Friendly Atheist

This also goes to show that no group of people isn’t without it’s sect of ninnys.

Another thing, though: you should put the “permalink” and “comments” link on seperate lines, they look like a single link at the moment. Maybe at least put “|” between them or something.

I thought they would be mad because spore gives people the impression that evolution requires a designer. But it’s just a game people should chill out.

I would like to contend that words like ’spirit’ and ’spirituality’ are not necessarily religious terms. I understand that in the context of the game religious is probably what they were going for, but that there is room for spiritual atheists. This doesn’t place any belief in the supernatural or ‘higher beings’. I take it as a mere appreciation of our unique and rare place in the universe.

Heck, when I play Civ 4, I’m always a Spiritual country. I find it the easiest way to make my civilization happy while still taking over others. …Hmmmmmmmm….

If anything the “militant atheists” should be annoyed that the game is not evolution, it’s intelligent design. Honestly I don’t care because 1) an evolution game would be horribly boring and 2) Spore looks fricking awesome.

one of the things that bothers me about Spore is that it really doesn’t represent evolution very well. YOU the intelligence DESIGNS the creatures, and THEN they evolve. Of course, a game where it represented true evolution wouldn’t be very fun, you would just watch it

There’s no detail to what upset the atheists, who they are, and how many there are, so lets not jump to conclusions. I doubt atheists have a problem with religion being in the game like some are suggesting. One thing that’s troubling with game producers is they cannot take one bit of criticism. It’s likely they sympathize with religion, they probably envy the blasphemy laws.

Sounds like they spend a lot of time making sure they didn’t offend religious people. That doesn’t sound like it would present a fair representation. They could connect religion with being good or something. If that’s the case then Will Wright should take criticism for that, he shouldn’t whine when people note that his shit stinks. If you’re in a creative industry you shouldn’t freak when people have opinions about your work.

The game doesn’t simulate evolution, the scientific theory, it’s very much a game about intelligent design although the player doesn’t have to be a god. I don’t have much of a problem with that, I don’t have a problem with playing a priest in World of Warcraft. I didn’t like any recent Maxis games but SimCity 2000 is still one of my favourite games, I’m looking forward to Spore.

Will Wright said in the full interview:

I’d probably be best described as an atheist. I’m open to the idea that there is some creator somewhere.

and

But if I can imagine that humans might one day have that power to create these universes, there’s no reason why some other intelligence above us created ours. That’s not to say that was the original designer, or the designer at all – maybe it was just an accident.

So at that level I’m open to the idea that our universe was created; but probably there’s not a guy with a long white beard looking at everything we do, just personally those are my beliefs.

He sounds more like a believer in Confusionism than an atheist.

an evolution game would be horribly boring

It was called SimEarth. All of my games ended up with repeated use of the Monolith.

Could have called it SoupEarth.

I haven’t seen so much as a hint of anything even resembling natural selection yet.

Isn’t there a PvP component to this? If so, the natural selection is coming.

Huh? Who are these militant atheists? Where is this outrage?

It honestly sounds too stupid to be real.

The problem that some of the reviewers brought up was that choosing the religious path gave the player’s species unrealistic advantages.

For example there are religious abilities which by any other name would be called magical, such as faith healing which actually works.

That kind of un-realism is what these people were complaining about, not simply the inclusion of religion.

I have also heard from second hand sources that the atheists were complaining about the inclusion of “faith healing” and “plagues” i.e. raining frogs (or pikachus, whatever). Religion was in Civilization IV and many other games, atheists didn’t complained about those. I smell bullshit.

Will Wright is knowingly lying when he said that it was the inclusion of religion caused complaint, since he read the posts and responded to the authors. I don’t believe someone as intelligent as him could genuinely read and not understand the feedback he was getting. Wright needs to apologise for misrepresenting the situation, and the gaming “news” needs to write corrections to their “reporting”.

I can now see why religion in the game pissed some people off, because people like Will Wright go around implying the game “simulates evolution” and it’s about science then do the opposite. World of Warcraft has faith healing, I have no problem with magical powers in games, but I wouldn’t be happy if they popped up in Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six, games promoted for “realism”.

Here’s the original post from the thread (author: SpongB6F1):

From the thread “In Game Text dumps found on xSpore!”

“The Religious Super Weapons include the Faith Heal, Black Rain, and Messianic Uprising.

The Faith Heal is unlocked after capturing 3 Religious cities. You can use the Faith Heal on your own vehicles or buildings to heal all units in the area.

The Black Rain is unlocked after capturing 5 Religious cities. If you use Black Rain on a neighboring city, it will cause a large Black Storm to appear over the city, raining diseased creatures on their city. This causes extreme unhappiness making it easier to convert their city.

The Messianic Uprising is unlocked after capturing 7 cities. Launching the Messianic Uprising creates a large holographic image of your priests chanting over your city and sending your religion across the globes. Awestruck, all cities immediately convert to your nation. “

If this is true then I am severely disappointed. Such rampant mysticism should have no place in a game so explicitly scientific in nature. When I think of how much they’ve trumpeted their scientific credentials, making such a show of the sophisticated technical science behind their tutorials–and especially when I think of Mr. Wright’s remarks about the inspirational potential of a science-based toy in fostering a rational outlook and a passion for the investigation of nature, I can’t describe this as anything but hypocrisy.

Clerical healing powers are something out of dungeons and dragons, and have utterly no place in a science-based game.

One would hope they try to give this some kind of sciency veneer to integrate it with the rest of the Spore setting (e.g. they described the “Messianic Uprising” as involving a hologram), but I can’t see how it would work.

And a further, related point–I’ve read that adopting a social strategy in the earlier game results inexorably in having religious cities in the Civ phase. This has no rational justification.

I am appalled.

Will Wright’s reply:

I do read the threads here when I get the chance (though been a bit on the busy side lately).

As you might know I’ve been very interested in using Spore to motivate an interest in science. At the same time we want to make a fun, humorous, playful game. The superpowers in the game were added both to make early decisions you make in the game (cell, creature, tribe) continue to have consequence in the later levels and also to add more humor and playfulness to the overall experience.

If you look at the Civ superpowers they are more realistic for the economic and Military strategies than they are for the religious. We could have labeled the religious powers differently (maybe enhanced memetic transmission or fundamentalist jihad) and given them the same rough effect but they would have felt a bit more gritty and out-of-character with the rest of the game.

Usually when we hit design bumps like this we like to fall back into humor, it’s something everyone can relate to and most tend to then view it as a metaphorical solution to something that’s below the simulation level of detail.

A good example of this was in The Sims when the characters needed to do things that would have been messy to simulate. For instance when a sim needs to change clothes they jump in the air, spin around and are redressed. That’s obviously not the way it works in reality. Also if they need a small object they always pull it from behind their back (the “everything comes out of your butt solution”). Most players understand these methods as a humorous metaphor for what would really happen.

The space level of Spore has a number of abilities that I guess you could argue might have technology solutions but that I personally view as highly unlikely (such as traversing a wormhole). Again these increase to playability and narrative density of what’s possible in the game.

At the end of the day I think the “educational” impact of Spore is less important than the “motivational” impact. In other words, I’d rather promote an interest in the larger world around us instead of downloading known facts. To have the largest impact we first and foremost need to make a game that’s compelling and fun to play.

This is a fascinating debate though (which is why I felt like I had to comment a bit) and I don’t mean to end it. In fact I would love to hear everyone weigh in on what they think about the creative license that we’re taking with these subjects.

- Will Wright

Shit, given those options, i’d probably opt for spiritual! Nothing wrong with being spiritual (i see the word as meaning someone who is very connected with the universe and believes that the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts when it comes to life)…

Aj, thanks for providing an example of this “outrage” Will was referring to. I suspected it would have to do with how it’s marketed as a scientific simulation. I can sort of sympathize, but I find Will’s reply all-in-all satisfactory. The game is basically soft sci-fi, and gameplay takes precedence over realism. There are worse things that happen in “realistic” games.

I liked Spore better when it was called SimLife. At least my computer could actualy run SimLife.

Anyways, the article seems to be trying to pick a fight without any evidence or even anecdotes.