Spore astrobiology
From Scienceguild
by Miles Smith
(To go back to the Spore report card, click HERE.)
At its very heart, Spore is a game about the emerging field of astrobiology. How does life come into being and propagate throughout the Universe? Indeed, the very name Spore refers to the most hardy of life forms. A bacterial spore can survive extreme temperatures, server drought, and even the harsh vacuum of space. When conditions are favorable, the spore germinates, releasing microbes into the local environment.
For their clever analogy between bacterial spores and space faring civilizations, Electronic Arts is to be commended. However, while their game is arguably the first to draw inspiration from astrobiology, their coverage of the field is somewhat sparse. Life is injected into the opening of each game by the arrival of a meteorite, carrying with it microbes from some other part of the solar system - a process known as panspermia. While this is a widely discussed topic in astrobiology (with bacterial spores being a leading candidate for the inter-planetary seeding of life), the concept of panspermia simply pushes the question of the origin of life out to the parent planet. If, for example, the early Earth was seeded with life from another planet, then how did life arrive on that planet? To get to the true origin of life, scientists are studying prebiotic chemistry.
Long before there was life as we know it, the Earth is conjectured to have been host to a soup of complex organic chemicals, some of which undergo the process of self-reproduction. This early chemistry may lack the individuality required for good gaming material, but is essential to the Darwinian view of the emergence of life. To the biologist, a single celled creature is a complex, wonderful thing, as equally miraculous as a forest or a lumbering ape. Without a discussion of prebiotic chemistry, life might as well have been a spontaneous creation, bought to Earth by some outside force, perhaps a meteorite, perhaps the hand of some creator. So, if Spore is to truly folow Dawinian principles, a future generation of the game needs to tackle this difficult subject.
By the end of a game of Spore you have become a space faring civilization, bent on terraforming every planet into your idea of paradise. It is here that Electronic Arts introduce some interesting concepts in astrobiology, namely what constitutes a habitable planet. However, this is a subject that really should have been covered in the earliest stages of the game. While habitability is certainly important to the would-be colonizers of the space faring stage, there is also a conjectured relationships between the conditions of a young planet and its ability to support microbial life. A possible next generation of Spore might begin with the subject of habitability. Until one has a planet with just the right ingredients (liquid water, organic molecules) and until the harsh conditions of its formation (meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions) have settled down, life is not expected to have a chance to arise.
Spore Astrophsyics
Ever since the Star Wars generation, the more scientifically inclined have learned to tolerate the sound of spacecraft moving through a vacuum, or the impossible jump to light speed. After all, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The same is true of Spore. A single individual (the player) takes on the responsibility of exploring the galaxy. In reality, while humans may one day extend their home beyond this meager rock, each journey would be many generations in the making. And, assuming that technology one day brings us close to light speed, there will be the incredible effects of Einstein's theory of relativity, where those who travel the galaxy age at a different rate to those who sytayed behind. This is essentially ignored in the game, which makes exploring a milion light years and a 100 billion stars seem like an afternoon's work. In the space faring stage, Spore loses sight of the wonderful concept that was introduced in the tribal stage and propogated through the civilization stage. Once a certain level of organization is reached, the species explores its environment and evolves as a group. However, in the space stage, that concept is relinquished for the good-ol gaming standard of an individual with a holster and a gun.
There is a saving grace in the space faring stage. The structure of the galaxy, as the player zooms in and out, is both realistic and evocative. There are even distant and unattainable external galaxies that can be seen between the stars. This player was at once transformed into the Captain Cook of a future generation. Ah, give me a hyperdrive and a few thousand years to explore!
Science vs Imagination (a personal note)
I was never expecting a computer game to be rigorously formulated based on the laws of physics or the principles of evolution. The journey undertaken by a player of Spore is far too grand to get bogged down in those kind of details. If Spore has one great message, it is that our own existence is connected to that of the Universe and to the forces that have shaped it over billions of years. To tell this story in a gaming medium is a new challenge that will take a number of iterations to perfect. For now, I am willing to forgive Electronic Arts for a handful of inaccuracies and incomplete story lines.
