Spore: A Video Game About Evolving

Complex systems have inspired some of video game designer Will Wright’s most successful creations, including the popular SimCity series of computer games. In today’s NYT Science Times, Carl Zimmer profiles Wright’s latest game, Spore, which follows the evolution of new life forms from single-celled organisms to galaxy-hoping civilizations. Spore raises the possibility that video games could help illuminate for players the basic premises of the life sciences.

Several of the scientists Zimmer interviews for the article point out that the way creatures evolve in Spore bears little resemblance to the real-life biological mechanisms. But they still applaud the value of underscoring the importance of evolution:

These caveats notwithstanding, Dr. [Thomas] Near, [an assistant professor of Ecology and Evolutionary biology at Yale], hopes that Spore prompts people to think about the evolutionary process. “This may be totally off about how evolution works, but I’d much rather be dealing with a student who says, ‘O.K., I have no problem with evolution; I think about it the same way I think about gravity.’ If it does that, it’ll be great.”

Mr. Wright said he had been hearing similar reactions from other scientists. “I find that scientists are incredibly open and excited that we can portray this stuff in games, even if it’s not perfectly accurate,” he said. “It’s manure to seed future scientists.”

We recently covered the potential for better learning through video games here at Science Progress, writing about the newly authorized National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, which can leverage a host of untapped technologies and educational research for high schoolers, college students, and life-long learners.

Even if Spore take liberties with the science, it’s worth noting that what Zimmer calls “one of the most eagerly anticipated video games in the history of the industry” takes evolutionary biology as its starting point. When the Federation of American Scientists released its own science-driven game, Immune Attack, for teaching immunology, they observed that students who played the game expressed a higher interest in biology. Perhaps Spore could inspire an even larger audience of young scientists.

What do readers think? Does a game like Spore have the potential to raise the profile of a field like evolutionary biology?

Tags: STEM Education

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