Spore

The Spore franchise continues to evolve as Maxis, an Electronic Arts studio, today revealed details about Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena – two games built from the ground up exclusively for the Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. Building on the franchise's core tenets of creativity, exploration and adventure, Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena will immerse Nintendo fans into all-new experiences when the games launch this year.

GameDaily BIZ just got off the phone with legendary game designer Will Wright, who as you know recently left Electronic Arts to pursue his entertainment think tank, Stupid Fun Club (of which EA is a co-owner). Although Lucy Bradshaw, VP and General Manager at Maxis, reassured us when the news broke that Spore would be in good hands and that Wright's legacy and the culture he instilled at Maxis would help steer Spore's future, Wright today confirmed with us that he will actually still be providing feedback to EA on Spore and other projects.

Few games have transitioned from the PC to the Wii. There is no World of Warcraft Wii, no Company of Heroes Wii, not even - yet - a Peggle Wii. But EA has been trying, first with MySims for Nintendo's home system and, coming this fall, Spore Hero. EA has shed almost no light on Spore Hero since announcing it in January as part of the 2009 line-up of Spore spin-offs. MTV Multiplayer can change that today. Last month in Las Vegas, Stephen Totilo met with the general manager for EA's Spore and Sims studio, Lucy Bradshaw, who talked to him, among other things, about how Spore for the Wii is taking shape.

Gamasutra writes: Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet leads the nominees for the ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards with seven nominations, organizers have revealed. Number None's Braid follows closely with five nominations. Among the nominations for LittleBigPlanet is the coveted Game of the Year award. Other nominees for that category include Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead, each of which received a total of four award nominations; Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV, which earned a total of three nominations, and Lionhead Studios' Fable 2. Winners will be honored at an awards show taking place during the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

Today's news gathering has everything the TGR staff truly loves: boiling hate, Spore and Uwe Boll being publicly disgraced.

Gamerdeals.net writes: Well... what can we say... the week of Christmas is not the best time to release a new game apparently...

The freshly-launched Spore video game that lets people play God has been hit with a lawsuit accusing its publisher of slipping devilish anti-piracy software onto players' machines. The lawsuit filed this week in a federal court in Northern California contends that players weren't warned about tenacious digital rights management (DRM) software that stays in computers even if game programs are removed. Spore publisher Electronic Arts told buyers that there are anti-piracy safeguards but didn't advise people the SecuROM program it used is essentially a virus that installs itself without warning, the lawsuit alleges. The DRM software attaches itself to the command and control centers of computers and can track activities, block certain operations and even disrupt hardware, according to the suit filed this week. A US woman was named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, which is seeking class action status to represent all Spore buyers. The filing demands a jury trial and wants Electronic Arts forced to pay unspecified damages as well as turn over money it has made from Spore, which went on sale in Europe, Asia, Australia and the US this month. Electronic Arts said it does not discuss pending litigation.

Kombo writes, It is a widely held belief that used game retailers are screwing game publishers and developers out of millions upon millions of dollars annually. While this may be the case, there have been some that have made the argument that the game industry would be in worse shape without these retailers selling games at discount prices. One such individual is Soren Johnson, a programmer on both the Civilization and Spore franchises. On his blog, Johnson spoke in the defense of GameStop saying...

Ripten: You know that saying about shit rolling downhill? Yeah, well you better believe it does. A few nights ago, we reported that a long time EA Command & Conquer community staff member had made a forum post informing members that the company would be linking bans on the forum to their line up of games as well ... We then ran a follow up yesterday featuring an official canned response from EA regarding the matter, and today, the C&C community manager issued a response via the forum addressing his previous comment...

Ripten: A recent post by an EA Community Staff member on the company's Command and Conquer message board outlines changes to their policy, stating their intent to link a gamers forum account to their EA gaming account. Why does this matter? Because EA is planning on banning those who get banned on their forum from their games as well. The post by the EA Community Staff member can be seen below: