Video Games

I don't believe that Spore exists.

This PC game, from The Sims creator Will Wright, has been perhaps the most anticipated game in the world since the concept was unveiled several years ago.

The premise is certainly intriguing: build life from the earliest single-celled organisms, molding your creations into any shape you choose, adding eyes, legs and other body parts as desired, and then shepherd your evolving mutant flock through the Stone Age and into the Space Age.

What's more, you can catapult your freakish creations into an online universe to interact with the equally bizarre life forms cooked up by other players.

In other words, Spore was designed to be perhaps the most complex, open-ended game ever built, dependent solely on its ability to indulge every Dr. Frankenstein-ish whim of the millions of gamers addicted to creation and interaction games such as, well, The Sims.

A tall order.

And one that Mr. Wright and publisher Electronic Arts may have a hard time fulfilling. The game, in gestation for years, was supposed to come out this year. But when Electronic Arts released its annual financial results a few days ago, the company had to admit that Spore won't come out until at least its next fiscal year, which begins in March 2008.

At that point, Spore will have been in development for at least three years.

Now, clearly, Spore exists in some form. Mr. Wright has been demoing the product for some time at trade shows and industry conferences, and you can find plenty of gameplay videos on YouTube and elsewhere.

But Spore is running up against a statute of limitations that most gamers who've been around awhile should be able to recognize. As a general rule, games that take more than a few years to make are almost always mediocre at best.

Whether it's because the games have become dependent on old technology, have stale gameplay, were too large in scope or simply were never any fun but were shoved out the door to generate some financial return on the millions of dollars invested in making the game, delayed games are generally bad games.

Of course, there are delays and then there are delays. A few months here and there shouldn't make you nervous, as game creation is still a somewhat inexact science.

But think of a title such as Duke Nukem Forever, which was announced roughly a decade ago. I'm sure a day will come when a boxed piece of software bearing the words Duke Nukem Forever will slink onto store shelves. But no one, including, I suspect, the game's developers, is expecting DNF to set the industry on fire. It will merely be the weak punch line to one of the longest-running jokes in the industry.

I think that Spore will ultimately be just as underwhelming. I'm afraid Will Wright bit off more than he can chew, maybe more than anyone could chew given current PC technology, and I think EA is starting to sweat.

I expect that many of the most ambitious features of Spore, the things that got people most excited about the game in the first place, will ultimately be pared back or removed altogether.

But we'll see.

EA will probably have to release Spore by next Christmas, in order to keep the game from becoming a complete money hole. Then gamers will find out if it is one of the greatest games of all time or simply an ambitious failure.

Victor Godinez covers technology for The Dallas Morning News. For more gaming discussion, go to his blog at punchbutton.beloblog .com.

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