The next evolution in gaming is upon us. From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPORE, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.

Begin your odyssey at the dawn of life as a simple microbe just trying to survive, then use the fun, intuitive Editors to evolve the creature from its microscopic origins into an intelligent, tool-using race. Guide your species as it builds (and the player designs) villages, buildings, cities, and vehicles. Along the way to becoming a global civilization you can choose whether to hunt or forage, attack or trade, be nice or play rough!

All the action takes place in a huge, lush world populated with creatures evolved by other players and shared over SPORE’s central servers. When it’s ready, your one-time pond scum launches into space in its UFO on a grand voyage of discovery, planet forming, or destruct-ion! As you explore and play in this limitless universe of unique worlds, your personal Sporepedia tracks all the creatures you’ve met and places you’ve visited.

Players who preorder Spore or Spore Galactic Edition from participating retailers will receive a coupon good for $10 off their next purchase of custom merchandise at www.zazzle.com/sporestore. For the ultimate Spore fan, the limited Galactic Edition will contain the 'Making of Spore' DVD, 'How to Build a Better Being' DVD (a 50 minute National Geographic Channel documentary DVD hosted by Spore mastermind, Will Wright), 'The Art of Spore' hardback book, an exclusive Spore poster, and a premium 100-page Galactic Handbook.

Aspiring game designers, engineers and artists will have the chance to hear Librande speak about "Designing Playfully" and learn more about the career opportunities inside the creative, global videogame industry. Students will also be among the first to get their hands on Spore(TM) Galactic Adventures, the highly-anticipated expansion pack to the platinum hit Spore.

Maxis'"College Invasion Tour" hit Georgia Institute of Technology on April 10, and will head to University of Southern California on April 16 and Carnegie Mellon University on May 1.

During the tour, Librande will guide studentsthrough the intuitive Adventure Creator in Spore Galactic Adventures while inspiring and teaching them how to make game concepts come to life. This easy-to-use tool gives students the ability to prototype design concepts and experiment with new ideas.

"Maxis and EA are huge proponents of college game design programs and nurturing rising talent," said Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis. "The robust creative capabilities of the Adventure Creator in Spore Galactic Adventures, empowers future game developers with a different way to experiment with game design. I can't wait to see what the students create."

In FY09, EA welcomed 250 interns to studios in the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Germany. Last year alone, the company hired approximately 80 new graduates, fresh out of college.

"The games industry continues to grow with the rise of online gaming, casual gaming and the exciting challenges of new markets," said Cindy Nicola, VP, Global Talent Acquisition. "EA is passionate about attracting and hiring the brightest graduates as they are our next generation of leaders. Our university partnerships and the talent they produce are key components of our overall talent strategy and we are deeply committed to continuing to hire interns and new graduates across EA."

Librande is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and California Institute of Arts Film/Video School. He has worked in a wide variety of technical and creative fields, and has been employed as an art director, video producer, software engineer, freelance illustrator and, for one long summer, a tractor driver on a farm in Oregon. He has also taught a game design course at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, CA.

Features :

• Take complete control of your creature’s fate as you guide it through the following six evolutionary phases:
  • Tidepool phase: Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
  • Creature phase: Venture onto dry land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your safe haven. Carnivore or Herbivore? Social or Independent? The choice is yours.
  • Tribal phase: Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe of your genetic craftwork. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you slowly upgrade their state of existence.
  • City phase: Bring your creatures’ race into a new golden era by building up the technology, architecture, and infrastructure of their city.
  • Civilization phase: Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. You can have them do so with an olive branch or a war cry—either way, the goal for your creatures is to unify the planet.
  • Space phase: The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make first-contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems scattered throughout a magnificently rendered galaxy. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals and paths to follow as you begin to spread through the universe.
• A suite of flexible, intuitive creation tools leverages the creative imagination of the player. Creating an entire universe of creatures, plants, buildings, vehicles and planets has never been so easy or so fun. An infinite variety of design choices is just the beginning.
• The world you explore is populated with creatures, plants, buildings and vehicles developed by other gamers and downloaded from a central database. The server chooses creatures and civilizations that best match your chosen environment, your experience level, and your creature’s ability. In turn, your creatures are uploaded to the server to be shared with other gamers.
• With procedural animation, your creatures and vehicles move based on how you construct them. They behave and interact based on your input and by their in-game encounters. That means there’s no pre-determined path you must follow—the game evolves based on your decisions.
• Wonder what another gamer was thinking when they created and evolved a creature? Uncover information about each creature’s origin in the Sporepedia, yet another way to explore the truly endless universe of creative expression that is SPORE.

The Spore Creature Creator gives Spore fans, and those who are creatively curious, the first hands-on opportunity to design their own species and share it with their friends. All creatures designed with the Spore Creature Creator can be imported into the full retail version of Spore.

The free demo version of the Spore Creature Creator will be available worldwide via download and lets players shape, paint and play with an unlimited number of creatures, using 25 percent of the creature-making parts from Spore. Gamers can then share these creations with their friends, including seamless uploads to YouTube. The demo will also be included in the The SimCity Box, which ships on June 23.

Spore is currently available worldwide, with the Galactic Adventures expansion expected on June 23, 2009.

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