The ''Spore Creature Creator'' is a software that allows players to create their own creatures with a standalone version of the Creature Editor from ''

Spore In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, ...

''; the software was one of the first aspects of the game to receive focused development, and underwent ten rewrites since the start of development. It was rated E by the

ESRB The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games in the United States and Canada. The ESRB was established in 1994 by the Entertainment Software Ass ...

in early March 2008, indicating that the editor would be released separately well before the game's release as a utility program. Electronic Arts told

MTV Asia MTV was a pan-Asian music pay-television channel which launched on 3 May 1995 as a standalone pay television channel. It was owned by Paramount Networks EMEAA. History MTV Asia was officially launched on 3 May 1995 as a 24-hour English-languag ...

that "EA Screen will provide visitors a chance to interact with EA's game producers hailing from the studios, and unveil the hugely anticipated ''SPORE Creature Creator'' demo version to gamers for the first time in Asia." Electronic Arts VP Mark Buechner stated on the ''Spore''

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page that the editor would be released in June or July 2008, saying, "We are looking at releasing it two to three months before the launch of the full game." ''The SimCity Box'' artwork showed a blurb stating that the creature editor would be included with it. IGN revealed that the ''Spore'' Creature Creator utility would be available in two different versions on June 17, 2008. There was a paid version (for $9.95) and a free demo that was downloadable from Spore.com and included for free, bundled with ''The SimCity Box''. The free version of the editor only contained 25% of the available creature parts that were found within the full version. In

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, on August 30, 2008, three state newspapers owned by

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offered the full version either free or for $2. The utility includes a test environment for players to see their creatures go through animations and allowed the player to import other user-created creatures through the ''Sporepedia'' at Spore.com. The utility included screen capture and video tools as well, including

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functionality. The editor also gave the user the ability to create animated avatars, and output in RSS and embeddable

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code to facilitate easy incorporation into such sites as MySpace and

. The software is automatically superseded by ''Spore'' when it is installed, since the Creature editor is already present on the game. Shortly after its introduction, the ''Creature Creator'' was used to create creatures with oversized

genitalia A sex organ (or reproductive organ) is any part of an animal or plant that is involved in sexual reproduction. The reproductive organs together constitute the reproductive system. In animals, the testis in the male, and the ovary in the female, a ...

, either stand-alone or engaged in

coitus Sexual intercourse (or coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion and thrusting of the penis into the vagina for sexual pleasure or reproduction.Sexual intercourse most commonly means penile–vaginal penetr ...

(a phenomenon quickly dubbed "sporn"). EA responded with e-mails sent to those who made pornographic

machinima Machinima, originally machinema () is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation. The word "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words ''m ...

from its demo, and has flagged certain on-line accounts for " TOS violations". Furthermore, YouTube pulled several such videos for violations of its own TOS. By June 24, 2008, users had already uploaded over one million creatures to the site. During Electronic Arts' E3 2008 presentation on July 14, 2008, Wright humorously noted that fans had done God's work at 38% efficiency by creating the same number of currently known species on Earth, 1,589,000, in about 18 days, compared to God's 6 days. When ''Spore'' debuted on September 1, 2008, over 3 million creatures had been added to the Sporepedia via the ''Spore Creature Creator''. When installing

, ''Spore Creature Creator'' would be uninstalled.

Reception

At the time of its release, the game received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

References

External links

* {{Sim series 2008 video games Biological simulation video games Electronic Arts games MacOS games Spore (2008 video game) Maxis Sim games Science fiction video games Video game development software Windows games Single-player video games Video games using Havok Video games developed in the United States