Spore
From Scienceguild
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In the new computer game Spore, players begin as single-celled organisms and guide the social and technological evolution of their creatures, ultimately leaving their home planets to spread across the galaxy.
The game hit stores 9 September 2008. It was created by Will Wright, whose previous games--Sim City and The Sims--are some of the best-selling games of all time, with 100 million units sold. Many expect this game to match that record.
But there is a strange claim embedded within the game's massive advertising campaign: Spore is based on science. That message is being pushed very hard, most recently in a pseudo-journalistic documentary about the game's science by the National Geographic Channel.
But can a game in which you play a species-tweaking god really help people to understand evolution, or is Spore actually "Intelligent Design: the Game"?
To find out, I've been playing Spore with a team of scientists. Their expertise covers the range of science that Spore claims to represent, from cellular evolution to galactic exploration.
Have a look at my review of Spore in Science magazine. This page is now part of the Gonzo Labs. Spore's science report card is below.
How Spore's science measures up
Organismic biology: D-
- Cell biology: D
- Genetics: F
- Development and reproduction: D
Evolutionary processes: F
- Evolution as fact: B
- Mutation and variation: F
- Natural selection: F
- Sexual selection: F
- Genetic drift: F
- Historical contingency: D
- Constraints: D
- Evolutionary history: D
The TRIBAL and CIVILIZATION stages
Cultural anthropology: C-
Sociology: B+
Astrophysics overall grade: B
- laws of physics: C
- cosmology: B
- galactic structure: A
- stellar evolution: B
- planetary science: C
Astrobiology overall grade: C
- origin of life: D
- planet habitability: B
- distribution of life in the universe: C
- extra terrestrial intelligence: C
The scientists
NILES ELDREDGE
Niles is an evolutionary biologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Among his many contributions to science is the development, with Stephen J. Gould, of the theory of punctuated equilibrium.
More recently, Niles has been exploring cultural evolution and generating, for example, a phylogeny of musical horns.
You can find out more about his doings here.
Ryan is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
He spends most of his waking hours comparing the genomes of different organisms and grappling with the C-value paradox.
He's also the author of the Genomicron blog.
His laboratory homepage is here.
Bill is a sociologist and co-director of Human-Centered Computing at the National Science Foundation.
His strange career has been chronicled here.
He is also the founder of the Science Guild, controlling avatars such as Sciencemag.
An archive of his ideas about technology, religion, and the future exists here.
Miles is an experimental astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
He has been exploring our solar system as part of the team behind the Phoenix Mars lander.
Before moving to California, he lived at the South Pole station, Antarctica, studying the Big Bang with the DASI telescope.
Here's a video about his work.
