Not content to simply bring you the news of Spore's release date (September 7th, 2008) or the reasons why the game has taken so long to develop (like numerous Facebook relationships, it's complicated), the staff of Level Up has brought you one more exclusive. When we found out yesterday that the PC edition of Spore would be accompanied by versions for the Nintendo DS, Macintosh computers and mobile phones, we again reached out to Electronic Arts to get the scoop. Maxis vice president and Spore executive producer Lucy Bradshaw was kind enough to promptly answer the questions we sent over via email--thanks!--and the answers demonstrate the amount of care that Maxis has put into trying to make sure that each instance of the game is worthy. Below, Brashaw tells us whether Mac and PC users will be able to share content with one another; which Japanese artistic tradition inspired the look of Spore for DS; and which single stage of the original game has been blown out for mobile phones. Intrigued? Keep reading.

What challenges have there been in developing a Mac version of Spore?

We're working with a company called Transgaming on our Mac version of Spore, and the effort is going very smoothly. When we set out to do this, it was to make sure that we have a simultaneous release on both the PC and Mac; too often our Mac versions ship months behind the PC. Just recently we were able to show the Creature Creator at MacWorld. We really feel that the creative nature of Spore will appeal to the Mac audience so we are excited to bring the game to both platforms.

Will Mac and PC users be able to share content with one another?

And, yes, the content that players create on the Mac version can be shared with PC players as well as other Mac players. All of the building blocks that are available in Spore's Creature, Building, Vehicle and Spaceship Creators are the same for both the PC and Mac versions, so we can now populate the galaxies of both Mac and PC players with the content that other players create, which makes exploring your own personal galaxy always unique and surprising.

How do the features and gameplay in the Nintendo DS version of Spore differ from those of the PC and Mac versions? Will the DS version have any unique content?

 The Cell stage from Spore, developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts

In Part I of our world exclusive Q&A with Maxis chief designer Will Wright, we discussed what caused Spore to overshoot his original projected release date by nearly two years; how Facebook, YouTube and Flickr became metaphors to navigate user generated content withing the game; and why hardcore gamers shouldn't worry that Spore isn't "game-y" enough for their highly advanced palates. In the second and final part of our interview, Wright shares some tidbits on the Wii version of Spore; explains the machinima tools; and reflects on the irony of building a revolutionary title on the back of classics like Pac-Man and Civilization. Enjoy.

Once someone has their initial toy box experience, they then decide, "Okay, I'm going to start at Cell and progress through." How much time did people collectively or individually want to spend in each of the stages before moving onto the next? Especially because like you said, there's an arc of evolution, but at the same time they're separate genres, and as you already said, different people respond to each of genres differently.

One of the things that we also decided not that long ago, based upon a lot of this focus group testing, is that we were actually going to put in difficulty levels in that the player selects, so when you start playing you can start at easy, medium or hard. We found that a lot of players that preferred playing with their toys in the world, where the world was pushing back at them less hard--those were closer to Sims players. Whereas the gamers wanted to go in and really play some hardcore fighting games in Creature or Civ.

We decided that it when you select the planet at the very start of the game, you select a difficulty level, so players can surf that as well. That's going to influence not just difficulty, but also the pacing in some of these games. Some of them are like a lot of RTS games or empire-building games, where you start out very lean on resources and you're digging yourself out of the hole; on the hard setting, it's going to feel a little bit more like that. On easy, I think the pace will go a little bit faster through a level. So it's going to depend primarily on the difficulty level. And once you get to Space, that's the point at which you can sit there and play the thing for 30 hours if you want, and it feels little bit more like an MMO at that point.

A Wii version has already been announced. What can you say about what that's going to play like in terms of structure, control, etc.?

