Sporedum points out that Spore has reached 100 million creations, a pretty incredible milestone. 2,700,000 contributed to that high content count. Congrats EA Maxis!

IGN has slapped up a new preview of Spore: Galactic Adventures. Beam us down, Scotty! Galactic Adventure is set to ship in June, and IGN feels this expansion will be a perfect fit to the game, introducing features and content that should really help players enjoy a more immersive space experience.

Will Wright spoke with GameDaily BIZ today, where they confirmed that Wright will continue to be involved with Spore and other EA franchises. Although the game designer left to put more focus on his Stupid Fan Club think tank, Will Wright will continue to provide feedback to EA on Spore and other projects.

Falsely assuming that his work on Spore and his other previous franchises is done, we asked Wright if he ever would return to them. He responded, “I don’t think it was widely reported, but alongside this whole [Stupid Fun Club] thing, I also entered into a consulting agreement with EA. I’m spending a certain amount of time every month actually working with the Spore team on future versions of Spore and expansions. So I will [still] be involved with EA on developing the Spore franchise as well.”

Alright, maybe not! But GameSpy has a fictional article up surrounding the whole Spore penis monster phenomena. Not even sure if penis monsters are a big deal these days, but be forewarned that if you check out the article they DO include images of said monsters.

Emeryville, CA – April 14, 2009 – The Spore™ franchise is going to college! Maxis™, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio, announced today that lead designer, Stone Librande, will be embarking on a lecture series that will reach some of the nation’s top game design college programs including Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon University. Aspiring game designers, engineers and artists will have the chance to hear Librande speak about “Designing Playfully” and learn more about the career opportunities inside the creative, global videogame industry. Students will also be among the first to get their hands on Spore™ Galactic Adventures, the highly-anticipated expansion pack to the platinum hit Spore.

Maxis’ “College Invasion Tour” hit Georgia Institute of Technology on April 10, and will head to University of Southern California on April 16 and Carnegie Mellon University on May 1.
During the tour, Librande will guide students through the intuitive Adventure Creator in Spore Galactic Adventures while inspiring and teaching them how to make game concepts come to life. This easy-to-use tool gives students the ability to prototype design concepts and experiment with new ideas.
“Maxis and EA are huge proponents of college game design programs and nurturing rising talent,” said Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis. “The robust creative capabilities of the Adventure Creator in Spore Galactic Adventures, empowers future game developers with a different way to experiment with game design. I can’t wait to see what the students create.”

In FY09, EA welcomed 250 interns to studios in the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Germany. Last year alone, the company hired approximately 80 new graduates, fresh out of college.

“The games industry continues to grow with the rise of online gaming, casual gaming and the exciting challenges of new markets,” said Cindy Nicola, VP, Global Talent Acquisition. “EA is passionate about attracting and hiring the brightest graduates as they are our next generation of leaders. Our university partnerships and the talent they produce are key components of our overall talent strategy and we are deeply committed to continuing to hire interns and new graduates across EA.”

Librande is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and California Institute of Arts Film/Video School. He has worked in a wide variety of technical and creative fields, and has been employed as an art director, video producer, software engineer, freelance illustrator and, for one long summer, a tractor driver on a farm in Oregon. He has also taught a game design course at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, CA.

Check out the latest images out of camp Maxis, for Spore Galactic Adventures.

Box Art

General

Spore™ Galactic Adventures

Product Description

Take Spore creature from zero to Galactic Hero! The Spore franchise continues to evolve with the launch of Spore Galactic Adventures – a highly-customizable expansion pack for Spore. Spore Galactic Adventures adds a tremendous amount of variety and fun to the Space game, allowing players to, play Maxis-created Adventures, create customized Adventures and beam down to planets for the first time ever! 

In Spore Galactic Adventures, players will re-connect with their creature as they turn them into legendary Space Captains.  Fans will prepare their Captain for infinite adventures across the galaxy, from battling epic monsters in intergalactic arenas to embarking on arcade-style puzzle quests and much more.  In each mission, gamers earn experience to rank up their Captain and gain game-changing items and accessories.  Players can suit up their Captain with over 30 new items, from the Plasma Pulser to the Swarm Magnet and  share their exploits online, as their Creature Card shows their accomplishments, rank, and medals earned.  Every thrilling adventure is just one more opportunity to prove there has never been a greater Captain!   

Gamers looking for a deeper experience will be able to realize their most outlandish, challenging and fun Adventure fantasies by creating personalized missions with the Adventure Creator. This easy-to-use tool gives players the ability to create, play and share one-of-a-kind missions with friends online at www.spore.com. Once an Adventure is uploaded, other players can modify and rate user and Maxis-created Adventures, providing an endless variety of fun new challenges to play. The possibilities are as infinite as the cosmos!

About Spore

Spore lets gamers build their own personal universe from scratch, evolving life from a single-cell organism to a galactic god over hundreds of millions of years.  Players design a species and guide it to sentience, then help it build a society, develop its culture, and ultimately explore an infinite cosmos of worlds created by other players. Visit www.spore.com for more details. 

Spore Galactic Adventures requires Spore to play. 

Key Features

Reconnect with Spore creature by beaming down to the planet surface and turning them into a Space Captain!

Play Maxis-created missions, featuring puzzle, combative, racing, and social gameplay styles

New creature accessory rewards, including Energy Blade, Acrobat Dance, Hover, Stunning Charm, Jump Jet

Adventure Creator 

o Terraform planets and for the first time place buildings, creatures, vehicles 

o Add goals, structure, or story to adventures

Share adventures online

Product Specifications

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Maxis

Ship Date: June 23, 2009

Players: Single Player

Category: Simulation/Action

IGN goes hands-on with the Spore Galactic Adventures expansion. Sounds like it’s pretty much done, needing just a bit more polish if anything.

The first mission, created by Maxis for this demo, is called Mothership Down. It’s designed to be played by your Space Captain, which is basically a heroic creature that you build up, sort of like Spore’s version of Captain Kirk. The mission begins with you being shot down over by hostile aliens. One of your crewmates nearby tells you (yes, you can input dialogue bubbles so you can have conversation cutscenes) that the enemy mothership has to be destroyed in order for you to get extracted. To do that, you have to get across or around a battle raging nearby between your troops and those of the enemy. Then you have to battle up to the gate of a fortress and destroy the gate to gain access inside.

To show off some of the tools available to you, the courtyard of the fortress is littered with the kind of red barrels that tend to explode. You also have to kill one of the aliens who’s holding the red key that you need to get past the red energy field to the transporter that “beams” you aboard the mothership. Then you’ll have to battle through the corridors to the reactor, blast the reactor till it explodes, and race to escape the mothership before it detonates.

Sporedum brings us a spotlight on Azulon, a well-known creator in the Spore community. They cover a bit on the person behind the Azulon name, feature some creations and talk shop. Find out all about Azulon, perhaps you’ll pick up some tips while you’re at it!

Sporedum has posted an interview with Stone Librande, lead designer of Spore Galactic Adventures. Topics of discussion include mods, the best part of Spore, favourite things, space missions, failing a mission and more. Read up!