![]() Which will change the way the way in which they play the game, you know. And every generation where you reproduce, a player has to go in and slightly change the design of their species. And that's the players' first avatar, and you're actually driving this little creature around, you're eating, you're surviving, you eventually reproduce. But, basically, a little shard comes off this comet, falls into the ocean, cracks open and a single-cell, little creature emerges from it. It's basically one of a number of plants that you can kind of start playing the game on. WRIGHT: Well actually it's not even Earth. So that's where we start, what happens after that? We were saying, Will Wright, you were saying that the game starts with the landing of a living organism on earth from outer space. We're talking this hour about the new computer game "Spore" with the game's creator Will Wright and evolutionary biologist Richard Prum. PALCA: From NPR News, this is Talk of the Nation Science Friday. So don't go away, we'll be right back after a short break. But we've got to take a short break now, and we'll be back talking with the creator of "Spore" and also an evolutionary biologist who's played the game and has some thoughts he like to share - is willing to share with us about it. Because I know I've watched people for decades now, talking about artificial life and their games of a very simplified nature that seemed to emulate some of the things you've created in Spore. Well, we're going to be talking about this whole question of where, well not so much where life came from, but how it goes forward and how you can play it as a game. ![]() But it's getting a little bit more ground now, what's called panspermia, which is that life came to earth from some other place. To really deal with, what you know what, we've like actually started one of the theories that was kind of in disrepute for many years. WRIGHT: Well, we actually were looking at origin of life theories and decided to go with panspermia which is to say we kind of ponded the problem. PALCA: That's interesting, because, you know, there's this question, I mean evolution, if Darwin is correct or runs by an ordered set of rules but has to start some place. And then eventually in the society and technology and all that, so we were kind of stepping way back and looking at the big picture. We actually wanted to track the origin of life to the evolution of single cell up to multiple flavor(ph) features, then intelligence. WRIGHT: Well, I would say that "Spore" the game, was inspired by a little larger view of evolution. Was it this kind of thing, that's kind of thought that was inspiring this game or were you off on a different tack altogether. And Will Wright, I don't know how much you heard, we were just talking with Jim Noonan about the - the evolving - how a human hand evolves from the same set of genes that a chimpanzee has, but obviously the hands in humans are different. And if you'd like to join our conversation, the number is 80, that's 800-989-TALK. Anyway, so now we're talking about this new game. PALCA: So I should've checked, I can make sure you're really at Yale by making sure the weather's the same, but now we'll let you - we'll assume. RICHARD PRUM (Chairman, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University): Thank you. Welcome back to the program, Doctor Prum.ĭr. ![]() Wait a minute, weren't we just talking to some - yes, we were just talking to somebody at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. PALCA: And Richard Prum, he's a professor of Evolutionary Biology and chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. WILL WRIGHT (Chief Designer, MAXIS): Oh thank you very much. He joins us on the phone from California. Joining me now to talk about "Spore" and the science behind it are my guests, Will Wright, he's chief designer at MAXIS and creator of Spore. Sounds like a computer game both kids and evolutionary biologists would love, well, we'll find out. Players start out as tiny microbes swimming in the primordial soup, gobbling up whatever floats by, and then one step at a time they crawl onto land, pick up some adaptations, establish civilizations, blast off into space, and write computer games. But this time it's not about urban planning or running the lives of simulated people, the game is called "Spore" and it's inspired by science, particularly evolutionary biology. This month, the creator of those classic computer games "Sim City" and "The Sims" is back with another game. ![]() OK, and now we're going to change from the real world of biology toward the sort of a simulated world of biology.
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