In 2005, we first sat down with Maxis chief designer Will Wright--creator of SimCity and The Sims--to discuss his evolutionary epic Spore. Shortly thereafter, we said of the game in the pages of NEWSWEEK, "Non-gamers often ask when videogames are finally going to get their 'Citizen Kane.' But when Spore ships sometime next year, this infant medium might receive its Torah, its 'Origin of Species' and its '2001: A Space Odyssey' all rolled into one." Ignore the somewhat breathless prose and reflect for a moment upon the game's original ship date: sometime in 2006. But when we consider the scope of the gameplay (it's Pac-Man at the bottom of the evolutionary food chain, and "Star Trek" at the top); the magnitude of its technical ambition (large slices of Spore are procedurally generated, from the creatures animations to the musical score); and the challenge of designing a simple-yet-flexible interface to control it all (Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are among its influences), we're loath to begrudge Wright and his team at Maxis the time they needed to get it just right.

You'll feel the same way after you read our world exclusive interview with Will Wright. We caught up with him last week via phone, a couple of days before he and his corporate overlords at Electronic Arts settled on the date of September 7th, 2008 to release the PC, Mac, DS and mobile phone versions of Spore. Even though we only spoke for just under 40 minutes, Wright dropped so much science that we had to break the Q&A into two parts, both of which will run today. In Part I, Wright explains in greater detail why the game has taken so much longer than he originally anticipated; how his team hit on social networking as the metaphor for navigating the vast amount of user generated content that Spore will almost certainly inspire; and whether there was any pressure from EA execs to ship the game before its time. Read on.

When we first met in your office to talk seriously about this game it was some time in 2005. It's now 2008, and you guys are finally set to announce a release date. What happened? What's been taking so long in making this game?

Oh gosh. It was so many challenges to overcome. A lot of them initially were technical challenges: procedural animation; can we do these levels of detail enough to have zoom on the models; etc. Once we nailed most of those, it became a very large design challenge. And probably the biggest design challenge was keeping it very accessible to players so that every bit of the game was intuitive, easy and approachable. At the same time, we were going to mix all these genres, so we wanted to have one kind of control scheme, camera scheme, feedback system, rewards, across these different game genres. That probably overall was the biggest challenge, I think.

We've had all the game levels up and running for quite a while now. Initially it felt like five different games kind of stuck together. We basically did pass after pass, bringing these things into alignment, kind of like aligning the Intercontinental railway, digging into the rails with a sledgehammer, slowly getting closer and closer and closer until pretty soon it's a seamless fit across the rail.

 The Tribe stage of Spore, developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts

The wait is almost over. The end is nearly in sight. Electronic Arts has just announced a release date for its eagerly anticipated game Spore, in which players work their way up the evolutionary ladder from single-celled organisms to space travelling powerhouses. On September 7th, 2008, the game will ship on Windows PCs, Macintoshes, DS and various mobile phones. No word yet on a ship date for the Wii version, or whether Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will be able to join on the fun.

We've also conducted a pair of exclusive interviews with Maxis chief designer Will Wright and Spore executive producer Lucy Bradshaw. Wright gives us some detailed insight into why Spore has taken so long to develop; why social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr are serving as guiding lights for the finished product; an whether he's got anything left in the tank after pouring his all into the game that some people have referred to as SimEverything. Bradshaw, for her part, explains what's been involved in creating the Mac edition of Spore, along with never-before revealed details about the versions for DS and mobile phones. You won't want to miss either one.

To read Part I of our two-part interview with Will Wright, click here. For Part II, click here. For our Q&A with Lucy Bradshaw, click here.

For the full press release, click on the link below.

1. @&!...Zero Punctuation's profane creator, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, interviewed
2. FRO...m the window/to the wall!  A look at whether Wii games get low scores
3. BOY...The child-man meme makes its way across the pond
4. ABS...Nintendo's president, chief design guru discuss the origins of Wii Fit
5. MMO...NCSoft's exclusivity deal with Sony suggests PS3 MMO in the works
6. NPD...plans to track game subscription fees; incumbent shows no fear
7. HOW...does it feel? Toshiba and HD-DVD face another Blu Monday
8. ART...and games: the eternal discussion and debate continues
9. RND...What's beef? Obama laced the streets with a hot joint; McCain claps back
10. RND...Frances Bean Cobain is 15, and suddenly, we feel rather ancient