Game Player

Kevin Caseyon the next big thing in gaming.

Video games finally became mainstream in 2007. Worldwide, annual sales jumped around 50 per cent, from $12 billion to $18 billion. Huge audiences are live to Internet gaming, including 10 million subscribers to World of Warcraft, the biggest multiplayer game. And some believe things are just getting started. From Halo to Brain Training, it seems the world and its mother is playing something.

Against this background, and with an unprecedented range and quality of titles available, the BBC has gone so far as to declare this a "golden age" for games.

Yet if there is one criticism for the heralds of a golden age to consider, it's that, despite the advances in technology, there has never been a "next-generation" game. Every new release is just a more salubrious sequel to something that first came out years before.

That's why all eyes are turning to 48-year-old Will Wright, the Steven Spielberg of games, to inject a bit of originality into the picture. Wright's blockbuster is The Sims series, which, at 90 million units sold, is the best- selling PC franchise.

Wright's much-anticipated follow-up is called Spore, and his publisher, EA Games, hopes and prays it will be big enough keep EA in the ring with Activision, publishers of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Activision recently became the world's largest games company following a merger.

Spore can be defined as a "SimEverything" concept. Starting the game as a single-celled organism, a player evolves creatures, tribes and eventually

a vast intergalactic civilization. Gamers can play solo or share with the online community. Like other Wright games, Spore forms a creative experience because every creature in it is as unique as the person who designed it.

In keeping with the open-ended spirit of the game, Wright has enlisted Brian Eno for the music. Using Eno's egghead "procedural music" technique, the soundtrack will be constant but never repeating. Wright and EA want Spore to be eternally regenerating user-content shared among unlimited players. It's a big fantasy idea that EA Games is betting the ant-farm on.

Wright has been touting demos at conferences for the past 18 months and, after various hold-ups, Spore looks likely to finally launch this spring.

Part of the delay came when Wright was forced to completely rethink the game for the modestly endowed Wii console. As far as he's concerned, the

Wii with its innovative "wag and wave" interface is the only truly next-generation games machine. Spore is scheduled to be released on the handheld DS and PSP machines as well as whirring giants like the Xbox, PC and PS3.

The test of Spore will be in how well the idea of an all-powerful pet colony balances its appeal to both sexes. It also depends on players' willingness to share the game online. If it fails, it could be the last time someone attempts to do something original in games for a long time.