Another post about Spore today. Turns out Newsweek got an exclusive interview with Will Wright that published yesterday. Wright gives some great information about the things that delayed Spore for so long and provides a few exciting insights about the social-networking-inspired features in the game.

The interview is divided into two parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2

Here’s a paragraph from the first part describing a change they made recently as a result of focus group feedback:

For instance, one of the things that we changed late last year was….We noticed universally when people were able to just drop into any editor that they wanted to and play around with it–that was a much more entertaining experience for them to start understanding what the gameplay was. The gameplay made a lot more sense to them after spending time in the editor designing something. Originally we were going to force the players to start at Cell and play their way up through every level, but we decided that we wanted to make it feel more like a toy box of the universe. So we let players drop into any level they want to, right off the bat. We have an entry path for every level, straight off the bat, where you grab somebody else’s pollinated content as your starting point if you didn’t play Creature for instance. We found the players enjoyed browsing the levels lightly at the beginning, and trying a little bit at each level, then they would generally go back, start a full game from the Cell level, and play the whole thing straight through.

I’m planning a more technical post later this week, so please don’t fret that my blog is devolving into a run-of-the-mill video game news blog. It is still decidedly a run-of-the-mill game production blog.

Now for the most disappointing news of the day. EA has announced the release date for Spore. After months of saying that it would be released sometime this spring, a press release hit the streets today announcing a September 7 release. Yes, September.

I remember first hearing about Spore in 2005. Of course, I certainly understand that great games take a long time to develop, and few developers are allowed the leeway to take their time to develop the best possible game. Blizzard, with its golden touch, comes to mind, and Maxis. I also understand that Spore is a hugely ambitious game, and I will certainly buy it when it comes out. I may even buy a new Mac to play it on. But this game better be worth it. Three years is a long time to wait for a game.

Judging from all the screenshots and videos out on the web, the bulk of Spore has been complete for some time. To me that means the delay has either been caused by some sort of unforeseen technical problem or — and this is what worries me — it wasn’t turning out to be much fun. It will still probably be a great game. Blizzard basically started over on Warcraft III when its original concept ended up being kind of slow. And that turned out to be a wonderfully entertaining game.

So, yes, I’d rather wait for a brilliant game than play a good one now, but sometimes it’s just hard to be patient.