A couple of DICEs ago, I remember talking to Will very briefly and he said that he did most of his recreational gaming at that point on the Nintendo DS. So it seems he’s a big fan of that platform — was that what drove the development of this version of Spore?
Well, the Nintendo DS, at the time, Will was playing it a lot, I play a lot of games on my Nintendo DS, I have kids, I find it easily portable. A lot of it was experimentation in gaming — a lot of new takes and new directions. And I love that about what the platform has allowed us to do, particularly with the stylus controller and the early jump into the online sharing. So it felt like a natural fit. The decision to take a very unique approach to Spore on the DS was born of, let’s look at this platform and see what we can best do to enhance the play here. And we also had to address the whole — do we do the whole scope or do we focus on one area?
So we did focus on one area — the “Creature” phase of the game. And then we said, let’s make sure we nail the core tenets of what Spore’s about. Creativity: I don’t know if you got the chance to play with the creature creator. Exploration: Where you’re exploring these different worlds, finding parts that allow you to evolve. Evolution: Are you going to be a friendly or an aggressive species? And with the Nintendo DS we added a little bit more of a quest. This idea that you are on a quest to ultimately evolve to the point where you can find the things to help you save your home planet.
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