Spore has more species than Earth

By Oli Welsh Published 15 July, 2008

Wright serves up E3's best stat attack.

Speaking at EA's E3 press conference, Spore creator Will Wright announced that thanks to the release of Creature Creator, the number of player-created species in the game already exceeds the number of species on Earth.

Wright - proudly wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Save SETI at Arecibo" - announced that in the 18 days since it was released, Spore: Creature Creator players have crafted 1,756,869 species of creature. By contrast, our planet has less than 1.6 million species.

Wright allowed himself a joke at the expense of Creationism: allowing that God had created that many species in 7 days, he compared the figures with Spore players' achievement, and calculated that Spore fans were currently worth 38 per cent of God. He went on to estimate that players would be equivalent to 1 God by launch, and 3 Gods by the end of the year.

Wright said that player creativity had far exceeded developer Maxis' expectations. They hoped to have 100,000 species by the launch of the full game, and a million by 2009. In fact, they had 100,000 in 22 hours, and a million in a week.

He showed off players' most impressive creations to date, many of which Maxis' artists thought would not be possible, including fairly realistic animals and humans, robots, aeroplanes, and a Weighted Companion Cube.

Wright also promoted Spore's focus on science. He mentioned a National Geographic TV documentary that will be aired at the same time as the game's release, and an as-yet unannounced partnership with SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - something the legendary creator said he was personally excited about.

"Science is a really powerful brand that no other entertainment property is trying to grab," said Wright, after complaining that modern chemistry sets "are so nerfed that you could probably eat all the stuff and it wouldn't make you feel sick".

Amazing scenes. We love Will Wright, and we love Spore. If you don't believe us, check out Kieron's Creature Creator review.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Brogan #1 4 years ago

    Shitting iron filings can't make you feel that great.

  • Svecke #2 4 years ago

    So, how will the Spore content turn out in the end?

    "We have become as gods!" or "We have become ass-gods (let's make another cock-species)!"

  • MyPointIs #3 4 years ago

    I bought it too.

    Because I wanted wings for my cock.

  • Rirekon #4 4 years ago

    Er.. there are over 1 million species of insect that have been discovered with estimates of 20 times that being yet undiscovered. There are another million of non-insects, which brings us to 2 million species on earth that are known and 20+ million unknown.
    Nice statistic but you fail.

  • skillian #5 4 years ago

    Yes Rirekon, that's what I was thinking.

    I know this is a games website, but "by contrast, our planet has less than 1.6 million species" is kind of a silly thing to say...

  • kinky_mong #6 4 years ago

    What sort of tightwad can't spare a fiver for this?!

    I pity any poor girl who ends up on a date with someone like disc.

  • gingerlink #7 4 years ago

    companion cube?

    this I gotta see :D

    Also, yeah, I thought there were more species than that. Maybe they're only counting vertebrae (as every creature in spore does actually have a backbone).

  • hiddenranbir #8 4 years ago

    I bought it, didn't just want to make meat-eaters.

    Stats are wrong though. Dumbarses.

  • Stuz359 #9 4 years ago

    Not to mention bacteria, viruses etc, etc...

  • Johnson #10 4 years ago

    >> companion cube? this I gotta see :D

    Hang on, let me check my notes. Hmm, a huge success apparently.

  • rudedudejude #11 4 years ago

    FAIL!

    There are millions of spider / insect species with more being discovered every day.

  • Nithron #12 4 years ago

    Yeah.. As others have said, this is complete PR gibberish, there are far more species on Earth than that. Also, as disc put it, most of the creature creator ones are indeed going to be giant sentient cocks.

  • gingerlink #13 4 years ago

    from wikipedia :

    Because of the difficulties with both defining and tallying the total numbers of different species in the world, it is estimated that there are anywhere between 2 and 100 million different species

    It's a ballpark figure, but it's still higher than what Mr Wright says.

    Back to my vertebrates point though (REMEMBER all creates in spore have a backbone, it's the start of the creation) there are only 58,000 species of these that exist in the world. Not many new ones are being discovered, so I reckon Mr Wright should stick to that.

  • Shadman #14 4 years ago

    Why all the hate? The Spore Creature Creator is one of the best bits of software released this year, and you can't help but smile the whole time you're playing it.

    And google animal species. Links to essays there (like this one) seem to agree that there's about 1.7 million recorded species. And who cares about how accurate it is anyway, it was only a bit of fun.

  • hahayou #15 4 years ago

    Science is a brand now? Great. I can't wait till it gets bought out.
    Science (tm), exclusive to the Microsoft (tm) Xbox 360 (tm).
    :(
    Edited by 1 at 15/07/08 @ 15:29

  • sneetch #16 4 years ago

    @disc
    "1. How many of those species are cocks?"

    Heh, that was my first question too.

    At least the real world has very few creatures that look like a twig and berries. A stick insect and a couple of beetles could arrange themselves to look a little like a meat and two veg, I suppose... but that would be two species displaying a (very) rudimentary sense of humour and could be hugely interesting stuff, scientifically speaking.