A friend said to me,
“I am trying to make a video game to create interest in engineering. Someone told me Spore taught a lot about evolution. What do you think?”
I did play Spore and I was very disappointed. I was angry, actually, because the things that are so cool about evolution were not present. Playing Spore was like expecting an excellent new baseball game and instead it was a soccer game. The worst part is, that real evolution would make a great game!
The real problem with Spore was that Maxis and EA advertised it as being about evolution, and bragged about it being a real science video game. However, anyone who knows about evolution knows that isn’t true. The problem is that so many people do not know how evolution actually works, and could easily be confused by the version of “evolution” presented in Spore.
Science journalist John Bohannon assembled a team of scientists to give Spore a report card on all the subjects its claimed to present. You can see this report card here: http://scienceguild.org/wiki/index.php?title=Spore You can read John’s review of Spore in Science Magazine, here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5901/531.3.full
Why am I writing about it? Because science can be explained by playing games, but only when the core of the science must be used to win the game. For example, a game about evolution should require the player to overcome that fact that random events may wipe out your offspring at any moment. That would be exciting and teach real science. I am writing about this because we (learning technology folks) are still struggling with this concept. I believe we have learned the theory: we know we want a game that requires the player to use real science to win. The struggling is coming from the question, how do we make that game? Working closely with the scientist, or having the scientist be the game writer is the answer. For examples, see Metablast, Cellcraft and Surge (and Immune Attack, of course).