in a kind of Pac-Man game. How you play in the cell stage determines what creature you create in the creature creator.Once that's done you move your character around and even go after other creatures to eat (and gain more DNA points and content to evolve your creation even more). The demo then "cheated" to go to the final space level where your creature explores planets and attempts to expand their influence to alien species.It's hard to tell if the final game will be worth the considerable hype (especially since the publisher is still using cheats to push media previews forward). Game Daily wonders if all five parts of the game will come together to form a cohesive whole. It won't be long before we find out....

We had a feeling this might happen and now the latest list of the top 10 best selling PC games in the US (via the NPD Group) has confirmed it. The list, which covers the week ending June 21, has the $9.99 Spore Creature Creator as the number one PC "game" (and it's not really a game, its an editor for an upcoming game, Spore).The "game" is the only new entry in the top 10 list this week; the other titles on the list have appeared before and have basically shifted positions on the list. Funcom's MMO Age of Conan continues to sell very well, outselling the Blizzard World of Warcraft juggernaut for the past several weeks. 1. Spore Creature Creator - Electronic Arts 2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts 3. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Funcom/Eidos 4. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard 5. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard 6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard 7. The Sims 2 FreeTime - Electronic Arts 8. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff - Electronic Arts 9. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision 10. Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures - LucasArts [Via Voodoo Extreme]...