Spore (Maxis, 2008) was first conceived as SimEverything: a conceptual followup to the wildly successful SimCity (Maxis Software, 2003) and The Sims (Maxis, 2000). The game would operate at a galactic scale, with the player able to interact at multiple layers of abstraction, inspired by the concept of being able to zoom out on the universe by “powers of ten” (Johnson, 2013). The entire game would be enabled by a procedural simulation of the universe and procedural generation of planets and creatures. Will Wright, the father of the Spore concept, spoke excitedly about creatures and planets being represented as “DNA”, which would enable the vastly reduced file sizes necessary to have a rich, shareable, procedural universe. The game spent years in development, breeding hype among reviewers and game enthusiasts. When Spore was finally released in 2008, it was met with mixed reviews—confusion and criticism over the shallow gameplay and poor model of evolution mingled with excitement over player creativity and user-created content.
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