Here’s Will Wright displaying a creature sequence from beginning to end in Spore at SXSW yesterday. It’s much like the original videos he showed when introducing the game a year or so ago, but obviously it’s being demo’d with the current engine and with a new creature being made up on the the fly. He gets all philosophical in the middle, as game designers are wont to do, and skips over village creation. But he goes much more into planet and space modes than before. The 17 minute video shows off planet weather, terraforming, planet invasion, creature encyclopedia, and galactic and intergalactic exploration.

Looks like the game is coming along just as expected. I’m hoping the replay value turns out as good as it seems, from the videos. And I hope the release date doesn’t get pushed back anymore (it currently resides at Q2 ’07).

Living in Austin since the 80′s, it’s bittersweet for me to see what SXSW has become. On one hand, we get the best of all media worlds coming here: started with music, and expanded into movies, and now is huge on electronic entertainment. On the other hand, as a perpetual student, I can’t afford even a portion of the events anymore, much less the one grand fee of seeing everything.

Le sigh.