Spore Going Hollywood?

A couple of weeks ago I made a post about the upcoming game, Spore. The title being published by EA has gone gold, which means we don’t have long before we’ll all be able to create cute little Spore creatures. As EA preps for launch, there’s already talks about branching Spore out beyond the video game world.

Will Wright was quoted in an interview stating, “With Spore, we’re looking way outside the game space, such as TV, movies, etc…We’re basically planting the seeds to spread Spore out to a much wider group of people than would ever play a computer game…We’re going to be much more intelligent about harvesting other market opportunities for Spore than we were with The Sims, which, as big as it was in the game space, pretty much remains in the game space.”

If EA knows its history; specifically with video games and movies then hopefully this is all just big talk. There’s nothing that hurts the credibility of a video game more than giving it a big screen release. You can give credit to Uwe Boll for most of this trend, but other film makers have tried as well and failed. The best video game to movie adaptation was probably the Resident Evil series, which is saying a lot. So, how could Spore fair in a different medium as a movie or TV show?

I think that Spore would definitely have a better chance at the small screen than the big screen. The evidence can be found with the WB show, Viva Pinata. This game is open ended much like Spore, where you can create characters and put them into a sandbox world. The show has been relatively successful as I’ve seen commercials for it off and on for awhile now. I’ve never watched a full episode so I can’t really give an opinion on the quality of Viva Pinata.

Hopefully Will Wright or someone at EA is somehow reading this; if so take this last statement to heart: All you need to do is release a quality game that millions of people will want to play. We don’t need comic books, tv shows, movies, lunch boxes, lunch meat, or a special edition Spore fruit roll-up (that sounds good about now). Just focus on getting Spore out there and try to keep up with the community that the game is bound to bring in. If after about a year or so, and the game is successful then maybe put out a cartoon to try and attract the younger audience. All of this being said, I can’t wait for Spore and to get my creative mittens on the full create-a-creature tool.